The Sorcerer's Apprenticeor
"What Did You Do After Citizen Kane?"
George Orson Welles loved magic. Born on May 6, 1915 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, he did not have a traditional or stable childhood. His father left the family when Welles was 7 and moved to Peking. Welles' mother, a society woman who was never satisfied with the status quo and was "a bit of a social reformer," moved with Welles to Chicago and married a businessman, who was not exactly a model of male stability, himself. Welles' mother died when he was 9, but had instilled in him the burden that, if he was to be present in the world of adults, he must be useful in some way, or at least entertaining, play an instrument, recite poetry. He began reading at two, and performing Shakespeare at 10. The chaotic childhood calmed down a bit when Welles was sent to Woodstock, Illinois and enrolled at the Todd School for Boys, where he impressed the headmaster—with whom he wrote plays, starred in and directed them—while gaining a reputation as being insufferable with his fellow students. At the age of 16 (although claiming to be 19), he embarked on a "painter's holiday" to Dublin, Ireland, where he talked himself into the company of its Gate Theater, as a professional actor, despite never having set foot on stage, except in school. He performed in several productions, and intended to continue in London, but his inability to obtain a work permit forced his return to America, where his career took off.
Returning to the Todd School, Welles wrote a textbook, in print for decades, entitled "Everybody's Shakespeare." Between 1933 and 1936, Welles' fortunes grew considerably appearing in productions in Buffalo, New York and starting a career as a voice actor on radio. In 1934, he mede his first film, an experimental short entitled The Hearts of Age. That same year, the 19 year-old Welles met producer John Houseman, who noticed him in a Broadway production of "Romeo and Juliet", and the two began a creative collaboration that would last for many years, first with the Federal Theater Project (whose innovative productions garnered national notice), and in 1937, Welles and Houseman founded the Mercury Theater, using actors Welles met during his theatrical and radio performances. Welles made the cover of Time Magazine on May 9, 1938. In July, CBS Radio sought out Welles to create a radio program, "First Person Singular" which would evolve into "The Mercury Theater On the Air," which, after its Hallowe'en presentation of "The War of the Worlds" which caused a certain amount of panic, became The Campbell Playhouse (after financing from Campbell Soup.). After "The War of the Worlds" incident, Hollywood beckoned, which Welles resisted consistently until RKO president George Shaeffer made him an offer he couldn't refuse—choice of projects with complete creative control, an unheard-of offer for a first-time director that earned Welles the jealous rage of veteran film-makers who'd toiled in the fields for years.
What came of that is well-known. A first film that was an artistic triumph, but a commercial failure, then his resulting dismissal by RKO after his second film was mauled while he was doing good-will work outside of the U.S. at the request of the government, then leading a gypsy life, making films, stage productions and acting in other's films in support of his work and his lifestyle. Welles became an independent film-maker before it was popular, but then he did almost everything before it became popular, a man constantly ahead of his time...and the world's tastes.
Encountering new work by Welles has always had a distinct reaction from me: walking out of the movie-theater (which is where I saw most of his films before their restoration on DVD and Blu-Ray), the world of movies, and indeed, the world, looked different to me, as if seeing it for the first time with new eyes. The world, briefly, opened up with bold ways of doing things, perceiving things, and in the telling of tales. A film by Welles was a master-class on what the possibilities of narrative could be.
In a world of stage-whispers, Orson Welles roared.
"The movie director must always remain a slightly ambiguous figure, after all, because so much of what he signs his name to came from elsewhere, so many of his best things are merely accidents over which he presides. Or the good fortune he receives. Or the grace."
The Hearts of Age (1934)
Too Much Johnson (1938)
The Green Goddess (1939) Designed as a prelude to a a stage version directed by Welles, this film is presumed lost. It would not be the last time that would happen.
Citizen Kane is not only a great movie, it is also a touchstone in the evolution of cinema—a game-changer in terms of imagination and the possibilities in the telling of a story through film. Citizen Kane offers so many leaps in presentation and effects and photography and editing, surpassing (while also taking advantage of) the techniques of the Hollywood films that had come before, it is like going from Edison's "The Kiss" through to the Sound Era in one film.
You make a better one.
If Citizen Kane is a freshman effort, full of brio and the expansiveness of possibility in the film-realm, The Magnificent Ambersons is the more mature, sophomore work, more disciplined—no less rich in technique, but not quite as showy—with more emphasis on the story. Booth Tarkington's novel was a favorite of Welles' and his version of The Magnificent Ambersons served story, not artifice. There's more going on in front of the camera than behind it. In its complete form, The Magnificent Ambersons might well be regarded as the better work.
If only.
