Welles’ dazzling and dizzying pulp poetry takes the classic femme fatale tale to globe-spanning lengths and hallucinatory heights. Hard-luck sailor Michael O’Hara (Welles) tumbles into the snare of gorgeous and mysterious Elsa Bannister (Hayworth) only to find himself caught in the murderous conspiracy of her viperous cohorts. A full synopsis would be a fool’s errand; Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn offered a thousand bucks to anyone who could explain the film, and the director himself stayed quiet. To get hung up on plot is to miss the point entirely, though. Welles improvised a brilliant, chaotic 155-minute noir epic, which studio editor Viola Lawrence pruned to 86 feverish minutes. What remained is one of the most startlingly inventive crime films ever released by a Hollywood studio.