Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

"War of the Worlds: The True Story," filmmaker Timothy Hines' ambitious faux documentary about a Martian invasion, has drawn opposing views from two prominent West Coast critics.

The film opened in select theaters on October 30, but has only recently gained notices from the Hollywood press as the Pendragon Pictures release now plays in Los Angeles theaters.

The Hollywood Reporter noted this was Hines second attempt at dramatizing H.G. Wells' sci-fi classic. (more...)

By ROGER L. RYAN

On September 13th The Magnificent Ambersons made its very belated DVD debut in North America as an Amazon.com exclusive “add-on” for customers who buy the Ultimate Collector’s Edition Blu-ray of Citizen Kane. Even though fans had been very vocal about wanting Ambersons released on DVD for a decade or more, the disc has arrived with virtually no fanfare from the Warner Home Video publicity department. There is a good reason for this: the new Ambersons DVD is disappointing.

The release feels like it just barely escaped being issued on the “Warner Archive Collection”, a recent division of Warner Home Video that provides “burn-on-demand” product to a niche audience. With an emphasis on “B-movies”, these releases are primarily un-restored existing prints transferred quickly to DVD-R and sold via a dedicated website. The discs contain little-to-no extras and cannot be purchased in stores or rented. Thankfully, Ambersons arrives on a properly  “pressed” DVD, but like many of the “Archive Collection” discs, the film looks and sounds like it received very little restoration effort and the release contains no special features whatsoever. During on-line chats and in interviews, Warner Home Video has insisted for years that the delay in releasing Ambersons on DVD was due to an on-going search to find “better elements”.  Evidently, no “better elements” have been found.
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THE ORSON WELLES LIBRARY

1. Wakefield by Nathaniel Hawthorne

2. The Red Room by H. G. Wells (with intro by OW)

3. The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad
4. The Secret Sharer (part two)
Sredni Vashtar by Saki (with intro by OW)

5. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
The Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling
Mandalay by Rudyard Kipling
6. Letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde by Robert Lewis Stevenson
Requiem (Under the Wide and Starry Sky) by Rudyard Kipling

7. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling
8. The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde (with intro by OW)

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Orson Welles uses his sonorous, mellifluous, matchlessly expressive voice and his legendary gift for characterization to delineate these oft-told tales in a way that will make you hear them as if for the first time. And if you are indeed hearing any of them for the first time, it will make you want to run to the library to read them and to savor them as they were meant to be experienced.

—Leslie Weisman, Wellesnet contributor

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In May of 1985, shortly after his 70th birthday, Orson Welles went into a recording studio to read about two dozen classic stories which he presumably chose himself, as they include selections by many of Welles's own favorite authors, such as Isak Dinesen, Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde and Robert Graves. At the time, Welles most recent film scripts, The Cradle Will Rock and King Lear, were floundering and ultimately would never find the financial backing to be realized. However, Welles's artistic talent could not be repressed, so even if he was denied the use of his filmmaking tool kit, he could easily tell stories using only the magnificence and skill of his peerless voice, as he had done so often during the heyday of radio.

Recently, the audio engineer who recorded these sessions with Welles provided me with a list of all the stories Welles had chosen to read.
They include these classic titles:

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Stories

A. V. Laider by Max Beerbohm
Grapes for Monsieur Cape by Ludwig Bemelmans
Miriam by Truman Capote
The National Pastime by John Cheever
The Chaser by John Collier
The Outcasts of Poker Flats by Hart Crane
The Old Chevalier by Isak Dinesen
The Heroine by Isak Dinesen
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ten Indians by Ernest Hemingway
In Another Country by Ernest Hemingway
Malibu from the Sky by John O'Hara
The Summer of the Beautiful White Horses by William Saroyan
The Girls in their Summer Dresses by Irwin Shaw
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

Poems

The Fairies by William Allingham
(So) We’ll Go No More a Rovin’ by Lord Byron
How Pleasant It Is To Have Money, Heigh-Ho! by Arthur Hugh Clough
A Slice of Wedding Cake by Robert Graves (with intro by OW)
Rondel by John Lee Hunt
Jenny Kissed Me by James Henry Leigh Hunt
God of Our Fathers, Known of Old by Rudyard Kipling
Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover by Sir John Suckling

