Many Orson Welles‘ films can be labeled “noirish” without a lot of debate among cinephiles. But only a couple might rightly be regarded as “film noir,” sordid crime tales exposing the dark underbelly of pre-war to post-war America.

The two films most clearly fitting into that genre are also defining films in Welles’ legacy, “marred” and studio-edited masterpieces, joining “The Magnificent Ambersons” as among the many projects that make Welles fans salivate over “what might have been.”

“Touch of Evil” (1958) has long been a favorite of film buffs, thanks largely to its glorious excesses, degree of difficulty and “Hollywood comeback” nature. For decades the film didn’t exist in accordance with Welles’ vision of it — the celebrated long take that opens it allowed to roll under the opening credits, etc. There is a “Welles cut” of that film extant, which could scarcely improve the picture’s already-lofty reputation.

Welles labored under similar circumstances on “The Lady from Shanghai.” He filmed this 1947 release for a major Hollywood studio, Columbia Pictures, and it starred the most powerful lady on the lot, Rita Hayworth. As she was married to Welles at the time, this picture gave him the leverage to make his own picture, and even dye her famous red tresses blonde, and chop them off short, enraging studio chief Harry Cohn.

Cohn, for whom Welles made the movie as a “favor” as the Columbia chief had invested in Welles’ disastrous stage production of “Around the World in 80 Days,” with music by Cole Porter, took out his revenge on the former “wunderkind” by heavily hacking away at “Shanghai,” cutting the big funhouse “hall of mirrors” climactic showdown from twenty minutes to just over three, for instance.

What’s left is still brisk and brilliant, a picture whose stature has soared in the decades since its badly-reviewed/box-office bomb release.

Welles slings an Irish accent and takes on an anti-heroic “action hero” role, playing a two-fisted brawler, writer and itenerate merchant mariner and sailor. That was a bit of a stretch, as we can make out the stunt men doubling for the tall, hulking Welles in the fight scenes.

“Black Irish” Michael O’Hara falls under the spell of the blonde Elsa — he prefers to call her “Rosalie” — on a hansom cab ride in New York. Some thugs come for her in Central Park, he knocks them about, and thus impressed, she starts to fall for him.

But bookish Irish Mike must not know the French phrase “femme fatale,” which he should sense the moment he spies the pistol she didn’t pull out of her purse to defend herself.

He’s disappointed to learn she’s married, but his sardonic, sarcastic voice-over narration all but brushes that off.

“Personally, I don’t like a girlfriend who has a husband,” he brogues. “If she’ll fool a husband, I figure she’ll fool me.”

The radio drama veteran Welles indulges in his most playful use of voice-over narration, which even if it was a product of re-edits and re-shoots, is some of the most charming film noir monologuing ever.

Black Irish Mike refers to himself as a “fathead,” and “big boob that I am” as he narrates himself right into a trap.

“This is I, thinking myself a very gay dog, indeed. But, here was a beautiful girl, all by herself, and me with plenty of time, nothin’ to do but get myself into trouble. Some people can smell danger. Not me.”

The “danger” may come from Elsa’s crutch-walking husband, the high-powered criminal defense attorney Arthur Bannister, deliriously overplayed by Welles’ “Citizen Kane” pal Everett Sloane. Bannister is a cynic and a realist. He wants Black Irish to crew on his sailing yacht, Circe (Errol Flynn’s yacht Zaca, was rented for the shoot, with Flynn along to sail it), which is to voyage from New York to California through “the (Panama) canal.” Bannister wants Mike because his wife wants him.

And what “Lov-errr,” as he calls her wants, Lov-errr gets.

Bannister has a sweaty, sketchy smart-ass partner, Grisby (Glenn Anders). And there’s a goon in the legal eagle’s employ (Ted de Corsia), some sort of private eye. If the lady of the yacht is making a play for the big “boob” of a bosun, this could get very messy very quickly.

The violence comes from an expected direction, but not with the expected victim and/or consequences.

The “big boob that I am” seems cagier than he lets on, resisting the lady’s charms as they sail to small Mexican towns and arrive in a small boat port near San Francisco. Yet somehow O’Hara is trapped, in a fix, with no way of knowing how to finagle his way out of it.

Welles shot in San Francisco and Sausalito, Acapulco and Pie de la Cuesta, Mexico. The picture has an intentional documentary realism at times, but peppered with telling close-ups, grim violence and grave pronouncements rendered by one and all, always with O’Hara’s resigned, world-weary voice-over spin as the icing on the cake.

“I never make up my mind about anything at all, until it’s over and done with.” “The only way to stay out of trouble is to grow old, so I guess I’ll concentrate on that.”

Watching the film, you can see what’s here as tight and polished and quick. Reading about it, you can see what might have been had Welles been left to his own devices. But like the thoroughly entertaining thriller “The Stranger,” “Touch of Evil” and “The Magnificent Ambersons,” there’s a briskness to the proceedings that make one wonder — not for the first time — if Welles wasn’t his own indulgent worst enemy. Even those films that only exist in truncated form are dazzling in technique, great fun to watch and timeless.

“Touch of Evil” plays as dark and droll with those credits rolling over Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh’s long walk across from a Mexican border town to an American. “Lady from Shanghai,” jumpy and choppy as it can seem, just skips by, a brutally efficient thriller with mystery and a grim determination to get on with everyone facing his or her fate.

“Maybe I’ll live so long that I’ll forget her,” O’Hara muses. “Maybe I’ll die trying.”

Welles the filmmaker and Welles the actor rarely told a tale that held us as firmly, from start to finish, as this one.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders, Ted de Corsia, Gus Schilling, Evelyn Ellis and Erskine Sanford

Credits: Scripted and directed by Orson Welles, based on a Sherwood King novel. A Columbia release streaming on Tubi, Amazon, etc.

Running time: 1:27