Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

The recent showing of Stefan Drossler’s rare “Unknown Welles” material at The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, brought out a large contingent of Bay area film scholars, including Joseph McBride, the author of many books on Welles, Tom Luddy, the former director of The San Francisco Film Festival, and current director of The Telluride Film Festival, Fantoma DVD president James Healy, SF film writer Meredith Brody, and Jonathan Marlow, the director of The San Francisco Cinematheque.

There were also several members of the audience who indicated they has flown up from Los Angeles, specifically for the opportunity to see this rare Welles material.

The two programs Stefan presented lasted over five hours, but I was personally most delighted to see the rough cut of The Other Side of the Wind that was shown in a special "after hours" session for a select group of Welles scholars.

So, in the grand tradition of Arthur Bannister, here is an Auto-interview about The Other Side of the Wind:

Do you think The Other Side of the Wind is a potential Welles's masterpiece?

In my own personal opinion, I would say the answer has to be a resounding YES! There are scenes that far exceed anything in Welles work after Chimes at Midnight.

You must be kidding? I thought it was considered far too experimental, or even worse, quite boring by most people who have seen it.

I've heard the same stories, but I saw the film long after midnight and it held me in awe. It had scenes of lyrical beauty, great acting and is filmed in beautiful color contrasted with rich black and white. Now, you may also recall that Welles's Chimes at Midnight The Trial and Touch of Evil also had the same kind of things said about them. The New York Times for instance thought that Chimes at Midnight was a total disaster! And every studio in Hollywood turned down Welles script for The Dreamers, one of the most poetic scripts I've ever read! So if we let the so-called "experts" like David Thomson decide that The Other Side of the Wind shouldn't be finished, it certainly never will be.

So you you really think it can be edited and shown?

Of course it can! Given the footage I’ve now seen, and having carefully studied the script, which I regard as a brilliant piece of work, I not only believe it can be finished, but I regard it as an artistic crime that it hasn't been finished!

What kind of money is needed to finish the project, and is Showtime still involved?

Showtime has been very supportive of the project, but over the years have run into many unexpected difficulties. Which is why I believe everyone who would like the film finished should certainly write directly to Showtime and voice their support for the project. Needless to say, the executives at Showtime are to be thanked for standing by the project after so many years, despite all the setbacks they have encountered. If the film finally gets completed, I believe Matthew Duda will have a lasting legacy behind him that will certainly make him remembered for a long time.

Oh come on? I can't think of any TV executives who are known to film buffs... Well, maybe one, that stupid idiot James Aubrey who ran CBS in the 60's

Yes, Mr. Aubrey is sometimes remembered, just like George W. Bush will be remembered... but unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons. Welles’s even noted that Aubrey's nick-name was the “Smiling Cobra.” He was also the man who shut down MGM, ironically at the very time Welles was shooting The Other Side of the Wind on the MGM back lot. Shortly afterwards, Aubrey took MGM out of the business of making movies.

Given all the problems Showtime has encountered with the film, why are they still involved?

I'd like to think it's because they realize the historic importance of this project. Which is why I'd like to personally extend my thanks to Showtime's Matthew Duda, who has gone far beyond the call of duty in standing by this film. To be honest, it's quite a daunting proposal. If it does get completed, it may very well be viciously attacked by the enemies of Welles, or those who won't invest the time needed to understand what Welles was attempting to do. On the other hand, if the film is well-received, it's quite possible that Mr. Duda may go down in cinematic history as the Dore Schary of his era. Mr. Schary, of course, was the enlightened head of MGM in the 50's, who brought Welles old partner John Houseman to MGM to produce a series of memorable movies for the studio, including Julius Caesar and Lust for Life.)

How does The Other Side of the Wind compare in relation to the other Welles unfinished projects?

I'd say it's the most interesting and exciting unfinished Welles work out there. The risks in trying to finish the project are great, but I dare say, the rewards will be far more exciting than any other unfinished project by Welles, including The Deep and Don Quixote. As Jake Hannaford says, those other films are "Less than the dust from my chariot wheels."