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Why only 8 of these stories have ever been commercially released remains something of a mystery, although it would appear that since the 8 selections that comprise The Orson Welles Library are all in the public domain, that probably has a great deal to do with it. Yet, why it should have taken ten years before even those 8 stories were released (in 1995 by Dove Audio on 4 cassettes), is yet another mystery! In any case, in 2007 the 8 stories were re-issued on CD, and are now available from Blackstone Audio.

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Ray Kelly, our Wellesnet man in Cambridge sends along this exclusive report on Stefan Drossler's presentation of The Unknown Orson Welles on December 1, 2008 at the Harvard Film Archive

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By RAY KELLY

What was billed as a two hour look at the unfinished works of Orson Welles, stretched into a nearly four-hour presentation. There were about 100 people present, similar to the size of the crowd there the night before for the look at Welles’ TV work (according to the gentleman seated behind me). Stefan Drossler of the Munich Film Museum bookended his presentation with a showing of a 1955 episode of Orson Welles Sketch Book and concluded with the 1983 videotaped pitch Welles's made for his film version of King Lear.

Early in the evening, Drossler made it clear that some of Welles lost work may truly be lost. For instance, in processing some 1970's cans of undeveloped footage of Moby Dick revealed only a blue print. The cans are being stored in hopes that a future technology may be able to salvage the footage. The Deep is also fading.

Highlights of the evening included:

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THE DEEP – For me this was the highlight of the night. A trailer (similar to the one shown in One Man Band, but much longer) was followed by a color reel of edited footage with sound and music. The footage totaled 18 minutes. Drossler believes it is The Deep, rather than, The Other Side of the Wind, that would have the best chance of being released closest to Welles’s vision. However, it is a low priority for Oja Kodar, who doesn’t want The Deep to compete with OSOTW in the battle to find completion funds. Further, an effort by German and French television to preserve and color correct the footage was nixed by Kodar a few years back over her request for more money. The Munich film Museum has only the work print. The negative of The Deep was apparently destroyed by French customs because of non-payment.

Additionally, dubbing most of the parts in The Deep would be necessary since Welles shot most of the footage with an un-blimped camera. Drossler also noted that Jeanne Moreau had originally acted in The Deep for only a percentage of the profits. However, her experience on the set was not entirely pleasant, since she and Ms. Kodar did not get along. When Welles later asked her to re-dub her lines, Moreau reportedly balked unless payment was forthcoming. Although now Moreau would be willing to help out, her voice is much deeper, so it might need to be dubbed by a younger actress. The other three main actors in the film (Welles, Laurence Harvey, Michael Bryant) are now deceased, so they would also have to be re-dubbed.

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Having visited Spain twice in the last two years and had the most wonderful time there, my comments here may be considered a bit biased, because I imagine if you haven't actually been to Spain, you probably will not be quite so excited about Orson Welles wonderful documentary, In the Land of Don Quixote.

The first episode, "Andalusian Itinerary" was posted on You Tube, but was removed after only a week.

However, having never seen this television show by Welles, I quite enjoyed getting to see the Spanish locations for several of Orson Welles films.  Of course, Welles loved Spain and I must say, so do I.  One of the most magical spots I've ever been to, was Tossa Del Mar, a short drive north of Barcelona, on the Costa Brava.  It was the location for the Ava Gardner-James Mason movie, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, shot in gorgeous Technicolor by Jack Cardiff.  Well, believe me, when I say even Jack Cardiff's cinematography can't do the town of Tossa Del Mar photographic justice. The light there, the castle, the ocean... it's all simply enchanting.

Anyway, to get back to the topic at hand, after seeing the first episode of Welles masterful In the Land of Don Quixote, I think it is quite possibly the best travel documentary I've ever seen!

It's certainly far better than the two segments of Welles previous documentary TV show set in Spain, Around the World with Orson Welles, made in 1955.

