Orson Welles

(uh, x-post by about a year and a half)

Not that I know of, but Turner Classic Movies is showing the film THIS WEDNESDAY (May 18th) at 11:30pm Eastern.

Either get your VCR ready or find someone who has TCM.

! I must get this.

(Does his "sellout" material need any defense anymore? It's all priceless.)

I wish someone would get on Falstaff/Chimes At Midnight quick. That's a great, great Welles film.

Does anyone remember when Orson Welles was on Moonlighting?

Last I saw on Wellesnet, Rosenbaum was expressing disappointment that this wasn't the case. (Of course, that was months ago.)

i was reading recently about how as soon as those really bombastic deep-focus shots became identified as "wellesian," he stopped using them.

As I understand it, Orson was on some kind of medication that reacted badly with alcohol, so after a few takes - I imagine he had to imbibe the wine at the end of each take - he was incoherent. Then again, the director's voice seems to indicate they were only on takes one, two and three, so maybe he did show up to the set absolutely trousered. I guess we'll never know. Still, awful to see such a great man laid so low.

Some of my favorite Welles performances were on The Dean Martin Show, of all places. The sketch/dance routine with Dean, Orson and Jimmy Stewart at the hairdressers makes me weep with laughter every single time I watch it.

I saw F for Fake for the first time last week, and I'm still thinking about it. The way it's edited is so goddamn brilliant. I keep remebering the sequence when the painter is denying that he ever signed a painting, and instead of just cutting to the biographer saying that he did, he lets the camera sit for a long moment on the biographers expression, purse-lipped, not even wanting to comment on a fact so obvious. "Of course they were signed."

And the other best bit is that he's absolutely right. Sure he's being a jerk, but ask a bonafide genius to do the dumbest commercial in television history, and that's what you get. I laugh when I hear that not because Orson is an arrogant prick, but because he so outclasses everyone around him, and says so.

F for Fake: This is the Welles movie that people seem to discover on their own, perhaps by accident, and after the discovery, they cannot contain their enthusiasm. A friend of mine recently saw it for the first time, and declared it: “Cinema, Cinema, Cinema!”

It is. It really, really is.

... up until this April, mehaps.

That Thomson book is awful!

Uh, not really--especially from a factual basis. I mean maybe it's the last word on him from the Pauline Kael-revisionist/ain't Hollywood great! strand of Welles writing.

That's incorrect. He has nothing but praise for The Immortal Story and F is for Fake.

"I mean maybe it's the last word on him from the Pauline Kael-revisionist/ain't Hollywood great! strand of Welles writing."

Another reductive judgment. Kael's essay made Thomson very uneasy, and he admits it. As far as Kael's argument goes, there's some merit to it, as the auteurist wing of filmcrit had championed Welles to such a degree that Mankiewicz's contributions were overlooked or ignored. Some of her criticism re Kane is on the money too; she's right on about how beautiful Welles' performance is and the scene in which Kane intones that awful line, "If I hadn't been very rich I'd be a great man.

Oh and HERE'S a little tidbit from a friend yesterday on FB who would know:

Today I received the very good news from UCLA Film & TV archive that Paramount is scanning the remaining nitrate footage of It's All True so that it can be preserved! More updates to follow.

Saw this yesterday, Orson doing Shylock on the Dean Martin Show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59sNCF80C70

I've been watching Chimes at Midnight again in memory of Keith Baxter, and during Criterion's commentary, James Naremore mentions that one reason Welles probably left for Europe was his politics, something Hollywood would not have liked post-WWII and Naremore says he believes Welles would've been in a lot of trouble had he continued making films in Hollywood like he did at RKO during the height of the Red Scare. Never thought of it before, but he's probably right - brings to mind what people said about the Replacements in the wake of the new Tim reissue, in that things probably turned out for the best. (i.e. had Tim become a massive hit, it's doubtful the band members would've handled it well).

(He does add that J. Edgar Hoover did indeed have a file on Welles and kept an eye on him as well.)

On Talking Pictures just now, a 1972 version of "Treasure Island" starring Welles as Long John Silver - based on an unfinished screenplay by Welles, though he asked for his name to be taken from the credits. Story of the film here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Island_(1972_film)

Didn't know this even existed tbh.

... his voice was dubbed... by Robert Rietty!

why the fuck was welles so into jesus franco anyway

seems like whenever the spanish were involved first thing welles said was "oh well we need to get jesus franco in on this, then, nobody knows more about spain than him"

i'm just saying he might have been better off with rich little. is all.