It could be myth, but the last few books I've read about Welles mention stories of him angrily refusing to watch the currently available version of his Ambersons on television...but of subsequently catching him watching it...and weeping.
It's All True (1943) Given the heady impact that it had on Welles' career, one wishes there was more one could say about "It's All True." Some of it has been sold chock-a-block to other studios for use as stock footage. Dezi Arnaz acquired quite a bit of it in 1957. When Paramount acquired Desilu in 1967, they got that, but unceremoniously dumped reels of it in the ocean to make room for storage...or to keep an interested party from getting it, and that was as late as the 1970's. Some of it is in the UCLA Film and Television Archive. And some of it was actually put together for a documentary produced and overseen by Richard Wilson (who worked with Welles on the original and some of his other projects) called It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles. Imagine that—actually putting the footage together...to be seen.
It started out as a combination documentary/fiction film to be directed by Welles, Norman Foster, and documentarian Robert Flaherty, with four stories of an incredible nature, including "The Story of Jazz" which was to feature Louis Armstrong. But, it was re-purposed after Welles was made a "goodwill ambassador" to Latin America by the Roosevelt Administration, and recruited by Nelson Rockefeller's Office of the Coordinator for Inter-American Affairs to make a pro-Latin American film to acquaint the country to its neighbors in the South, ostensibly to make it one happy hemisphere that would be hard-pressed to succumb to communism.
There were three planned segments: "Carnaval (The Story of Samba)," "My Friend Bonito," (the story of which would also serve as the basis for the 1956 film The Brave One), and the one segment that draws the most interest "Jangadeiros," the story of four Brazilian fisherman who sailed 1650 miles with instruments to Rio de Janeiro to petition the government for union stipulations to which they were not entitled. Welles filmed the segment with the four participants who made the incredible journey and it is this segment that has the most complete form from Wilson's efforts.
Welles, although he could have had access to the footage, never wanted to look at it or complete it, feeling the project "cursed."
Wikipedia makes this note in its article on It's All True:
In her book, "It's All True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey" (2007), Catherine L. Benamou presents an inventory of the surviving It's All True footage stored in the UCLA Film and Television Archive nitrate vaults. These materials were present in a June 2000 inventory.
"My Friend Bonito" — Approximately 67,145 feet of black-and-white not preserved; 8,000 feet preserved. "Carnaval" — Approximately 32,200 feet of black-and-white not preserved; 3,300 feet preserved. Approximately 2,700 feet of Technicolor not preserved (in Paramount Studios vaults); approximately 2,750 feet processed for use in the 1993 documentary. "Jangadeiros" — Approximately 28,000 feet of black-and-white not preserved; approximately 35,950 feet preserved.
Journey into Fear (1943) Between The Magnificent Ambersons and It's All True, Welles worked on this low-budget adaptation of the Eric Ambler novel with a script by star Joseph Cotten and Welles (after chucking the one by Ben Hecht) and directed by Norman Foster—although Welles isn't credited as director or screenwriter (or producer, even though it is listed as "Orson Welles' Mercury Production," he had a hand in designing it and a brief role as the corrupt colonel of the Turkish secret police, Haki.Cotten plays a naval engineer who is returning with his wife (Ruth Warrick) to the U.S. from Istanbul by train, when he barely survives an assassination attempt. Whisked away for questioning by the Turkish secret police, Col Haki (Welles) persuades him to send his wife by train, but that he should go by steamship-as it is much safer for him (who could possibly get on while at sea?). Trouble is, the ship is is infested with Nazi's, and it doesn't become a question of if he'll get killed, but by whom.
There's just enough Welles to make it tantalizing, but it is, ultimately Foster's film and so there is an air of ordinariness to it, even if the script and performances are flamboyant. It's interesting to see, but it doesn't hold in the memory for very long at all.
Here, Welles is having fun with the idea of a Nazi war criminal hiding in plain sight in a small American college town. He's become a professor—college prof's being allowed certain eccentricities, like a secret allegiance to Der Fuehrer—and he has wooed and become engaged to a Supreme Court Justice's daughter (Loretta Young with her "deer-in-the-headlights" look). But for Nazi's it's safety in numbers, usually in concentric patterns. So when another war criminal is allowed to escape as bait by a War Crimes Commission, he heads straight for Harper, Connecticut, picturesque in Fall, and his superior, Franz Kindler (Welles), hiding as Professor Charles Rankin, hoping to start a Fourth Reich. As the professor is a clock-hobbyist, Kindler's precise deceptions begin to ungear. His current project, the old school clock tower with its carouseling angels and demons in pursuit high above the town is his refuge.