Here we get to see brief shots of Welles, his wife, Paola Mori and Welles 9-year old daughter, Beatrice, as they tour Spain in a black Mercedes, but all of these shots are quite brief. What we get to see much more of, is the Spanish landscape, which has been so important to so many of Welles own films. There are many shots of windmills, which Welles himself might have wanted to include in his film of Don Quixote. And since the Jess Franco version of Don Quixote used some of the footage from In the Land of Don Quixote, we can now actually see just how badly he screwed-up! From just seeing the 30 minutes available for viewing here, it is quite evident that any competent film editor could make a far better version of Don Quixote than what Jess Franco assembled for his truly awful version of the film. Why any Welles fan would want to see that shameful version released is quite beyond me!

In any case, Welles also visits many other famous Spanish locations, several that he would end up using for his upcoming films shot in Spain, such as the the walled city of Avila, that appeared in Chimes at Midnight. There are also shots of many locations Welles had already used in Spain, such as the imposing "Arkadin Castle" at Segovia, and the Roman aqueduct in Segovia that was also featured in Mr. Arkadin. Then, most prophetically, Welles shows us shots of the magnificent cliffs and streets of Ronda, the town in Spain where bullfighting was born, and where he would eventually be buried.

Although In the Land of Don Quixote is essential a travel documentary about Spain, it's done by a film artist, and as such, I think it's one of the best and most poetic documentaries I've yet to see on any country. Seeing it today, years later, it still seems quite unique. So ironically, it's no surprise that it was never widely seen in 1964, except on Italian TV, and they insisted on adding a narration over the images.

Unfortunately, nothing could be worse then hearing a voice-over against these simple but powerful images, even if it was the voice of Orson Welles (and it wasn't). The score here is also quite wonderful... a simple Spanish guitar theme, by Juan Serrano, without any distracting narration serves the material just fine. But the editing of the images it where the poetry of the film comes into full flower. I think it would be quite enough to carry this wonderful portrait of Spain, even if there were no score at all!

The film apparently didn't get shown in America until 1986, as part of the AFI's National video festival, which offered a comprehensive survey of most of the work Welles made for television. Kevin Thomas who reviewed it for The L A Times had this to say:

"In The Land of Don Quixote should not be confused with Welles Don Quixote, a film he worked on for 30 years and came close to completing before his death last year. In The Land of Don Quixote is essentially a travelogue of Spain, in which Welles, his wife and daughter occasionally appear in a dark Mercedes. It was never intended to be seen all in one sitting, and in this format it frankly grows tedious (There are 9 episodes of about 25 minutes each.)

Yet how stunningly everything has been shot, in a high-contrast black and white, punctuated with recurring shots of the windmills with which Welles himself tilted as nobly as Quixote. It's quite likely that no one has caught the danger and excitment of the running of the bulls at Pamplona so vividly; Welles viewed the bullfights themselves as rituals of life and death and not at all romantically, sparing us none of the blood. (There's a busy Italian narration, which hasn't been translated because Welles disavowed it.)

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RELATED: See Jeff's review of the Jess Franco Don Quixote DVD here, including frame grabs of the Spanish windmills Franco used, which look far better in Welles own documentary:

http://www.wellesnet.com/quixotedvd.htm

Shortly before the April 28, 1946 opening of AROUND THE WORLD in Boston, Orson Welles called Harry Cohn in Hollywood to get a loan for the costumes he needed to open his new show.   As most Welles followers know, the result of that call was a loan from Cohn that allowed the show to go on. It also led to the only film Welles would ever make with his wife at the time,  Rita Hayworth.  THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI is now widely considered a masterpiece of film noir, but incredibly enough, it was not even listed on a recent ballot of the 400 greatest movies,  as ranked by that idiotic commercial and corporate group known as the AFI.     

Thankfully, Columbia at the time was not owned by a huge muti-international conglomorate, but was run by an independent mogul, Harry Cohn. That allowed Welles to make the most expensive Hollywood movie he would would ever direct.  Unfortunately, Welles was not given final cut on the film.  