I'll drink to that!

So will I, when and if the film gets completed! And to help back up my rather grandiose statements, I'd like to present two excerpts from The Other Side of the Wind. The first is from the original screenplay, the second is the same scene from the continuity script, that records the scene exactly as it was filmed and edited by Welles. In most movies, these two documents are not that different, but reflect the small changes in concept that occur when a director shoots what the screenwriter has written. However, in Welles case, he made a great many changes to his own script, due no doubt to the circumstances, the budget, his lack of actors, or simply because a better idea presented itself to him while he was shooting or editing the material.

These two scenes clearly demonstrate the creative genius of Orson Welles, as both a director and film editor, just in case anyone actually needed such evidence.

This sequence also features some stand-out performances from the actors involved, so it should be noted that three of the performers had already won Academy Awards. Huston's was for directing, but he gives a performance that easily surpasses his work as an actor in The Cardinal or Chinatown.

John Huston plays Jake Hannaford
Edmund O’ Brien plays Pat
Mercedes McCambridge plays Maggie

Also giving standout performances are:

Lilli Palmer as Zarah Veleska
Susan Strasberg as Juliette Riche
and
Cameron Mitchell as Zimmer

(more...)

This weekend, the Pacific Film Archive will be hosting Stefan Drosseler of the Munich Film Museum, who will be presenting two shows of his rare UNKNOWN ORSON WELLES material.

Needless to say, this will be a long overdue program to arrive in the Bay area, for which film fans and Welles scholars can give thanks to PFA curator Susan Oxtoby.

Full details at the PFA website

Short article in the SF Bay Guardian
_________________________

A restoration is never finished, because it’s always possible that you’ll have a new discovery, get new ideas, or get knowledge that changes something you’ve already done. In the case of Orson Welles, there is always the chance that even more material will surface. For example, the first version we did of Moby Dick was a little bit different. We eventually changed some of the titles, and we cut it down a bit. We didn’t cut any shots, but we made each take a little bit shorter, cutting away some frames. In studying Orson Welles’s editing style, we found that he always took the shortest possibility. In the beginning, we had a lot of respect for the original material, and we even wanted to keep all the clapboards in the film, but it destroyed the atmosphere. I think the version we have now of Moby Dick works quite well. The response at the screenings has been very good

—Stefan Droessler

_________________________

Notes on some of the excerpts to be shown:

THE DREAMERS (1982) Directed by Orson Welles. Screenplay by Orson Welles and Oja Kodar, based on The Dreamers and Echoes by Isak Dinesen. Cinematography (in color) by Gary Graver. Music by Erik Satie.

Cast: Orson Welles as Marcus Kleek
Oja Kodar as Pellegrina Leoni

While no other actors were officially cast, Welles was hoping to obtain the services of the following actors: Timothy Dalton as Lincoln Forsner; Oliver Reed as Guildenstern; Bud Cort as Pilot; Peter Ustinov as Baron Clootz and Jeanne Moreau as the notorious Donna Lucetta Boscari, "expert in poisons and aphrodisiacs, and procuress to the high clergy."

Welles wrote the screenplay for this film in 1978 and began shooting short "test footage" of the picture in the garden and interior of his house in the Hollywood Hills to stand-in for scenes in the script set in Pellegrina's Villa in Milan, Italy.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (1969) Written and Directed by Orson Welles. Based on the play by William Shakespeare. Cinematography by Giorgio Tonti, Ivica Rajkovic & Tomislav Pinter (in Color). Editing by Fritz Muller & Mauro Bonanni.

Cast: Orson Welles (Shylock), Charles Gray (Antonio), Irina Maleva (Jessica).

