Orson Welles

Gregg Toland on shooting KANE:

http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=178

It's a hundred degrees out right now... Currently watching F For Fake and drinking beer.

I can't wait to have this baby arrive in the mail this week.

I picked up on the cheap a French box set of Welles films and a TV series he made. So far I've watched a couple, The Stranger and Confidential Report.

The Stranger is a watchable thriller about a Nazi on the run in small town America. There's a bravura, Hitchcock-esque finale in a clocktower, but on the whole it's a very run-of-the-mill Hollywood thriller. I find it amazing he turned out something so very conventional just a few years after Kane and Ambersons.

Confidential Report = British release of Mr Arkadin, supposedly a superior cut to the U.S. release. An enjoyable caper, the first half hour in particular very good, but then it loses steam and focus in a whirlwind of different locations (The Riviera, Spain, Paris, Munich, Amsterdam, Mexico... it's all too much), and a neverending series of campy cameos. The whole thing is too rich, the underlying plot not really up to the job. He's recycled themes from Kane I guess (investigation into past life of larger-than-life tycoon, flashback structure) but played it for laughs. Enjoyable, but no masterpiece.

Last film is Malpertuis, which I've yet to see and know nothing about. The TV series looks like it might be interesting.

Just like everyone else it seems, I've wandered onto this thread to say I've just watched F for Fake and OMG it's fun. Best bit is the fit girl wandering around and being ogled - I'm being fucked with, but I know I'm being fucked with, and OW knows I know I'm being fucked with, or so it seemed to me. Oh yeh, and the quick cuts between the two dudes when the old guy said he'd never signed any of his paintings, O RLY? YA RLY.

I really have to get round to watching Citizen Kane.

uh ya

shenanigans:

http://www.tribecafilm.com/news-features/features/Orson_Welles.html

I thought it was gonna be about Lady From Shanghai.

Shanghai-igans

The 1982 Arena special on Welles gets an airing on BBC4 tomorrow night, essential viewing.

I hope I'm in to watch Magnificent Ambersons on Sunday. I've decided this year to give in and watch it, bastardized though it may be.

The special's in 2 parts with the second on the 27th, also on Sunday 'Orson Welles over Europe' a new documentary looking at his exile in Europe presented by Simon Callow.

Alright, watching the Arena special now and being reminded of how depressing the changes to Ambersons are I've gone right off watching it on Sunday. Convince me otherwise?

also lols at Bogdanovich totally dicking Kael. and RIP Robert Wise.

Raising a glass to the man right now: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm queer for the Caribbean. ."

I hope I'm in to watch Magnificent Ambersons on Sunday. I've decided this year to give in and watch it, bastardized though it may be.

― moron oil (Gukbe), Thursday, December 24, 2009 2:28 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

obviously it would be better to have his cut, but dude... most films are bastardized. even some classics like 'rules of the game' are very dodgy (iirc the version we have is a 1958 edit).

the first 20-30 minutes are still perfect, and there's good stuff throughout (except the very last scene).

“My doctor told me not to have intimate dinners for four,” he once famously quipped, “unless there are three other people there.”

hero

there's batardized and then there's lopping out 45 minutes and changing the ending. echoes of the cut version of Brazil come to mind. I'll probably watch it.

however, there's a new problem. the second part of Arena airs right afterwards, but I'm meant to be going out. since part 1 isn't available on iplayer, i can't imagine the second part will be. /distressed

was glad to have seen 'journey into fear', whatever welles's involvement. i would definitely steal the opening shot if i were a maker of hitman movies. (probably been done.)

i watched his "macbeth" the other week. shit is weird. dude was weird.

granted, macbeth is a weird play. but this was new kinds of weird.

also, has anyone ever heard an orson welles story that wasn't fairly entertaining? was reading about his shenanigans on the set of "the long, hot summer"--pretty much standard-issue welles shenanigans, really--and was duly amused.

yeah.

any opinions on the best welles biography? i've only read david thomson's, many years ago, which a) i can't remember, and b) well, i can remember it was afraid of being a boring old "biography".

Thomson's has some of the best critical insights into Welles' work even when I disagree often.

i forget which one i read, it was a super-defensive post-"raising kane" one clearly out to make a point but otherwise pretty good

isn't there a definitive three-volume set, the guy currently writing the third? sorry that this isn't tremendously helpful but i maybe gathered this from an old welles thread.

that'd be simon callow's, i guess. not read anything by him (he's best known as a very actory-y actor).

but shd look up reviews.

I have the first 2 Callow vols and have only skimmed. Look good.

i read volume 1 of callow's book back when i was an obsessive wellesian. it's great stuff, very insightful and informative, espec on all the theatre stuff. i'll get around to reading the second one one of these days; i remember being relieved he had decided to continue doing it. they're coming out at the rate of once every 12 years or so.

barbara leaming's book is worthwhile if only because she was the only biographer welles spoke to, so there's a lot of wonderfully entertaining stories and quotes even if you assume he's making a third of it up.

I loooved the first volume of Callow's biography, birth thru Citizen Kane, teh second volume not so much. looking forward to the third covering Welles' long weird decline.

anybody else remember the TV commercials he did in the late 70s for Perrier and Gallo (IIRC) wines? or John Candy's priceless Welles impression on SCTV?

Sure. And there is a Paul Masson wine ad over at Morbius's shenanigans link.

I guess This Is Orson Welles is not a bio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ehxdlAlHQ

is journey into fear worth watching? its on el iplayer

it's only 75 minutes long. press play and see what you think!

no-one would claim it's a classic.

did The Immortal Story ever come out on disc?

There's an hour long Orson Welles documentary by Simon Callow (wrote Cowell first) tonight on BBC4.
Orson Welles Over Europe:
Simon Callow looks at the career of actor-director Orson Welles after he went into self-exile in Europe and immersed himself in challenging films, TV, theatre and bullfighting.

The ending of Ambersons is absolutely appalling.

don't think it has, morbs (i watched it on VHS i think)

anyone ever read jonathan rosenbaum's reconstruction of the original ending of ambersons?

anyone ever listen to OW's mercury theater radio adaptation of it?

Haha, googled Orson's F for Fake girlfriend the other day and came across an album by some Ilx0rs.

is "girlfriend" some sassy new slang for "movie" like "joint"

No, that is a nice theory but sorry. Isn't there a woman featured prominently in F For Fake who lived with him for many years and later made a documentary about him, as is mentioned up thread?

yes, OJA

(I have seen her sex scene in a car from The Other Side of the Wind)

is "OJA" some sassy new slang for "oh yeah"

I thought you were watching GWTW!

Not every one of your contributions is going to get reposted on the zing thread, s1ocki.

i wasn't trying to zing u sir

Actually, I just looked it up, her real name was Olga but Orson changed it to Oja to make it more exotic.