{"id":2156,"date":"2011-05-07T11:42:33","date_gmt":"2011-05-07T15:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=2156"},"modified":"2011-09-11T22:02:26","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T02:02:26","slug":"orson-welles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=2156","title":{"rendered":"orson welles"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Yesterday was Orson Welles' birthday, and in honor of that I've decided to post my Orson Welles reviews here. Below is the original introduction I wrote twelve years ago. At the end is the list of the movies. My plan is to post one review a day until they are all up.]<\/I><\/P>\r\n\r\n

Introduction (1999)<\/B><\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I've been a fan of Orson Welles' films for many\r\n\r\nyears, probably since the first time I saw Citizen Kane<\/I> on television,\r\n\r\na viewing which was interrupted right before the end by a drunken\r\n\r\ndriver crashing into our family's car right outside the house, so I\r\n\r\nhad to wait impatiently for a second opportunity to see the film in\r\n\r\norder to find out what the heck \"Rosebud\" was.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I'm not sure exactly why or when that initial desire\r\n\r\nbecame a fascination with Welles' films in general, but I was lucky\r\n\r\nbecause in those days (the 1960s and 1970s) there were many revival\r\n\r\nhouses in New York City, theaters which showed only old movies, in\r\n\r\ndouble bills. The movies were changed every day in some theaters, in\r\n\r\nothers they stayed a little longer, but the result was that, if you\r\n\r\npaid attention to the listings, sooner or later you could see almost\r\n\r\nanything. Even off the top of my head I can remember seven such\r\n\r\ntheaters, and I'm sure I've forgotten some.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

So, when I set out to see all of Welles' movies, it\r\n\r\nwas not easy but it was certainly possible. Today, of course, it\r\n\r\nwould be impossible except on video, and difficult even then. So, in\r\n\r\nthe early 1990s, when I was posting messages on some local computer\r\n\r\nbulletin boards (also now mostly extinct, the Internet has killed the\r\n\r\nlocal BBS scene almost as completely as video killed the revival\r\n\r\nhouses), I realized that I was the only person there who had seen all\r\n\r\nof Welles' movies on the big screen (or, probably, on any screen). So,\r\n\r\nI set out to write reviews of all of them.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

By the way, when I refer to Welles' films, I am\r\n\r\nspeaking of the films he directed. I have no special interest in the\r\n\r\nmovies he acted in (most of which he chose strictly on the basis of\r\n\r\nhow much they were willing to pay him), and have only seen two (The\r\n\r\nThird Man<\/I>, which is great, and Catch-22<\/I>, which is not).<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

My memory is far from photographic, so I did utilize\r\n\r\nsome reference materials when I wrote the original reviews, and I\r\n\r\nrented the films which were available on video in order to refresh my\r\n\r\nmemory on some points.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Interest in Welles and his films seems to be\r\n\r\nincreasing these days.\r\n\r\nThe 1998 re-edit of Touch of Evil<\/I> was\r\n\r\nthe most successful revival ever at the\r\n Film Forum in New York City,\r\n\r\nrunning a total of five months, and at one point it was one of the\r\n\r\ntop-grossing films in the country (calculated on a per-screen basis).\r\n\r\nBooks about Welles continue to be published, and Tim Robbins' newest\r\n\r\nmovie (Cradle Will Rock<\/I>) depicts an\r\n incident in\r\n\r\nWelles' early life. And, of course, today's filmmakers continue to be\r\n\r\ninfluenced by, and to steal from, Welles.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

(Thanks to Bruce Goldstein from Film Forum for\r\n\r\nconfirming the specific details about Touch of Evil<\/I>.)<\/P>\r\n\r\n


George Orson Welles
(1915-1985)<\/B><\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

There are two particular quotes from Orson Welles\r\n\r\nwhich I've always thought were especially interesting, and they get\r\n\r\ninto some of the points I've been thinking about in relation to Welles' \r\nfilms:<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I<\/B><\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\"Luckily, we know almost nothing about Shakespeare and\r\n\r\nvery little about Cervantes. And that makes it so much easier to\r\n\r\nunderstand their works... It's an egocentric,\r\n\r\nromantic, nineteenth-century conception that the artist is more\r\n\r\ninteresting and more important than his art.\"<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Welles did not like to discuss his life, and\r\n\r\nespecially any connection between his life and his art, and it seems\r\n\r\nlike this reluctance is partially personal and partially because it\r\n\r\ndetracts from the work being taken the way it's intended, as art. This\r\n\r\nis, as he points out, a rather old-fashioned notion.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