He should be keeping his eyes on the ground and the dogged—one might say "pugged"—pursuit by War Crimes investigator Wilson (Edward G. Robinson, whose good "badness" is used to great effect). Welles and his screenwriters (with an assist by John Huston) have a lot of fun with the global affairs effecting a small town and its eccentric collection of rubes, who prove to be inconveniently adept at things: the busy-body checkers hustler has a good memory and the town gossips are good sources of information, especially when they're in the dark about what secrets they have. Pretty soon, suspicion is sewn and in a small town, word gets around.
Welles manages to make a propaganda film, a detective story, a woman-in-jeopardy tale, with elements of comedy, AND show concentration camp footage all in one story-line (filmed in 1946!), couched in a popular entertainment (for producer George Schaefer who brought Welles to Hollywood) and knock it out before heading to Rio De Janeiro to film The Lady from Shanghai.
It's lower-tier pulp Welles, which still puts it far above Hollywood's average.
The Lady From Shanghai (1947) The story goes that Welles needed $55,000 (or $47,000—Welles' stories always changed) to retrieve some costumes out of storage for his lavish stage version of "Around the World in Eighty Days" and so he made a desperate deal with Columbia's head Harry Cohn for the cash in exchange for writing, directing, and starring in a film for Columbia Pictures for no fee. The story—and Welles perpetuated the myth—that the source of the movie, Sherwood King's "If I Die Before I Wake" was a random book being read by a ticket-taker at the theater. Actually, the film rights of that particular book were owned at the time by William Castle, who was hoping to direct the film—he was helming short hour-long films based on radio dramas and wanted to break into the Big-Time. Instead, he was shuffled to the Assistant Director position to fulfill the deal Cohn had made with Welles, who gave himself the credit "Screenplay and Production Orson Welles."
The dark tale is about an almost Shakespearean fool, Michael O'Hara ("Black Irish" they call him, played by Welles)—"a notorious waterfront agitator"—who is intelligent and self-aware but that doesn't stop him walking, eyes wide shut, into a hornet's nest over a woman. He first sees Elsa (Rita Hayworth) in a hansom cab and he offers her a cigarette which she takes anyway, even though she doesn't smoke. He ends up keeping her from being mugged and she offers him a job on her husband's yacht. That tears it. He won't seek the job or the woman. But, imagine his surprise when that husband, the legendary defense attorney Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane) seeks him out at the wharf to offer him the job. O'Hara has a lot of questions and a lot of suspicions but he takes it, anyway.
He finds that there are as many sharks on the boat as in the water. And there's a feeding frenzy going on between the Bannister's, Bannister's partner George Grisby (the unique Glenn Anders), Bannister's investigator Sidney Broome (Ted De Corsia)...and with O'Hara as the bait. Someone's going to get murdered...but who or why is anybody's guess depending on who you're asking. The plot is as convoluted as The Big Sleep and Welles makes it quite clear that he's more interested in style than substance, breaking every cinematic rule in the book, keeping the thing moving with frequent edits—any traveling, no matter how close, takes at least three shots—in a curious combination of location and studio, and Welles veers from noir tones to glamour shots whenever ex-wife Hayworth is onscreen. But, it is one wild entertaining fun-house ride—where the film famously ends—as long as you don't think about it too much.
MacBeth (1948) "It's a great feeling to be dealing with material that is better than yourself." Welles made great films out of great material and interesting films out of garbage. After The Lady from Shanghai, he started trolling in better waters, by going back to Shakespeare. They were his favorite since childhood, and, of course, they were in the public domain. You could start a project for cheap.
In what would be the template for his future Shakespearean films, Welles did "The Scottish play" at Republic Studios, known for making low-budget films, most of those being Westerns. Still, he was funded, in a studio, and was able to bring something like his vision to the screen. Okay, the crowns are made of cardboard, but they look great, and the imagination brought to this is bloody amazing, even if the entire thing seems to be shrouded in night or mist. At the time, (and bear in mind it was released the same year as Olivier's Hamlet) Welles was criticized for using Scottish accents (which seems a bit ridiculous—it takes place in Scotland), but maybe the criticism was for the sound, which was a combination of a prerecorded track, some on-set recording (but very little) and some tinkering in post.
When I first saw MacBeth the sound was muddy and egregious, but these days, it's been cleaned up and sounds terrific. As such, a recent viewing of it is like seeing an entirely different film—the shocks are still there, the quirks now stand out proudly and in stark relief and the whole thing seems somewhat magical, like if Disney decided to do a grisly Shakespearean tragedy on its sound-stages.
