ORSON’S OEUVRE
A look at the legacy of filmmaker Orson Welles on the centenary of his birth,
This year marks the centenary of Orson Welles, considered by many the greatest filmmaker of all time.
His reputation rides heavily on Citizen Kane, his 1941 debut. He co-wrote, directed and starred in the feature, which some rank as cinema’s highest achievement.
Big things had always been expected of Welles, who as a child in the Midwest could recite King Lear and, as a teen, acted on U.S. and Irish stages. By 22, he cofounded a repertory company and, a year later, frightened America with a radio version of The War of the Worlds that many listeners mistook for news.
All this led to a Hollywood contract that brought him to his true love: making movies. But following Citizen Kane, his productions were marred by creative clashes with studios, financial struggles and plain bad luck. Some projects never made it to camera while others that did were never completed.
One of those, The Other Side of the Wind, may yet see the light of the projector’s bulb. He spent the early half of the 1970s shooting the satire about a Hollywood director (played by John Huston) trying to mount a comeback but lost control of the footage due to a struggle with investors and never finished editing.
Last year, L.A.’s Royal Road Entertainment acquired the rights with eyes on completing and releasing the film in this centenary year. But an Indiegogo campaign to raise $1 million (U.S.) toward postproduction costs has raised just $281,591 with six days remaining.
Regardless of the movie’s fate, Welles’ legacy as cinema’s top talent will remain untouched. Here are five reasons why, as told through his films:
1. It’s loud in here
The Magnificent Ambersons’ overlapping dialogue (1942). Welles carried over this technique from radio and mastered it here. Having characters talk over one another or engage in separate simultaneous conversations injects a fresh sense of naturalism to the artifice of the film experience.
2. Shootouts
The Magic Mirror Maze shootout in The Lady From Shanghai (1947). A love triangle boils over in an amusementpark crazy house, with figures reflected in multiple images of varying size. It’s like combining full shots, medium shots and close-ups in a single frame.
3. Scene stealer
Stealing the show in The Third Man (1949). Welles’ appearance as a black marketeer in Carol Reed’s classic was so memorable — and the film’s mood so akin to that of The Lady From Shanghai — it was falsely believed Welles directed the film.
4. Where there’s a will . . .
Genius out of desperation in Othello (1952). Costumes weren’t available for Roderigo’s botched murder attempt on Cassio, so Welles set the street scene in a Turkish bath instead, with characters wrapped only in towels, giving the action a steamy, more barbaric quality.
5. The long shot
The opening shot in Touch of Evil (1958). It starts on a bomb being planted in a car and in one 3:19 tracking shot also introduces the victims, a seedy border town and the narc (Charlton Heston) who will investigate the murder.