However, the entire reason THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI  happened, was because of the call Welles made to Cohn to help him launch his production of AROUND THE WORLD.  It was based on the famed Jules Verne's novel, which Welles had already adapted to radio, to startling effect,  in 1938.

However, doesn't it seem slightly bizarre that until the revival being put on this week in London by Ian Marshall Fisher, that this work by two giants of American culture  has never been revived on the stage?  And of course, it still has never been revived in America.  

Now, just think what Picasso and Matisse were painting in 1946? Do you think any of those canvases  have been hidden from view for the last 60 years?  Of course not.    

So let's thank all of Welles many friends in the UK who know and love his work.  People in the theater, like Mr. Ian Fisher, and Simon Callow, and Welles first biographer, Peter Noble.  And of course, the BFI and Sight and Sound,  who unlike the laughable AFI,  have the taste, knowledge and appreciation to know that Orson Welles really did make many other movies besides CITIZEN KANE.  

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Searching for Orson�

Directed and written by Dominik Sedlar & Jakov Sedlar. Produced by Jakov Sedlar. Executive producers: Richard Weiner & Stephen Ollendorff. Co-producers: Harold Snyder, Boris Miksic, Ron Assouline, Natali Schlesinger; Photography (Digital Video): Gary Graver, Igor Sunara, Zelko Guberovic; Editor: Zdravko Borko; Supervising sound editor: Ivika Dmic. Narrated by Peter Bogdanovich.��� Running time: 80 minutes�

Featuring:
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Orson Welles
Oja Kodar
Peter Bogdanovich
Gary Graver
Frank Marshall
Paul Mazursky
Henry Jaglom
James Earl Jones
Merv Griffin
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Steven Spielberg
Christopher Welles Feder
Marc Welles

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By LAWRENCE FRENCH
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For three years running the Tiburon International Film Festival and its director, Saeed Shafa has spotlighted the work of Orson Welles with an outstanding tribute program. This is especially appropriate, given the fact that Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth spent time filming The Lady From Shanghai near Tiburon in the fall of 1946.
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(Location shots of Marin and San Francisco from Lady From Shanghai can be seen here: �

www.filminamerica.com/Movies/TheLadyFromShanghai/ )
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Although the waterfront scenes in The Lady From Shanghai were filmed at the now defunct Walhalla Caf� and bar in nearby Sausalito, legend has it that Errol Flynn docked his yacht, The Zaca used as Arthur Bannister's boat in the film, at the historic Corinthian Yacht Club, located north of the Golden Gate Bridge, at 43 Main Street in Tiburon. (The Corinthian Yacht Club is also where the film festival holds it�s opening night party, this year with director Mark Rydell in attendance with his compelling new film on gambling, Even Money.) Also interesting to note is how Welles� famous story in The Lady From Shanghai (about sharks devouring each other off the coast of Fortaleza), relates to the discovery of Tiburon, since in Spanish, Tiburon means shark. In 1775, the Spanish explorer who first discovered Tiburon named it �Shark Point� when, like Michael O' Hara, he observed �a sea that was made of sharks, and more sharks still.�
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This years Welles�s program has brought the marvelous new documentary Searching For Orson to Tiburon, and although it�s co-director�s, the father and son team of Jakov and Dominik Sedlar could not be present, the film�s executive producer, Richard Weiner was on hand to speak about the documentary along with noted Welles� scholar Joseph McBride.
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Producer Weiner revealed that the project began when Oja Kodar approached the Sedlar�s and provided rare Welles� material that has never been widely seen before, since much of it is of a highly personal nature. Quite wisely, instead of wasting time rehashing Welles already well known early triumphs, the film focuses on Welles work�after he met Oja Kodar when he was shooting The Trial in Zagreb.
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Of the unfinished Welles films, the most footage is devoted to four projects: The Other Side of The Wind, The Dreamers, Don Quixote, and The Merchant of Venice, with some new perspectives and fascinating footage on all of them. Peter Bogdanovich, for instance, basically lays out his plan for finishing The Other Side of The Wind, and last week, Bogdanovich said from the set of the concert film he is currently shooting with Tom Petty, that the deal with a cable network (Showtime) to finish Other Side of the Wind, is now �99 % certain.����
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In Searching For Orson, Welles oldest daughter, Christopher also appears for the first time in a documentary,�commenting on the little-known fact that her half-sister Rebecca had a son who she put up for adoption. Orson Welles grandson, Marc Welles is�interviewed on camera�here and he tells the very sad story of never having been able to know or even meet his real mother or his famous grandfather.
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Beginning the film with Oja�s first meeting with Orson Welles, it ends touchingly, as we hear one of the final audio recordings Welles ever made: a message he recorded and sent to Oja�in Croatia for her birthday in 1985, six weeks before �the silver cord would snap... the golden bowl would break� and Orson Welles would go �to his eternal home�� and his dust return to the earth as it was��� In this beautiful recording, Welles movingly reads a famous passage to Oja from the book of Ecclesiastes - almost as if he had a premonition he only had a few more weeks to live. �
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Richard Weiner says Searching for Orson may be�the first chapter in an ongoing series of documentaries and DVD�s covering The Lost Treasures of Orson Welles. Concomitant to that, are plans for a film school, which Orson and Oja had always wanted to begin, and Oja says Welles originally wanted to call it the �Jean Renoir school of Film.� �

