1. shanghai | ʃaŋˈhʌɪ | transitive verb (shanghais, shanghaiing, shanghaied) 1) historical: force (someone) to join a ship lacking a full crew by drugging them or using other underhand means. 2) informal: coerce or trick (someone) into a place or position or into doing something other than this and the air of mystery that Shanghai gives to Elsa (Rita Hayworth), I could find no other factors in this film that is related to Shanghai - or, rather, the Shanghai that I know. I must try to forget about this before I start a race-and-ethnicity-themed ramble.

2. Also, Orson Welles's fake Irish accent is just as disturbing as Rita Hayworth's Chinese (Cantonese).

3. But hey, Rita Hayworth. Yeah I know. Bold, mysterious, immensely charming, sexy to the extent of being implicitly promiscuous (it was hinted that she may have been a high-class prostitute before she married Bannister) - and most importantly, dangerous. Femme fatale to its finest. (But still under the male gaze, of course.)

4. Mike O'Hara (Orson Welles) is essentially a reinvention of the Byronic hero (which is almost narcissist, in a sense?). Just like most noir heroes, he is watched by fate (or God?) all the time - note the camera angle. This portrayal is of course related to the influence of the Gothic romance. When seen with the other main characters of the male sex (who are all more sinister and much more filthy rich) than him, Mike could maybe be understood as a representation of the working class.

5. Law is depicted as nothing but a corrupt joke in this film. The attorney's chess playing while waiting for the jury to come to a decision, the best criminal lawyer's cross-examination of himself, and even the fake confession letter (gosh that letter sounds so fake!) - all this is ridiculed as just a game that really, in the end, gives no one justice. But the pistol does give justice.

6. New York City, oh the greatest city of all time, is seen as an intricate labyrinth and an enigma. The labyrinth of plot gives you this sense of being trapped and fooled and, yeah, basically being shanghaied. It's all a game (I mean, hey, an amusement park for the climax scene) about money, sex and crime, really.

7. The Germans. The sense of disorientation, given by the labyrinth-like city, is visualized through the complex use of mirrors and irregular shapes in the climax scene, which is, obviously, a tribute to German expressionism. And the Freudian implications of lust, the wartime/postwar angst ("the gas chamber")...

8. I'll take a wild guess here. The beautiful aquarium sequence, with Mike and Elsa's silhouettes, in some way inspired Woody Allen's planetarium sequence in Manhattan.

9. This was the first film that I properly watched at Birkbeck Cinema, just several doors away from the great Laura Mulvey and three houses from where the Bloomsbury Group came into being. I'd love to have a glass of champagne to this new start. So, cheers.

Ref.: http://www.filmsite.org/ladyf3.html