II<\/B><\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

[When discussing his conviction that he had killed his\r\n\r\nfather:]<\/EM>
I don't want to forgive myself. That's why I hate\r\n\r\npsychoanalysis. I think if you're guilty of something you should live\r\n\r\nwith it.\"<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Welles has always seemed to me very unusual among\r\n\r\nfilmmakers in that his ideas about stories and characters and even\r\n\r\ngood and evil come from Shakespeare more than from any source in this\r\n\r\ncentury (most filmmakers these days seem to draw mostly from other\r\n\r\nfilms). Even the best directors today (Martin Scorsese comes to mind)\r\n\r\nare film buffs, the product of film schools. Welles was always much\r\n\r\nmore interested in making films fit his ideas about telling stories\r\n\r\nthan he was in finding himself a niche in the history of\r\n\r\nfilmmaking.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I read an article which said that Scorsese has an\r\n\r\nentire office, staffed 24 hours a day, just responsible for taping\r\n\r\nmovies off TV and cable, and keeping a running catalog of which ones\r\n\r\nthey have, which ones they want, and which ones they want a better\r\n\r\nversion of. It's impossible to imagine Welles doing anything like\r\n\r\nthis, in fact he thought it was dangerous for a filmmaker to see too\r\n\r\nmany movies. Not that he didn't study films, when he was about to\r\n\r\nstart making Citizen Kane<\/I> he screened Stagecoach<\/I> every night for as\r\n\r\ncouple of weeks, each time with a different person from the studio in\r\n\r\nattendance to answer his questions. But that was to learn as much\r\n\r\nabout the technical side of filmmaking as he could in a short period\r\n\r\nof time. He didn't keep doing it after that goal was achieved.<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n


The movies:<\/B><\/P>\r\n\r\n

    \r\n\r\n
  1. Citizen Kane<\/a> (1941)<\/LI>\r\n\r\n
  2. The Magnificent Ambersons<\/a> (1942)<\/LI>\r\n\r\n
  3. The Lady from Shanghai<\/a> (1948)<\/LI>\r\n\r\n
  4. Macbeth<\/a> (1948)<\/LI>\r\n\r\n
  5. Othello<\/a> (1952)<\/LI>\r\n\r\n
  6. Mr. Arkadin\/Confidential Report<\/a> (1955)<\/LI>\r\n\r\n
  7. Touch of Evil<\/a> (1958)<\/LI>\r\n\r\n
  8. The Trial<\/a> (1962)<\/LI>\r\n\r\n
  9. Chimes at Midnight\/Falstaff<\/a> (1966)<\/LI>\r\n\r\n
  10. The Immortal Story<\/a> (1968)<\/LI>\r\n\r\n
  11. F for Fake<\/a> (1974)<\/LI>\r\n\r\n<\/OL>\r\n\r\n

    (I exclude The Stranger<\/I>\r\n\r\n(1946) from Welles' filmography not because it's not credited to him\r\n\r\nbut because he himself didn't want to take credit for it. There is no\r\n\r\nquestion that he directed at least some parts of it, and it is\r\n\r\ninteresting to watch, but it's not on the same level as the other\r\n\r\nfilms I've written about here.)<\/P>\r\n\r\n

    Also<\/B>: The Cradle Will Rock<\/a><\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n

    Additional viewing, for confirmed fans only:<\/P>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

    Orson Welles: The One-Man\r\n\r\nBand<\/I>: A very interesting documentary, which contains\r\n\r\nfootage from various unfinished Welles projects, including The Other\r\n\r\nSide of the Wind<\/I>, Moby Dick<\/I>, and The Merchant of Venice<\/I>. It is included in the Criterion Collection DVD of F for Fake<\/em>.<\/P>

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    [Yesterday was Orson Welles’ birthday, and in honor of that I’ve decided to post my Orson Welles reviews here. Below is the original introduction I wrote twelve years ago. At the end is the list of the movies. My plan is to post one review a day until they are all up.] Introduction (1999) I’ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-2156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies-2","tag-orson-welles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2156"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2170,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156\/revisions\/2170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}