What maybe the start of yet another Orson Welles revival, this montage of clips and interviews in a new documentary from Academy Award Winning Director Chuck Workman on the great man’s life that marks the centenary of his birth. With a wealth of archival footage and contributions from leading cinematic figures such as Martin Scorsese, Julie Taymor and Peter Bogdanovich this affectionate tribute meanders somewhat haphazardly through Welles roller coaster career. Whilst it hardly covers any new ground on a subject that has already been well documented, it does offer a lively account of some of the high points of Welles’ life and many of his low ones too, with some very forthright and funny input from the man himself.
Workman starts from the very beginning with Welles being hailed as a Boy Genius who parlayed the attention he gained at a very early age into establishing his own Repertoire Company. He grabbed the general public’s attention at large in 1938 with a dramatic live radio version of H.G. Well’s ‘War Of The Worlds’, which had people clamoring for his life after being scared out of their wits when they believed he was seriously announcing that the world was being invaded by aliens. The Police were called in to investigate but as he mischievously claims ‘I didn’t go to jail, I went to Hollywood!’
The Studio that had lured this budding genius was RKO who hired Welles to deliver masterpieces. He did that twice, but they hated them and in the end, him too. His first movie ‘Citizen Kane’ which is now on every film aficionado’s Top Ten List was killed off at the time by the newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst who was the thinly disguised subject of the movie. This was followed by ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’, which was the first of several movies that Welles would be fired from and someone else would be asked to edit and finish resulting in a much inferior film. What is evident now and borne out by all the Hollywood insiders interviewed on screen is that Welles was at least 40 years ahead of his time.
The actor Simon Callow who is one of Welles’ biographers expresses his astonishment at why the filmmaker was thwarted at almost every step. ‘The great mystery is why this extraordinarily brilliant man was constantly outwitted by so much less remarkable people.’ As the documentary goes on to illustrate Welles is celebrated as much for his body of outstanding movies that never got finished and/or released as the few that the public did get to see. His own favorite and the one that he considered his personal best was ‘Chimes of Midnight’ his version of ‘Falstaff ‘, which is still tied up in legal disputes and may never be seen again.
Unable to get directing work he earned his keep by acting in a whole slew of movies that were certainly not what he considered were very good, and in fact the role that gave him his biggest commercial success as Harry Lime in ‘The Third Man’ was the one he despised the most. Welles always retreated to do Shakespeare whenever he could afford to, as that was where he felt most challenged and comfortable even though at the time the critics warmly welcomed none of these films.
It’s hard not to like this unmistakable genius who in the 1950’s was one of the first real indie filmmakers, albeit not by his own choice. His own Mercury Theater gave him the platform to become both one of the highest paid actors on radio, and also one of the most celebrated stage actors of the last century. With a personality and ego even larger then his bulky physique that seems to give him seemingly endless trouble it evokes comments like the one from the veteran French star Jeanne Moreau who fondly described Welles ‘like a destitute King on this earth where there is no kingdom big enough for him’.
Welles deserves a far better profile than this well intended but slightly disjointed attempt, but it will nevertheless still please his devoted fans, and make a few new ones too.
★★★★★★★ ★