Naturally, as with all Welles projects, finding the backers and money will be the key for such plans to actually reach fruition, but let�s hope that this pilot documentary creates enough interest to begin a whole series of future DVD�s that will enable the�world to explore the many Lost Treasures of Orson Welles.��

The ever witty, brilliant friend of Orson Welles, writer Gore Vidal, wrote a review in 1989 of Frank Brady's Citizen Welles and Welles own script for The Big Brass Ring. The article itself is fairly well known (it was reprinted in Interviews with Welles), but if you haven't read it, it can be accessed here:

ttp://www.nybooks.com/articles/4016 

However, what I find completely hilarious, and even more interesting than Vidal's review, was his masterful put down of some poor lawyer smuck who dared to suggest that Rosebud was not really the name Hearst gave to Marion Davies' clitoris.

Like many Welles stories, the truth on this one may be difficult to believe, much less prove, but Gore Vidal, in his reply, makes mince-meat out of his attacker, (a "blood-sucking lawyer") and offers some valuable insights into the whole Citizen Kane script controversy at the same time.

Here is their exchange:

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Here are two reviews on the new Croatian film Searching For Orson.

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SEARCHING FOR ORSON
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(Documentary - Croatia - U.S )
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By Robert Koehler � Variety�
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A D&J Prods /Filmind/Studio Guberovic presentation. Produced by Jakov Sedlar. Executive producers, Richard Weiner, Stephen Ollendorff . Co-producers, Harold Snyder, Boris Miksic, Ron Assouline, Natali Schlesinger. Directed, written by Dominik Sedlar, Jakov Sedlar. Camera (color, DV), Gary Graver, Igor Sunara, Zelko Guberovic; editor, Zdravko Borko CQ; supervising sound editor, Ivika Drnic CQ. Reviewed at AFI Los Angeles Film Festival, Nov. 2, 2006. Running time: 79 MIN.�
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With: Orson Welles, Oja Kodar, Peter Bogdanovich, Steven Spielberg, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Frank Marshall, Paul Mazursky, Henry Jaglom, Gary Graver, James Earl Jones, Merv Griffin.

Narrator: Peter Bogdanovich.