Othello (1952) Two parallel paths of funeral corteges open the film Welles made of Shakespeare's Othello, emphasizing that there are two tragedies to the story, while against their processions, Iago (Micheál MacLiammóir), Othello's lieutenant, is hauled away in chains and suspended in an iron cage above the city of Venice to witness the results of his handiwork.
Welles took Shakespeare's 3 hour play and cut it down to 90 minutes, making a fast-moving film of the conspiracy of lies built by Iago to bring down the Moorish hero Othello (played by Welles), who meets his defeat not in battle, but in the fields of the heart and the mind with his subsequent marriage to the daughter of a Venice senator, Desdemona (Suzanne Cloutier). Their marriage, for the most part, is kept secret, but Iago manipulates the smitten Roderigo (Robert Coote) to expose the marriage to the Senator, who accuses Othello of witchcraft, be-spelling his daughter into marriage. But, Othello is forthright, telling the father that Desdemona merely heard the stories of his upbringing and fell in love: "She gave me for my pains—a world of sighs." But, the Senator warns his son-in-law: "Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee."
This is enough for Iago, who begins to conspire a story that Desdemona is unfaithful to Othello, using his own wife's relationship to her to gain access and falsify evidence. And Othello, being a lifelong soldier and trusting of "honest Iago," has no head for the politics of back-stabbing, and succumbs to Iago's lies, which ends in tragedy for all concerned.
Welles efforts to complete Othello were herculean—he spent three years filming it in Morocco, Venice and Rome, necessitated by the original producer running out of money in the first days of production and Welles supplanting it with his own. Filming was done only when actors were available—and recast when they were not (Cloutier was the third Desdemona of the production)—and when there was funds. There are fights that begin in Morocco with the reverse angle being from Rome. The murder of Roderigo takes place in a Turkish bath because Welles didn't have money to retrieve costumes, and so towels would do. But, as low-budget and scraped together as it is, it is one lush version, with sun-blasted exteriors early in the film descending into noirish labyrinths as the plot comes to fall on all concerned. It is a brilliant piece of film-making.
Mr. Arkadin (aka Confidential Report, 1955) "On December 25th, an aero-plane was sighted off the coast of Barcelona. It was flying empty. Investigation of this case reached into the highest circles and the scandal involved was very nearly responsible for the fall of at least one European government. This motion picture is a fictionalized reconstruction of the events leading up to the murder...and to the appearance last Christmas morning of the empty plane "
Derived from some cobbled together scripts from Welles' radio series "The Adventures of Harry Lime," Mr. Arkadin starts with a murder on a Naples dock. Small time smuggler Guy van Stratten (Robert Arden) and his girlfriend Mily (Patricia Medina) stumbles onto the man, who whispers two names he claims "will be worth millions." The names are Gregory Arkadin and Sophie...but the man dies before he can reveal her last name. Van Stratten and Mily undertake to find out what they can about the mysterious and well-guarded businessman, van Stratten by ingratiating himself with Arkadin's daughter Raina (Paola Mori, Welles third—and last—wife) and Mily by working as a cabaret dancer in Arkadin's employ.
It is van Stratten who gets to Arkadin first, who has investigated him, suspicious of any of Raina's suitors and challenging him on his previous run-ins with the law. Van Stratten counters that a similar look into Arkadin's past would provide just as much dirt and Arkadin prevails upon van Stratten to do just that—amnesia has cost Arkadin any memory before he was found wandering in Zurich with a suitcase containing 200,000 French francs. If van Stratten can tell him of his missing history, he will not interfere with his relationship with Raina.
Of course, things...and the deal...are not what they seem. Nor is Arkadin. What is certain is the love the magnate has for his daughter and it shouldn't come as any surprise to those who know Welles' films that ultimately it is she that betrays him, she being the only truly trustworthy person in the whole film. The film also contains the oft-used "frog and scorpion" story that has been used in a few films.
Mr. Arkadin (or as it's known in some regions Confidential Report) has seen many different versions, owing to the producer taking it away from Welles...again...after its completion, and from letting the film lapse into the public domain. Also, there is a novelization of the film credited to Welles but actually written by the French translator of the film.
Touch of Evil (1958) Like The Lady from Shanghai, Welles "lucked" into directing Touch of Evil. He'd enjoyed playing a corrupt rancher in Albert Zugsmith's production of Man in the Shadows and agreed to play a corrupt detective in Zugsmith's "Badge of Evil." The producer used that to lure in Charlton Heston to star, which he'd agree to...IF Welles directed the film, too. Zugsmith must have hung up from that phone-call sweating bullets, but Welles signed to direct for the same money that he was acting for. He re-wrote the script in two weeks and started a whirlwind production, bringing in friends and associates who just wanted to work with their buddy, Orson—folks like Joseph Cotten, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Dennis Weaver, Mercedes McCambridge, the Gabor sisters and Marlene Dietrich (and Janet Leigh, who went over her agent's head to do the film). Welles shot day (in remote desert locations) and night—to discourage set visits by Universal execs, improvising, playing with the material, and starting off the film with an elaborate (and cost-saving) 3½ minute tracking shot that doesn't end until an anticipated explosion happens off-screen.
