Orson Welles turned a trashy novel into a brilliant film by overturning all the expectations of the crime thriller. Although the film remains an absorbing intrigue--the story of a murder plan that unfolds as a yacht makes its luxurious way along the Pacific--every scene is a showcase for Welles' cinematic inventiveness, and the whole adds up to a significant statement on the evils of money-lust. Welles' first coup was in casting himself as a totally sympathetic character, an Irish sailor and veteran of the Spanish Civil War who lives close to his humanitarian politics and who becomes the pawn in the game of the greedy rich. Next, he took the Hollywood heroine and systematically destroyed the aura of glamor surrounding her, portraying instead a web of avarice, and tearing out her mythical good heart. (Welles' denunciation of the heroine as a “praying mantis” is only one of the film's controversial elements; the public did not go for the film, with its politically outspoken hero, although critics did, and Welles left Hollywood not long after.) The Lady from Shanghai is filled with bravura moments that resonate beyond pyrotechnics, including sequences of reflexive cinema such as the macabre Hall of Mirrors scene and a confession of love in a “fishbowl"/Aquarium. As critic David Hull writes, “It takes several viewings to understand just how great this film is.”