Orson Welles

Do love the guy but there is one really great film

you don't rrrrrrreally love him, take your jigsaw puzzles and go.

Thinking about this need to bring down Papa Welles (surely in part a reaction to the romantic hyperbole of things like that Dietrich quote - or Godard's equally absurd 'All of us will always owe him everything') led me to thinking about Kael's 'Raising Kane', which led to me finding Sarris' response to Kael's piece here:

http://www.wellesnet.com/andrew-sarris-vs-pauline-kael-on-raising-kane/

At one point Sarris writes:

At the very least, we may expect a reprise of the recriminations exchanged between Peter Bogdanovich and Charles Higham on the occasion of the publication of Mr. Higham's "The Films of Orson Welles."

I don't know the Higham book, does anyone know what the fuss was about?

I never heard this before, but the recent Kael bio says Kael more or less stole most of her research for that article.

including the falsehoods?

Ward:

http://www.wellesnet.com/peter-bogdanovich-replies-to-charles-higham/

I think the falsehoods were somewhat selective extrapolations.

Thanks Morbs - not sure Bogdanovich does Welles any favours here

the Kael article I sum up: bad if not meretricious journalism, terrific as criticism. I love the "shallow masterpiece" bit.

the "shallow masterpiece" bit is really fucking annoying. does she suggest what his deep masterpieces are? i don't recall.

all masterpieces should be that shallow

It should only bug you if you're a square; I'd question someone's sanity if he walked around thinking masterpieces should be "deep." She's clear about what she means: its script is its best and worst quality. Plus, the thing is a lot of fun to watch -- pure pleasure.

Kael was a provocateur, and by 1973 or whenever she thought the film's defenders needed a kick in the shins.

I've never actually read the article and can't find it online anywhere at the moment (and its reputation as being thoroughly discredited has apparently merited its omission from various reprintings, collections, etc.)

It's worth a read, like Eliot's After Strange Gods.

it's in her collected crit too.

I assume yr referring to For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies from 1994 - it's not in her 2011 collection

Yep.

I'd question someone's sanity if he walked around thinking masterpieces should be "deep."

ah popmuzik

hope I die before I get morbed

now Brian de Palma's defenders needed a kick in the shins.

now there's a man who created a coupla shallow masterpieces

depth is a funny thing

I assume Kael hated De Palma

didn't she love him?

yeah she was his number one fan

I think De Palma has sprung to the place that Altman achieved with films such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville and that Coppola reached with the two Godfather movies—that is, to the place where genre is transcended and what we’re moved by is an artist’s vision.

whoah okay then

I haven't read a ton of Kael (obviously) but starting to get the impression I would find her irritating. I hate critics that consider genre a thing to be transcended for ex.

Kael was irritating. That was her best quality ... unlike some ILF'ers.

all ILFers

Irritating for ILFe

the "shallow masterpiece" bit is really fucking annoying. does she suggest what his deep masterpieces are? i don't recall.

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Friday, September 18, 2015 8:31 PM (31 minutes ago)

if i recall, she says something like "it isn't a 'deep' masterpiece, like rashomon or the rules of the game."

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/1972/04/i-missed-it-at-the-movies-objections-to-%E2%80%9Craising-kane%E2%80%9D/

Rosenbaum's response piece to Kael re:Kane. It's been years since I read this, but I remember thinking it was pretty good. Pretty sure it's part of the aforementioned Rosenbaum book.

it's chapter one

tis pity we seldom talk about the actual films in this thread

NYC area ppl, Touch of Evil is showing tonight in 35mm grandeur at the Loews Jersey City (built 1929).

Do love the guy but there is one really great film

you don't rrrrrrreally love him, take your jigsaw puzzles and go.

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Friday, September 18, 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Love needn't be blind.

(surely in part a reaction to the romantic hyperbole of things like that Dietrich quote - or Godard's equally absurd 'All of us will always owe him everything')

That's part of it. I find a lot more in Godard than Welles but he's not the most sincere guy either.