Welles began this adaptation of Shakepeare's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE intending it to be a full length version, which like OTHELLO before it, was shot in broken intervals where ever Welles happened to be at the time, in this case mostly in Trogir, Yugoslavia, as well as in Venice and Asolo, Italy. Finally, because of problems with money and obtaining filming permits in Venice, Welles decided to make an abridged version (running about 40 minutes), by eliminating many of the major roles, including Portia (who originally was going to be played by Oja Kodar). The negative was long presumed lost, and a major portion of the soundtrack was stolen from the trunk of Welles car while he was living outside of Rome.

(more...)

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

**************************************************

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:

**************************************************

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.

(more...)

The upcoming Harvard Film archive's mini retrospective of Orson Welles films has generated several interesting articles in the local Boston-Cambridge press;  below are links for them.

Unfortunately, Ed Symkus, writing in The Walpole Times mars his story with the following absurd paragraph:

Although Welles is one of the most recognized and admired names in cinema history, the truth is that he was a failed filmmaker, a director who, after a tremendous success with his first film, “Citizen Kane,” quickly spiraled downward in the eyes of studio heads who didn’t trust him with their money. Though he made a few other brilliant films, he mostly had to eke by on small projects with tiny budgets, eventually paying the rent by serving as a huckster for wine on TV.

Now, if the real truth is to be told, Welles was anything BUT a failed filmmaker! Hopefully Mr. Symkus will be able to attend Stefan Droessler's programs on The Unknown Orson Welles, where he might find himself pleasantly enlightened.

************************************************************

ORSON WELLES - THE UNKNOWN: November 29 to Dec 1

http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2008novdec/welles.html

************************************************************

BOSTON PHOENIX

http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Movies/72570-Alls-well-that-is-Welles/

************************************************************

THE WEEKLY DIG

http://www.weeklydig.com/arts-entertainment/movies/200811/orson-welles

************************************************************

THE WALPOLE TIMES

http://www.wickedlocal.com/walpole/fun/x1772961966/Alls-Welles

************************************************************

Bob Downing has sent along information about a very interesting Orson Welles film series that will be screening in August at Seattle's Northwest Film Forum. It will feature all three films Orson Welles directed in the decade of the sixties: The Trial, Falstaff and The Immortal Story. If you are in the Seattle area, I'd highly recommend the series pass of seeing all three Welles films for only $15.00!

Here is a link with information about the schedule and the special guest speakers that will introduce several film showings:

http://www.nwfilmforum.org/cinemas/orsonwelles.php

(more...)

Director and Orson Welles authority, Peter Bogdanovich will be in residence this weekend at San Francisco's historic movie palace, The Castro Theater, where he will be introducing a mini-retrospective of his films.

Here is a link to the schedule of Mr. Bogdanovich's in-person appearances. The Bogdanovich movies scheduled to be shown, include: Targets, The Last Picture Show, At Long Last Love, What's Up Doc?, Paper Moon, Nickelodeon, Mask and They All Laughed. Of special note, Nickelodeon, Mask and They All Laughed will be presented in new director's cuts, with Nickelodeon being shown for the first time in the black and white format that Welles had urged Bogdanovich to use against the studio's wishes. As a result, the original studio backers canceled production of the film!

