The Lady from Shanghai

Irish sailor Michael O'Hara rescues a woman named Elsa when hooligans waylay her horse-drawn coach in Central Park. Escorting her to her car, Michael reveals he is a seaman and learns Elsa and her husband, criminal defense attorney Arthur Bannister, are newly arrived in New York City from Shanghai. They are on their way to San Francisco via the Panama Canal. Michael, attracted to Elsa despite misgivings, agrees to sign on as an able seaman aboard Bannister's yacht. They are joined on the boat by Bannister's partner, George Grisby, who proposes that Michael "murder" him in a plot to fake his own death. He promises Michael $5,000 and explains that since he would not be actually dead and there would be no corpse, Michael could not be convicted of murder (reflecting corpus delicti laws at the time). Michael agrees, intending to use the money to run away with Elsa. Grisby has Michael sign a confession. On the night of the crime, Sydney Broome, a private investigator who has been following Elsa on her husband's orders, confronts Grisby, having learned of Grisby's plan to murder Bannister, frame Michael, and escape by pretending to have also been murdered. Grisby shoots Broome and leaves him for dead. Unaware of what has happened, Michael proceeds with the night's arrangement and sees Grisby off on a motorboat before shooting a gun into the ground to draw attention to himself. A mortally wounded Broome warns Michael that he is being set up and Grisby intends to kill Bannister. Michael rushes to Bannister's office to find Bannister alive and Grisby dead. The police discover evidence implicating Michael, including his confession, and take him away. At trial, Bannister acts as Michael's attorney. Upon learning of his wife's relationship with Michael, he ultimately takes pleasure in the suspicion that they will lose the case, while also indicates that he knows the real killer's identity. Before the verdict, Michael feigns a suicide attempt by swallowing Bannister's pain relief pills, and slips out of the building in the ensuing commotion. Elsa follows, and she and Michael hide in a Chinatown theater while they wait for Elsa's Chinese friends to arrive. Michael realizes that she killed Grisby, but passes out from the pills he took and is carried to an empty funhouse. When Michael wakes, he deduces that Grisby and Elsa had been planning to murder Bannister, and for Grisby to appear to be the only culprit, who would then disappear using the un-provable murder ploy. Broome's involvement ruined the scheme and Elsa killed Grisby for her own protection. She had planned that with her husband and Grisby out of the way, and Michael cleared of murder, they could be happy together. Bannister tracks Elsa down and engages in a shootout with her in a hall of mirrors. He is killed while Elsa is mortally wounded. Disillusioned and ignoring Elsa's pleas to save her life, Michael leaves with the knowledge that a letter Bannister had left behind will clear him of any crimes. He contemplates, "Maybe I'll live so long that I'll forget her. Maybe I'll die trying."