Apart from all that there was really no reason for that BFI season. They could've screened the new-ish print of A Touch of Evil a few times and leave it at that. Or I think it is, either that or its a different fit of the boring 'what would Orson have really done if he was allowed near it?'

Now THAT is one jigsaw puzzle to be bored by.

NYC area ppl, Touch of Evil is showing tonight in 35mm grandeur at the Loews Jersey City (built 1929).

Touch of Evil in 35 is one of the purest cinematic pleasures what can be got

watched the Corinth version of Mr. Arkadin last night, what a ridiculous movie. Not in a bad way - just so much grotesquerie, Welles constantly filling the frame with his glowering hamminess, a completely unsympathetic protagonist, characters endlessly criss-crossing each other's paths. In some ways the key scene to me is the one where Mily is spilling everything about her and Van Stratten's scheme to Arkadin on his yacht, with it's combination of a seemingly stream of histrionic exposition as the characters stagger about drunkenly and the camera see-saws back and forth in a queasy simulation of the motion of the sea. Very enjoyable in a pulpy way, that it's a mishmash of narrative ideas from Kane and Harry Lime material is def evident.

Also lol @ Rosenbaum's note that Welles claims "not to remember a thing" about it's making, surely that's some kind of joke on the pretended amnesia of the titular character.

never knew this nutso detail before:

Welles left Kodar his Los Angeles home and the rights to his unfinished films, and turned the rest over to Mori. Mori contended that she should have been left everything, and a year after Welles's death, Mori and Kodar finally agreed on the settlement of his will. On the way to their meeting to sign the papers, however, Mori was killed in a car accident in Las Vegas on August 12, 1986. Mori's half of the estate was inherited by Beatrice, who refused to come to an arrangement with Kodar.

So Beatrice arranged for her mother to be killed in order to get back at her father's mistress?

it's kind of hard to imagine nowadays how Welles was able to conceal his relationship w Kodar from Mori and Beatrice for decades

Doubt it was very concealed. Prob more like "Oh, Orson.../Oh, Dad..."

And Οὖτις very OTM re: "Arkadin". Possibly his hammiest film overall but such a pleasure to watch every once in a while.

Welles wasn't close to his daughters, so I understand why Beatrice would know shit.

assorted treats at NYC MoMA next month: work print of The Deep, longer Euro cut of Journey into Fear, incomplete Shakespeare projects/clips, and Oja Kodar!!! introducing "the Munich Filmmuseum’s reconstruction of two legendary—and legendarily unseen—Welles projects": The Other Side of the Wind and The Dreamers. ("scenes")

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1623

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/film_screenings/25396

jealous

will heckle Oja to get this shit edited

Pretty sure they presented all these unfinished pieces/Munich Filmmuseum reconstructions like 10 years ago at Film Forum. Wonder how different this showing will be - other than the fact Kodar will be there?

yes, i had the same thought but will investigate

Tanx, Morbs.

http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/022_03/14944

That opening anecdote is devastating, def one for Orson Welles: the biopic. I think this paragraph is reaching a bit:

But now when we look back on Welles’s work in Hollywood in the early 1940s, his real problems become clear: His dark vision of American capitalism was out of tune with the gung-ho years of World War II. That Welles pursued his original vision, even as he worked in a state of hand-to-mouth auteur financing, into the ’80s looks from our vantage point like a sign of strength and integrity. The director of Citizen Kane and the director of The Maltese Falcon sitting in a Denny’s in Arizona with Rich Little in 1974? That is a picture of dignity in the face of adversity, not a picture of failure.

I mean, you cld equally say that Welles' 'career' throws the whole question of what constitutes success and failure up into the air - because there can be few more multifaceted lives lived than Welles', and so his is a prismatic life story that's open to many different interpretations/viewpoints - and it's this ambiguity, sometimes verging on indifference (to capital, to an orthodox career, or to a well-ordered life) that troubles 'American capitalism', whatever that is (and if it exists, Welles is culturally and temperamentally deep within it.)