http://www.midnitesformaniacs.com/boggy.htm

___________________________________

AN INTRODUCTION TO ORSON WELLES

By PETER BOGDANOVICH

'I think Orson Welles is the only American director,' Woody Allen was saying to me over dinner in Manhattan the other night, 'who goes up there alongside of Bergman and Fellini, Renoir and, you know, those guys.' I said Orson would have loved to hear that, and agreed that Welles was the only full-out conscious American artist who directed movies on a level with the greatest of the Europeans. It is true that, as Orson used to joke: 'I kept myself virginal only as a film director,' meaning that in other areas of his career as film, TV, radio and theatre star/actor/producer/writer, TV talk show and variety personality, novelist, professional magician, newspaper and magazine columnist, and show-biz jack-of-all-trades, Orson did allow the unmistakable taint of 'Hollywood' or 'Las Vegas' or perhaps simply US mega-success to sometimes color the work. But never as a picture-maker. Well, maybe just once: Orson always used to disown The Stranger from his personal oeuvre. Yet that picture was also the single one of his films that was successful at the box office. Welles used to say that 'he could have gone on making films like that for the rest' of his career but he 'didn't want to.' Maybe that only further confirms Woody's point: in Europe they tend to judge a film's qualities more on lasting artistic merit than on attendance figures. There isn't universal agreement today with Woody's opinion of Welles, but more than there used to be, say, in the late 60s through the mid-80s when I knew Orson, sometimes fairly intimately, during those final 17 years of his life.

Since his death (though this was true even before) there have been numerous personalized reinterpretations of Welles, often by people who knew him only for one portion of his tumultuous life (like me) or who knew him only toward the beginning or only toward the end, but largely by people who never knew him at all. None of these Orson’s bears a true resemblance to the man (or the director) I knew, though there are distorted similarities. But, finally, isn't that the essential dilemma of Citizen Kane: how do you find out the definitive truth about a man who has died? Orson's case proves that often it isn't even possible when the person is alive. Certainly, no one else in American pictures in 1941 was illustrating the thesis that capitalism and worldly success could in some cases lead to spiritual impoverishment and the failure of emotion. In its style Citizen Kane had something else that was unique: an absolutely certain sense of the sound, look and feel of the United States combined with a worldly, aristocratic sophistication and intellect. Among the most complicated aspects of Welles' work is the tension between the essential pessimism of his outlook and the exhilarating optimism inspired by the brilliance of his style. In a poetic way he summed this up at the end of his essay-documentary F for Fake by saying, in effect, that all man's achievements finally turn to dust but 'keep on singing!' To make that possible for Orson was, finally, the central motivating factor behind everything we did, and, unspoken behind that, was one of basic cause: good pictures.

There was tremendous assurance combined with tremendous insecurity. Yet at his deepest level Orson had an ever-valiant nature that seemed all the more indestructible in the face of the odds he fought all his life. He died at his desk writing a screenplay. The one thing most people still ask about Welles is: what happened after Citizen Kane? Now a far better question to ask about him would be: how did he accomplish so much in a commercial medium without ever having a big commercial success? One time while I was bemoaning the end of the golden age of pictures, Welles laughed and said, 'Well, come on, what do you expect? Even the height of the Renaissance only lasted 60 years!' Along those same lines, we shouldn't be consumed by thoughts of how much we didn't get of Orson Welles, but rather by how much he did manage to achieve that has lasting value.

The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California is presenting a nearly complete retrospective of films directed by Orson Welles, including rare screenings of Chimes at Midnight and The Immortal Story. Unfortunately, these two films will be shown in 16mm versions.  Also, there will be no rare material from the Munich archive, and quite sadly, no showings of Fountain of Youth or Filming Othello. Otherwise, it will comprise all of Orson Welles completed movies, shown in vintage 35mm prints.