Back working with a Hollywood studio and all its film-making tools, Welles has said it was his happiest time making a movie. But, Universal honcho's, after screening Welles edit, re-shot some scenes, threw the credits over that elaborate beginning tracking shot, and took pains to try and throw some convention into Welles' deliberately obtuse nightmare-noir-scape. Welles was barred from the editing room and the Universal lot. Heston tried to bring pressure on Universal and Welles wrote an 18 page memo after screening the film at the Berlin Film Festival, but to no avail.
In 1997, producer Rick Schmidlin and editor Walter Murch took the film and re-edited it to match Welles' memo, bringing the film closer to its originally planned running time. It's not exactly as Welles might have seen it through, but it's the best we've got and a heroic effort to do some justice to Welles' study on injustice in the name of the law.
The Fountain of Youth (1958) Done as a pilot for Desilu Studios (and bankrolled by Desi Arnaz from what he called his "Babalu" money) "The Fountain of Youth" is an interesting little multi-media story, combining video, film, slides and Orson Welles' on-camera presentation. "Designed for the box" as Welles described it, it is a bit like a radio play with pictures. Starring Dean Tobin as scientist Dr. Humphrey Baxter, and Joi Lansing as the actress "who stands for something more than talent" he falls in love with, and Rick Jason as a tennis pro she ultimately throws him over for. For their wedding present, the dejected but forgiving Baxter gives them his latest discovery, a special gland extract that will keep them both young for 200 years. But there's only one vial and it came at the cost of a man's life...and there's only enough for one of them.
Only broadcast once, it nevertheless was nominated for—and won—a Peabody Award.
The Trial (1962) While he was trying to complete his modern take on Don Quixote, Welles was approached by film producer Alexander Salkind to make a film from any property on a list of 86 in the public domain—Welles' choice was Kafka's "The Trial", which Welles wrote the screenplay for and mostly filmed at the abandoned Gare d'Orsay train station in Paris to save on studio costs.
After a fable "that has the logic of a nightmare," Josef K (Anthony Perkins) awakens from bed to find a policeman has entered his room, who begins to ask pointed accusatory questions to whatever K says, however innocent. "Well, listen, you don't deny anything. You don't affirm anything," says K in bewilderment. "You just stand there and stare at me in my private bedroom at 6:14 in the morning." He is joined by two other who inform K that he is under arrest. When he demands to know the charge, they merely don't tell him, but question him as if looking for specifics. "You've got the wrong man." "That's what they all say..."
The circular illogic of the questioning extends to every conversation that K has in his on-going efforts to prove himself innocent—or at least to get a trial, fair or not. At times, he begins to suspect himself of being guilty or something—anything—or else why all of the elaborate fuss? And why is there conflict and mis-understanding with everyone he encounters? But, he makes no headway, no matter what part of the maze-like Justice Hall he may enter, or what official, lackey, or victim he may run into on the way. Welles film follows Kafka's story in form and character, but the dialogue is contemporized and sometimes ad-libbed, often in long takes—"those separate the men from the boys" says Welles—that task the excellent cast—Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Elsa Martinelli, Romy Schneider, Akim Tamiroff, Michael Lonsdale—when Welles isn't emphasizing the conflicts with a brutal editing hand.
It's very easy to get lost in the dizzying illogic of Welles' version of The Trial, but that's exactly the point.
Chimes at Midnight (aka Falstaff, 1965) While Welles' reputation was built on a ground-breaking film like Citizen Kane, many critics think Chimes at Midnight may be his best film, and certainly his best performance in a film. It is a grand idea (which he produced on stage in Ireland): take the character of Falstaff, who galumphs like the elephantine comic relief he is throughout the "Henry" plays and "The Merry Wives of Windsor," and devote an entire film to that one character and his tragic arc—which is a powerful one in the "Henry" plays, though relegated to the background.
"Jesus, the days that we have seen!" says Justice Swallow (Alan Webb) to his companion Sir John Falstaff (Welles), and it's true, although the best is yet to come for England, in defiance, if not because, of its past.