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Of course the producers hated me most, because if I could do all those things, than what is the need for a producer?
� �Orson Welles���������

Without final cut an artist cannot function.
� �Henry Jaglom���

������������������� ��*��������������*�������������*�
It�s insane that filmmakers have to play that game, and that�s why movies suck!
� �Ed Burns�

Given TCM�s status as television�s premier movie channel, it�s gratifying to report that one of their first in-house documentaries, Edge of Outside, more than lives up to the high standards filmgoers have to come to expect from them. In fact, with�the cookie cutter approach that most documentaries about movies adopt (and one that I was expecting to encounter here), it was quite a surprise to find�director Shannon Davis has given us such a refreshing and fascinating look at some of the screens most creative directors. Ms. Davis accomplishes this by grouping together several maverick directors who all challenged the status quo laid down by staid studio executives, and also had to fight bitter battles (usually losing), to bring their highly artistic cinematic visions to fruition. Among the directors discussed are Nicholas Ray, Samuel Fuller, John Cassavetes, Sam Peckinpah, Arthur Penn, Stanley Kubrick and of course, Orson Welles. All these men shared the misfortune of losing control over at least one of their movies, which usually led them towards the path of independent filmmaking. �

With that premise, and given a brief running time of 64 minutes, director Davis doesn�t resort to simply giving us brief recaps of each directors career, but assumes her viewers are a film savvy bunch, who know a few things about the work of these men. That allows her to more fully explore the theme of the outsider working on the edge of Hollywood. This, in turn, gives Davis the leeway�to�grow her documentary in a more organically interesting way, and also provides the opportunity to�revisit several directors throughout the movie as key questions are raised. The doc. also grounds itself historically, by giving brief mentions to silent directors D. W. Griffith, Erich Von Stroheim and Charlie Chaplin, notes�the important role Roger Corman played�in lauching many of today�s independent minded directors�with his�brand of �low-budget guerilla filmmaking, and continues up through todays current iconoclasts such as David Lynch. Naturally, chief among all movie iconoclasts is Orson Welles, who remains one of the most celebrated cases of a director obtaining control over his art, only to find that control�being violently ripped from his hands. So it�s fitting that Welles is given the star position in Edge of Outside, as Welles was one of the first to seek financing independent of Hollywood, and served as the de facto �Godfather� figure to all of the independent directors who� followed in his wake. And like the elder statesman he is, Welles pops up throughout the doc. in interview clips (taken from TNT�s OW: Stories from a Life on Film) commenting on his outsider status in Hollywood.�� (more...)

Since Mr. Arkadin didn't open in America until 1962, it's not surprising that most of the U. S. press didn't review it until then (if at all), but strangely Variety also missed the boat, failing to review the film on it's European release. However, they made up for their mistake with this rather perceptive review, before the film opened at Dan Talbot's New Yorker theater in October, 1962. But one more Arkadin mystery presents itself: If the 99 minute Corinith version is what opened at The New Yorker in 1962, why did Variety list the film with a running time of 93 minutes. --LF

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MR. ARKADIN (Confidential Report)

(Anglo-French)

Orson Welles long time no see melodrama. One for the cine addicts.

Reviewed by Jack Pittman, Sept. 12, 1962

Quiescent as a "personal" filmmaker since he wrote and directed "Touch of Evil" for Universal (circa '58) Orson Welles' delayed bounce-back with the forthcoming "The Trial," from the Franz Kafka classic and starring Tony Perkins, which he screenplayed and directed. (American distribution is optioned by Astor Pictures, but the deal is not finalized).

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I received my review copy of the Criterion Complete Mr. Arkadin set last week, and after a cursory walkthrough, I can say it�s pretty much everything we hoped it would be. While it isn�t absolutely �Complete� (something that has to be a bit of a gag on their part, given the project at hand here), it�s about as complete as most of us would want it to be. Including three different versions of the film and a copious selection of extras, this really stacks up as the single best Welles DVD release out there, moving past the French Macbeth set for the top spot. The only black mark I can assign it so far is Criterion�s misguided used of window-boxing on the image, done to alleviate overscan for the masses. It cuts down resolution, and it�s just a bad idea. Anyway, with the possibility of a North American Macbeth release this year, in addition to Jane Eyre, this is shaping up as a good year for Welles on DVD. My full length review will be appearing on digitally Obsessed, so I don�t want to get into too much detail here, but if you were at all on the fence about this release, don�t be. It�s a must have. If you'd like to order a copy and support this site (c'mon man, you know you wanna), just make with the clicking on the link below...

Buy The Complete Mr. Arkadin at Amazon.com