THE MAGNIFICENT MR. WELLES
March 7, 2008 - April 13, 2008

************************************

Like the movies of Renoir, Chaplin or John Ford, the films of Orson Welles are distinctively autographed by their maker. "Film is a very personal thing," Welles has said, "Much more than the theatre, because the film is a dead thing—a ribbon of celluloid—like the paper on which one writes a poem. Theatre is a collective experience; cinema is the work of one single person—the director." In twenty years, Welles has made just seven pictures that can fairly be called his own, but there is a personal unity in his work that can be found in only the very greatest poets of the cinema. ("I believe that any work is good only in the measure it expresses the man who created it.") One may enter at any point in a Welles film and never doubt who its director is—not only because of his darkly lyric imagery, his mysterious, brooding sense of the evil in the world, his remarkable technical ingenuity and originality, his witty, probing dialogue, or indeed his own physical presence as an actor, but also because of the profound theme that runs through all his work, man as a tragic victim of the paradox between his sense of morality and his own dark nature. All the leading Welles characters are damned, from Charles Foster Kane to Hank Quinlan (in Touch of Evil), all of them larger-than-life, morally detestable men for whom, somehow, one has deep sympathy. As Welles put it: "I don't detest them, I detest the way they act—that is my point of tension. All the characters I've played are various forms of Faust. I hate all forms of Faust, because I believe it's impossible for man to be great without admitting there is something greater than himself—either the law or God or art—but there must be something greater than man. I have sympathy for those characters—humanly but not morally." And because of this compassion, Welles refuses to judge his people. He shows them for what they are, but his jacks are never one-eyed; he withholds judgment on the "great bastards" he portrays. "One has no right to judge except by a religion," he has said. "To decide if someone is good or bad is the law of the jungle."

The dark poetry of Orson Welles is peopled with men who in some form or another have made themselves a world over which to reign—have placed themselves above the law or God or art: Kane, who tried with his newspapers and money to win the love of the people; the Ambersons, symbols of the false pride of a useless, decaying aristocracy; Arthur Bannister, the lawyer (in The Lady From Shanghai) who placed himself above the law; Macbeth, with his "vaulting ambition"; Othello's "green-eyed monster"; Mr. Arkadin, the adventurer who created a world unto himself and tried to destroy his past; Quinlan, the cop who thought he could be the law and final judge. These are the doomed, classic characters of a Faustian world, the leading figures in the seven tragic poems of Orson Welles. For, more than anything else, the cinema of Welles is a poetic one—painted with dazzling, florid, bold strokes. Not to speak of his accomplishments in the theatre or radio, Welles is, perhaps, the most striking moviemaker of our time—his films sing, flow and vibrate with the vision of a thrilling, original talent and a consummate, inspired artist.

—Peter Bogdanovich, The Cinema of Orson Welles (1961)

(more...)

Public radio station KQED in California is presenting a radio show looking at the history of the infamous "War of the Worlds" episode of The Mercury Theater on the Air. The show will be presented twice, once tomorrow (2/16) at 1 PM, and on 2/20 at 8 PM (these are Pacific times, by the way). You can listen to them on their site, so check it out.

We all know Orson Welles never won as Oscar as best director, but let's face it, given all the great directors who haven't won Oscars, it's really more of a honor to be on the long list of Oscar losers than among those who have actually won. Besides Welles, the list includes Hitchcock, Hawks, Kubrick, Lang, Penn, Ray, Sirk, Preminger, Altman etc., etc.

However, what is far more shocking to me is how Welles is still so unhonored in America, compared to all the tributes that have been heaped on him in Europe. In Kenosha, Wisconsin you might think they would have the sense to erect a statue to an American Master, but apparently nobody living there cares about such trivial things.

Thankfully, our European friends are much friendlier to the memory of Welles and his accomplishments. Quite by chance, when I was in Jerez, Spain, in 2006, Jose Luis Jimenez, the President of the Cine-Club Popular de Jerez was campaigning to have a street in Jerez named after Welles. Now I may be wrong, but I don't think any city in America has ever proposed that a street be named after Orson Welles. And although there is a statue of George M. Cohan in Times Square, I don't know of any Orson Welles statues that have been erected in New York, or anywhere else in America. I bring this up, simply to point out the great contrast between the honors and efforts European countries seem to bestow on Welles, compared to the country of his birth.

Here is a link to an article on the recently unveiled statue of Orson Welles in Split, Croatia, followed by information on the plans to name a street for Welles in Jerez, Spain.

www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2008/01/17/feature-03

(more...)