We flash back to earlier days, with Ralph Richardson's narrator giving us context: "King Richard II was murdered, some say at the command of Duke Henry Bolingbrook, in Pomfret castle, February the 14th, 1400. Before this, the Duke Henry has been crowned King, though the true heir to the crown was Edmond Mortimer, who was held prisoner by the Welsh rebels. The new king was not hasty to purchase his deliverance. And to prove this, Mortimer's cousins, the Percy's, came to the King unto Windsor. There came Northumberland, his son Henry Percy (called Hotspur), and Worcester, who was ever to procure malice and set things in a broil."
Northumberland (Jose Nieto), Hotspur (Norman Rodway) and Worcester (Fernando Rey) entreat King Henry (John Gielgud) to free Mortimer, but he refuses, and so, the Percy's plot against the King and his weakest link, his son, Hal (Keith Baxter), next in lineage to be king. But, Hal seems to have no interest in kingly matters, spending his time drinking, whoring and carousing with Falstaff, alienating his father.
For Falstaff, who is a charlatan and a toady, things could not be better, and he sees himself with a fitting royal position when Hal becomes king, should he survive the machinations of the Percy's, culminating in the Battle of Shrewsbury, which Shakespeare used to his own dramatic devices.
Welles' version of the Battle has always been mentioned in discussions of the film, because it is so raw, visceral and fast, influencing many other film-makers looking to capture the terror and chaos of war. Rather than seeming heroic with pomp and individual acts of combat and valor, it is a mass of human beings flinging themselves at each other trying to inflict the most damage, the sides ending up being indistinguishable as they are encased in the mud that the field has turned into after taking so much punishment, and soaking in so much blood. It is frenetic thrashing that has little to do with political gains—only destruction.
The performances are as sharp as they can be from an expert cast, and Welles' direction is assured and seems dwarfed by the larger-than-life characters and their actions. It is only at the end that a shot shrinks its subject. And it is at the film's most heart-breaking moment.
It is Welles' masterwork.
The Immortal Story (1968) Short film (60 minutes and Welles' first film in color), done for French television, based on a story by Isak Dennison (the subject of Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa) about an elderly importer, Mr. Clay (played by Welles) living in Macao, who, rather than having his ledgers read to him at night as per usual, is told by his clerk Levinsky (Roger Coggio) of an "immortal story," of a young sailor who is recruited for five guineas by a man to sleep with his wife in the efforts to produce a child. Clay, being a money-man with no imagination, thinks the tale is impossible as all he can believe is facts as unquestionable as the numbers found in his ledgers. He recruits Levinsky to recreate the story so that he can see it with his own eyes and only then will he believe.
Levinsky contracts Virginie (Jeanne Moreau), the daughter of Clay's business partner and the "kept woman" of another clerk of his acquaintance, for the re-enactment, then picks a random sailor on leave, Paul (Norman Eshley) to re-stage the story at Clay's residence, the old man discretely watching, unseen, from the balcony. Virginie's father had been bankrupted by Clay and does the service out of spite. But, her rendezvous with the sailor proves to be something more than a mere transaction, effecting and moving them both, although, ultimately they do part. When Levinsky reports back to Clay what has transpired, he finds that Clay has died in the night.
Welles eliminates any frenetic technique or dutch angles and creates his own romantic style of telling a story through various levels of gauze and with eye-popping color that looks like Technicolor, even though it's the less impressive Eastmancolor. And Moreau has never been more vulnerable.
F for Fake (1973) A dog's breakfast of a documentary built of found footage from another "work-in-progress" documentary about art forger Elmyr De Hory that eventually becomes a meditation on art, reality, talent, and, ultimately, the worth of things and their efficacy against the ravages of time. Doesn't "sound" like a whole lotta fun. But, it is. Radical, too. What it comes down to is lying even with the proof of evidence right in front of your face, a sleight of hand with picture and editing and Welles has a fine, laughing time with that. De Hory might be a renowned forger but he might not be. We meet his biographer, Clifford Irving, who would create his own forgery by purporting to have helped Howard Hughes write his autobiography...falsely as it would become known. Everybody's lying about something, and although Welles states at the beginning that "for the next hour I'll only tell you the truth," the magician-filmmaker will weave in and out of story-line, editing footage in such a way (as he was forced to in his European films) to create conversations, manufactured reactions, taking bits and pieces from all sorts of sources to create a dramatic through-line, often to comic effect, moving from incident to fabrication until the lines are blurred between what is real and what is hooey. In the end, one can only take one's word for it, in a film where even laying claim to something can be a total canard. F for Fake is a new kind of film form and quite gleefully so—an "anti-documentary," that lies as it goes, even as it shows you the photographic evidence. A neat magician's trick of illusion.
