“The director is the most important influence on a film” Compare how far your two chosen films support this statement.
The two films I have selected for this question is Blade Runner (1992 directors cut) and The Lady From Shanghai (1947) and the directors in question are Ridley Scott and Orson Welles. The Auteur Theory is “create your own visual style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.” Orson Welles.

The Lady From Shanghai was made in 1947 by Orson Welles starring himself and Rita Hayworth. This film was originally made to get Welles out of Debt because he went over budget for a stage production of around the world in 80 days and he owed IRS Money. The film had a budget of 2.5 million in which Welles went overbudget due to shotting in far locations such as Nicargarua and San Fransisco  , increasing costs on travel and accommodation. Welles wanted full control of the film and had his actress Rita Hayworth hair bleached and cut, which angered Harry Cohn, the manager of Columbia pictures.

Towards the end of the film, we see a mirror sequence that is a signature of Welles’ auteur style. This sequence shows long shots displaying the mirror technique. This is what Welles wanted but Columbia Pictures demanded more close ups of Rita Hayworth as they believed she was the main attraction to the film. These look odd during the sequence and look out of place. Also in this sequence you can see that whenever Rita is on camera she is always brightly lit, enforcing the idea that the studio loved her. This gives a Disorientating affect, as everything doesn’t make sense at this point in the story as we just learnt who the killer was. This emphasises the classic Noir style. We see Rita be revealed as the Femme Fatale which is convention continuously used in the genre.

The influence the studio had over the Lady From Shanghai is similar to the Influence of Warner Brothers on Ridleys Scotts Blade Runner. Throughout the film, Scotts dropped signatures from his Auteur style such as Establishing shots showing the location of the film, similar to Welles. He also uses Rain which is inspired from his upbringing when he lived in the north of England. This caused a problem with both cast and crew, Harrison Ford saying “ It was a B*tch to film, The shooting was long and hard.” Ridley also painted Rachels lips himself as he wanted them to be perfect.


The final scene in the film sees the confrontation of Deckard and Rot and it ends with the men sitting together in the rain, showing Scotts signature style. This shows a dark tone and keeps the film grounded in the new noir style. The sequence has shot reversed close ups of the two which is similar to the Lady from Shanghai but these shots were intended. The monologue Tears in the rain was written and performed by Rutger HAuer himself and Scott allowed that to be put in place. However, with the original, The studio believed the film didn’t make much sense so they asked Scott to put in a Harrison Ford voiceover throughout it. After the film came out, this was seen as pointless and was taken out for the directors cut. Scott had a lot of problems with the studio while making the film, eventually get fired and rehired during the process. The film was meant to be under two hours but the first copy they sent to the studio was four hours long which angered Warner Brothers. This meant new scenes had to be shot causing this film to also go overbudget like Welles The Lady From Shanghai.

In The Lady \From Shanghai, Welles liked to have everything in focus and you could see that throughout the film,making the film fell quite crampted at times when four men were confined to single shot so they were all in focus. As well as having low key and high key lighting in his shots as one of his signatures was having composition between the two colours in every shot meaning he had layers of shadow and light throught the scene causing silhouettes and shadows.

This differs to Blade Runner as Scott wanted low key lighting always with little neon elements to light up the scene as he wanted to create a wet and dark atmosphere as that was one of his signatures of his auteur style. This is seen in the scene I mentioned earlier and it gives the film a bleak tone as if nothing will get better. Before taking on the film Blade Runner, Ridleys Scott’s brother Frank sadly passed away due to his battle with cancer so this idea of the replicants running out of time was really emphasised by Scott’s personal loss as he thought his brother had ran out of time as well. Scott also added the unicorn scene to the Directors cut as he wanted to symbolise the power of memories and how important they were to the story. Deckard has a dream about a unicorn which shows human nature which contrasts to the robotic feel of the film. It humanises Deckard as he is more of your anti-hero type protagonist as he only kills the women replicants, gets saved by Rachel by one of the male replicants, drinks a lot and rapes Rachel.

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