    Greetings all, as noted below, the University of Michigan opened an exhibition based on their recently acquired Welles collections tonight. The displayed items will eventually change, but the display itself will continue through December, and the collection is available for research purposes now, though not all of it has yet been cataloged. Catherine Benamou presented the collection, explaining some the thinking behind the organization of the display items and their meaning in the larger career of Welles. Many of the items have never been seen by the public before, and included the following:

- photos (including two color slide enlargements) of Welles' 1947 Utah stage production of Macbeth, believed to be the only surviving images of that production;
- frame enlargements from Magnificent Ambersons, including shots from the lost scenes;
- the order to destroy the prints (one a 10 reel print, the other a 14 reel print) of Ambersons that had been sent to Welles in Rio, which was itself sent to RKO's Brazilian office in 1944, more than two years after Welles had left them behind;
- fan mail sent to Welles after the War of the Worlds broadcast, which had been sitting unopened, in a box, for more than sixty years;
- materials from the aborted Heart of Darkness film project; one of the jewels of this collection is Welles' annotated, illustrated script to that film;

And there's still much more in the rest of the collection. Much of the material on display now comes from Richard Wilson's papers; also acquired by U of M are Welles' papers that went to Oja Kodar, and hold their own numerous treasures. All in all, it was a treat to see all of these materials, as well as see a couple other Wellesnetters there. If you live near enough, you'll want to take a look at this exhibit, not to mention looking into the materials themselves.

Jeff W.

The Special Collections of The Hatcher Graduate Library presents

ORSON WELLES AND THE ART OF ADAPTATION IN RADIO, THEATRE AND FILM

An exhibit highlighting ORSON WELLES extraordinary vision and artistry in interpreting the works of others.  On display at the Special Collections Library at the Univ. of Michigan will be material from the Orson Welles collection.

Professor Catherine Benamou, author of the recent book on It's All True is curator of the exhibit, which will be on view from September 20 until December 1, 2007.

An opening reception (free and open to the public) will be held Thursday, September 20, from 5 to 7 p.m.  Professor Benamou will be on hand to discuss some of the rare items on display, such as original scripts, correspondence, and photographs spanning Welles career from the 1930's up until the late 1950's.

The exhibit will feature many rare treasures from the Orson Welles collection at the University of Michigan that were acquired from the many papers Welles entrusted to his close associates Oja Kodar and Richard Wilson.

_____________________________

(more...)

Given the fact that Citizen Kane has been at the top of every international poll as the greatest film every made since 1962,  it seems like a good time to codify what real Welles scholars think are the great directors best films.

In 1999 Juan Cobos asked mostly Spanish and European film critics to do the same for his special Welles issue of Nickelodeon. For this Wellesnet poll, we will also limit the responses to 100 people, but in this case, any Welles admirer can post his own thoughts on Welles ten best films to be tabulated into the total. 

I’m also going to invite all the many Welles scholars (Joe McBride, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Richard France, Stefan Drossler, Francois Thomas, Catherine Benamou, Robert Carrington, etc.),  who frequent Wellesnet,  to either send me their list of ten favorite Welles films, or post them on the messageoard site devoted to that subject. Once we have a total of 100 responses they will be added up and we will post the cumulative results, as well as Juan Cobos list of results in Nickeleondeon for interesting comparisons.   

The Wellesnet messageboard thread, Favorite Welles Films – lay it down is where Wellesnet readers should post your own ten favorite Welles films. And since there are already about 20 ten best Welles film lists, anyone who wants to change their choices can do so be using the edit function. However, once we reach a total of 100 choices, we will compile the totals with whatever you have currently listed.  Also, to ensure a uniform count I will only be counting lists with at least ten selections. Titles, however can be  from any of Welles works, finished or unfinished, television, documentary or otherwise, but must contain at least ten titles.   

Here is my own list of of favorite Welles films:   

1.  Chimes at Midnight
2.  The Other Side of The Wind
3.  Touch of Evil
4.  The Magnificent Ambersons
5.  Citizen Kane
6.  The Lady From Shanghai
7.  F For Fake
8.  Othello
9.  It’s All True
10  The Fountain of Youth

—Lawrence French