The Other Side of the Wind (Filmed in 1970-1976; Released 2018). Welles returned to Los Angeles to film his last work—a satire about an aging legendary film-maker (played by John Huston) on his 70th birthday, and like so many of his previous films, it was simultaneously a film-project and a party. Welles died in 1985 and there have been tantalizing glimpses of sequences which have been proffered (usually to encourage financing), but the film has been locked in legal disputes over ownership that have meant endless brokering for even the chance to retrieve the 1,083 reels of film that have been locked away in a French vault. The reels have been secured and, supposedly, (and most articles on the subject always caution "but we've heard this before") editing has begun with a possible release to Netflix (at one point it was Showtime) in 2018.
Without Welles to supervise the editing, it will hardly be Welles' "vision" (despite following his editing work-print) but that has never stopped the release of any of his films in the past. Ironic that this last one should fall to the hands of other people.
A full review of the film is here.
In what would be the template for his future Shakespearean films, Welles did "The Scottish play" at Republic Studios, known for making low-budget films, most of those being Westerns. Still, he was funded, in a studio, and was able to bring something like his vision to the screen. Okay, the crowns are made of cardboard, but they look great, and the imagination brought to this is bloody amazing, even if the entire thing seems to be shrouded in night or mist. At the time, (and bear in mind it was released the same year as Olivier's Hamlet) Welles was criticized for using Scottish accents (which seems a bit ridiculous—it takes place in Scotland), but maybe the criticism was for the sound, which was a combination of a prerecorded track, some on-set recording (but very little) and some tinkering in post.
Welles took Shakespeare's 3 hour play and cut it down to 90 minutes, making a fast-moving film of the conspiracy of lies built by Iago to bring down the Moorish hero Othello (played by Welles), who meets his defeat not in battle, but in the fields of the heart and the mind with his subsequent marriage to the daughter of a Venice senator, Desdemona (Suzanne Cloutier). Their marriage, for the most part, is kept secret, but Iago manipulates the smitten Roderigo (Robert Coote) to expose the marriage to the Senator, who accuses Othello of witchcraft, be-spelling his daughter into marriage. But, Othello is forthright, telling the father that Desdemona merely heard the stories of his upbringing and fell in love: "She gave me for my pains—a world of sighs." But, the Senator warns his son-in-law: "Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee."
Derived from some cobbled together scripts from Welles' radio series "The Adventures of Harry Lime," Mr. Arkadin starts with a murder on a Naples dock. Small time smuggler Guy van Stratten (Robert Arden) and his girlfriend Mily (Patricia Medina) stumbles onto the man, who whispers two names he claims "will be worth millions." The names are Gregory Arkadin and Sophie...but the man dies before he can reveal her last name. Van Stratten and Mily undertake to find out what they can about the mysterious and well-guarded businessman, van Stratten by ingratiating himself with Arkadin's daughter Raina (Paola Mori, Welles third—and last—wife) and Mily by working as a cabaret dancer in Arkadin's employ.
Of course, things...and the deal...are not what they seem. Nor is Arkadin. What is certain is the love the magnate has for his daughter and it shouldn't come as any surprise to those who know Welles' films that ultimately it is she that betrays him, she being the only truly trustworthy person in the whole film. The film also contains the oft-used "frog and scorpion" story that has been used in a few films.
Mr. Arkadin (or as it's known in some regions Confidential Report) has seen many different versions, owing to the producer taking it away from Welles...again...after its completion, and from letting the film lapse into the public domain. Also, there is a novelization of the film credited to Welles but actually written by the French translator of the film.
In 1997, producer Rick Schmidlin and editor Walter Murch took the film and re-edited it to match Welles' memo, bringing the film closer to its originally planned running time. It's not exactly as Welles might have seen it through, but it's the best we've got and a heroic effort to do some justice to Welles' study on injustice in the name of the law.
The Fountain of Youth (1958) Done as a pilot for Desilu Studios (and bankrolled by Desi Arnaz from what he called his "Babalu" money) "The Fountain of Youth" is an interesting little multi-media story, combining video, film, slides and Orson Welles' on-camera presentation. "Designed for the box" as Welles described it, it is a bit like a radio play with pictures. Starring Dean Tobin as scientist Dr. Humphrey Baxter, and Joi Lansing as the actress "who stands for something more than talent" he falls in love with, and Rick Jason as a tennis pro she ultimately throws him over for. For their wedding present, the dejected but forgiving Baxter gives them his latest discovery, a special gland extract that will keep them both young for 200 years. But there's only one vial and it came at the cost of a man's life...and there's only enough for one of them.
Only broadcast once, it nevertheless was nominated for—and won—a Peabody Award.
