Orson Welles

I've watched six of these for the last hour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT-nPWT-vVk

watched The Lady from Shanghai today... christ, pick an accent

Loo

he did

always after me Lucky Charms

Lol (let me check that i spelled it correctly this time)

The 1939 Welles radio adap of Ambersons on the Criterion is quite something -- only an hour (probably 45 mins w/out the Campbell Soup ads), Orson plays Georgie Minafer seemingly on the edge of hysteria. There's stuff he carries over to the film -- the townspeople chorus have nearly the exact lines, and they sing "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo" on the sleigh ride (in Tarkington's book it was The Star-Spangled Banner). Walter Huston plays Eugene Morgan. Ray Collins is the uncle as he is in the movie. No Aunt Fanny!

The other supps delineate almost exhaustively who directed and DP'd what scenes (OW's *business manager* even got in on the reshoot action). Bernard Herrmann was the only collaborator who had his name taken off it in protest, after they fucked with his music by cutting huge swaths of it out (along w/ whole scenes).

Should I try to watch Black Magic before it disappears from MUBI?

Why don’t you spend Orson Welles’ birthday watching The Fountain of Youth, the pilot, made for Desilu Productions, that would have been an anthology show featuring him as an almost always present host (no, it wasn’t picked up, but it won a Peabody) https://t.co/IeLziO1AZn

— Matt Prigge (@mattprigge) May 6, 2019

Orson Welles, the year before his death, doing a reading from Charles Lindbergh's flight journals for The Other Side of the Wind DP Gary Graver's camera. He's in full hamhock mode, and the result is... astonishingly moving! https://t.co/VvDj603umF

— 𝖇𝖎𝖌 𝖇𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖓 𝖆𝖉𝖛𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖚𝖗𝖊 (@NickPinkerton) April 4, 2020

Great find!

Who is the “Bill” referred to?

no idea

Wiki:

The film was intended as a private video letter from Welles to his longtime friend and accountant Bill Cronshaw, who was ill.

think of what a draining job being his accountant must've been

Welles had a voice and he knew how to make the most of it. If you had another actor reproduce every vocal inflection in that performance, but an actor with a voice less resonant, with a different timbre, and it would sound unbearably artificial.

And an hour later, another take, Welles would've been phony too -- that's the rub. His voice was his blessing and curse.

That moment when your daughter is getting her 1st spa treatment from the baby nurse & you realize the teenage years are going to be REALLY expensive. (We’re still home! This is from two days ago. In spite of everything, there were also sweet, happy moments worth remembering. 💜) pic.twitter.com/E7WGkWkS2s

— Red Stethoscope (@RedStethoscope) April 4, 2020

this baby looks like welles imo

Better that than Winston Churchill.

lolz

How's that Hignam book? It's the only one of the major critical bios I haven't read.

Higham? i read chunks of it in HS, so i dont recall.

"The one generalization which is true about America is that everything is true about it. It's impossible to say anything that isn't true, good or bad. Our enemies are right. Our friends are right." -- Orson Welles

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) July 4, 2020

This is pretty great. The man seems at times lost amidst all these young cinephiles but he works his charm. Mostly French, no subs. https://www.cinematheque.fr/henri/film/125173-orson-welles-a-la-cinematheque-francaise-pierre-andre-boutang-guy-seligmann-1983/

that line from Picasso is great

Not 100% sure it's legit (or he got it from Leger) but that's Orson The Raconteur for ya.

revisiting Lady From Shanghai...the trial section is a riot

I looked at their filmographies, and this checks out:

Something I've noted recently, the case of two previously workmanlike cinematographers--Russell Metty and Charles Lawton, Jr.--who both went Godmode after working with Welles, on The Stranger (1946) and The Lady from Shanghai (1947), respectively. The man elevated people's game!

— 💜💜𝔹𝔼 𝕊𝔸ℕ𝔻 ℕ𝕆𝕋 𝕆𝕀𝕃💜💜 (@NickPinkerton) August 23, 2020

I don't remember The Stranger looking good but I probably watched a crappy public domain copy.

This thread never really got off the ground: TS Rudolph Maté vs. Russell Metty

I actually haven't seen The Stranger, that may be the case, but some gems in Russell Metty's subsequent work:

Ride the Pink Horse
Magnificent Obsession
All That Heaven Allows
Written on the Wind
A Time to Love and a Time to Die
Touch of Evil
Imitation of Life
Spartacus
The Misfits

xp Hey now!

No love for his previous work such as Bringing Up Baby?

Good lord how the f did I miss that one

You and Nick Pinkerton both.

Interesting story I just saw about the studio bringing in Metty to shoot some additional scenes for The Magnificent Ambersons while Welles was out of the country. Welles was annoyed but liked his work which is why he hired him for The Stranger.

Orson Welles talks to Andy Kaufman about his character Latka on Taxi. pic.twitter.com/laMMceFhp6

— Reconsidering Cinema (@coenesqued) September 27, 2018

I’ve watched this clip at least 20 times in the past week and the zinger welles lands on kaufman around the 20 second mark cracks me up every time. kaufman looked so wounded

That time Orson Welles almost made a noir thriller with Lucille Ball: https://crimereads.com/orson-welles-lucille-ball-and-the-greatest-thriller-that-never-was/

Some interesting tidbits in there about shared DNA between this script and Kane: As it happened, Mankiewicz didn’t hate everything Welles had dreamt up for Smiler. The script opened with a newsreel recounting the life of the Hughes-like heavy; Mankiewicz found the idea clever and kept it in Citizen Kane.

Examining the Magnificent Ambersons preview comment cards.

https://www.wellesnet.com/magnificent-ambersons-previews/

“We do not need trouble pictures, especially now… Make pictures to make us forget, not remember.”

O_o

The David Thomson bio from '95 included several of them, including that comment. Ugh.

Give the people what they want and you will most probably end up with crap.

That theory was most recently discussed on the Kinks-post-1970 thread.

RKO decided to preview the film in Pomona, a middle class community 30 miles east of Los Angeles at the Fox Theatre following a showing of the Dorothy Lamour musical The Fleets In.

i swear to god. what were these ppl thinking?

"Bury the bastard."

Has this been posted anywhere yet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOmYEssdXg8

The Trial is getting Criterioned:

https://www.criterion.com/films/28115-the-trial

Finally! (Great, great movie.)

Indeed.

Eureka/Masters of Cinema coming out with a limited-edition 4K of Touch of Evil in September.
https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/touch-of-evil-limited-edition-box-set-4k-ultra-hd/

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.