After a fable "that has the logic of a nightmare," Josef K (Anthony Perkins) awakens from bed to find a policeman has entered his room, who begins to ask pointed accusatory questions to whatever K says, however innocent. "Well, listen, you don't deny anything. You don't affirm anything," says K in bewilderment. "You just stand there and stare at me in my private bedroom at 6:14 in the morning." He is joined by two other who inform K that he is under arrest. When he demands to know the charge, they merely don't tell him, but question him as if looking for specifics. "You've got the wrong man." "That's what they all say..."
It's very easy to get lost in the dizzying illogic of Welles' version of The Trial, but that's exactly the point.
"Jesus, the days that we have seen!" says Justice Swallow (Alan Webb) to his companion Sir John Falstaff (Welles), and it's true, although the best is yet to come for England, in defiance, if not because, of its past.
We flash back to earlier days, with Ralph Richardson's narrator giving us context: "King Richard II was murdered, some say at the command of Duke Henry Bolingbrook, in Pomfret castle, February the 14th, 1400. Before this, the Duke Henry has been crowned King, though the true heir to the crown was Edmond Mortimer, who was held prisoner by the Welsh rebels. The new king was not hasty to purchase his deliverance. And to prove this, Mortimer's cousins, the Percy's, came to the King unto Windsor. There came Northumberland, his son Henry Percy (called Hotspur), and Worcester, who was ever to procure malice and set things in a broil."
Welles' version of the Battle has always been mentioned in discussions of the film, because it is so raw, visceral and fast, influencing many other film-makers looking to capture the terror and chaos of war. Rather than seeming heroic with pomp and individual acts of combat and valor, it is a mass of human beings flinging themselves at each other trying to inflict the most damage, the sides ending up being indistinguishable as they are encased in the mud that the field has turned into after taking so much punishment, and soaking in so much blood. It is frenetic thrashing that has little to do with political gains—only destruction.
It is Welles' masterwork.
The Immortal Story (1968) Short film (60 minutes and Welles' first film in color), done for French television, based on a story by Isak Dennison (the subject of Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa) about an elderly importer, Mr. Clay (played by Welles) living in Macao, who, rather than having his ledgers read to him at night as per usual, is told by his clerk Levinsky (Roger Coggio) of an "immortal story," of a young sailor who is recruited for five guineas by a man to sleep with his wife in the efforts to produce a child. Clay, being a money-man with no imagination, thinks the tale is impossible as all he can believe is facts as unquestionable as the numbers found in his ledgers. He recruits Levinsky to recreate the story so that he can see it with his own eyes and only then will he believe.
F for Fake (1973) A dog's breakfast of a documentary built of found footage from another "work-in-progress" documentary about art forger Elmyr De Hory that eventually becomes a meditation on art, reality, talent, and, ultimately, the worth of things and their efficacy against the ravages of time. Doesn't "sound" like a whole lotta fun. But, it is. Radical, too. What it comes down to is lying even with the proof of evidence right in front of your face, a sleight of hand with picture and editing and Welles has a fine, laughing time with that. De Hory might be a renowned forger but he might not be. We meet his biographer, Clifford Irving, who would create his own forgery by purporting to have helped Howard Hughes write his autobiography...falsely as it would become known. Everybody's lying about something, and although Welles states at the beginning that "for the next hour I'll only tell you the truth," the magician-filmmaker will weave in and out of story-line, editing footage in such a way (as he was forced to in his European films) to create conversations, manufactured reactions, taking bits and pieces from all sorts of sources to create a dramatic through-line, often to comic effect, moving from incident to fabrication until the lines are blurred between what is real and what is hooey. In the end, one can only take one's word for it, in a film where even laying claim to something can be a total canard. F for Fake is a new kind of film form and quite gleefully so—an "anti-documentary," that lies as it goes, even as it shows you the photographic evidence. A neat magician's trick of illusion. |
| I'll bet that isn't even his hand! |
The Other Side of the Wind (Filmed in 1970-1976; Released 2018). Welles returned to Los Angeles to film his last work—a satire about an aging legendary film-maker (played by John Huston) on his 70th birthday, and like so many of his previous films, it was simultaneously a film-project and a party. Welles died in 1985 and there have been tantalizing glimpses of sequences which have been proffered (usually to encourage financing), but the film has been locked in legal disputes over ownership that have meant endless brokering for even the chance to retrieve the 1,083 reels of film that have been locked away in a French vault. The reels have been secured and, supposedly, (and most articles on the subject always caution "but we've heard this before") editing has begun with a possible release to Netflix (at one point it was Showtime) in 2018.Without Welles to supervise the editing, it will hardly be Welles' "vision" (despite following his editing work-print) but that has never stopped the release of any of his films in the past. Ironic that this last one should fall to the hands of other people.
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