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Patti Smith on Orson Welles

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006

The poet and musician Patti Smith has written many poems about her favorite film directors, including Pasolini, Godard and Robert Bresson.  Here she writes a poetic souvenace for Orson Welles.  And since this piece isn't an actual poem about Welles, I thought I'd also include a poem taken from Patti's most recent collection Auguries of Innocence (Ecco Press) which, while not specifically about Welles, seems to capture some of his spirit.   

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George Orson Welles
 
May 6, 1915 — October 10, 1985
 
"We are made of opposites; we live between two poles. There is a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles, you just recognize them." 

     —Orson Welles


  
These words might well have tumbled from the mouth of the darkly, limpid Harry Lime, whom Welles crystallized so brilliantly in Carol Reed's rendering of Graham Greene's The Third Man. He played his part with no make-up and thus gave us a naked portrayal of a very clothed mind.
 
Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His beautiful mother, an accomplished pianist, died when he was eight. His father died a few years later leaving the precocious Orson an orphan. But little more than a decade later this breathtaking fellow produced what is considered to be a cinematic masterpiece. His Citizen Kane brought critics to their knees but was deemed a commercial failure.
 
This was the story of his life. He created Art yet he craved box office success. The poles of his life never aligned. He was not consumed however. He responded by feasting and took on the form of a warm and gluttonous genius. In the end, his heart did not break, it failed and only God knows what word spilled from his lips. 

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A PYTHAGOREAN TRAVELER
 

Awoke in a light not known before
the lodging's glass door mirroring
a likeness not hoped to glimpse again
clouds of my childhood, clouds of God
that supported the feet of Jesus Christ
ascending the brush of Raphael.
 
The young on their motorbikes do not lift
their heads nor cry: The clouds, the clouds.
They are always there—Mediterranean arias
mounting with swift and terrible calm.
Do they know me? Do they know I am here,
scribbling as they are decomposing?
 
The moon rises filled with moon blood
drawn from the Italian skies. Here Byron
unwound his turban and shook out his locks
as gulls dropped into the sea. The moon
knew her rival and hung like an ornament
from the ear of a bright deity curling his lips,
expelling great puffs, the clouds of San Remo.
 
I will sit here until dawn tripping the spine
of the stars, a Pythagorean traveler marveling
another numerical scheme, adding to his shoulder
a music not heard but attained.
 
Beauty alone is not immortal.
It is the response, a language of ciphers,
notes, and strokes riding off on a cloud charger—
the bruised humps of magnificent whales.
clouds of my childhood, clouds of God.
Awash in rose, violet and gold.

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Wellesnet Exclusive: Signed copies of Chris Welles Feder’s “The Movie Director”

Wednesday, July 12th, 2006

I'm happy to report that Chris Welles Feder, Orson Welles eldest daughter, has agreed to offer readers of Wellesnet a limited number of signed copies of her beautifully written book of poems about her father, "The Movie Director." 

The book was privately published in a limited edition in 2002, which is probably why most Welles fans may have never heard of it, and since the book was offered only in a limited edition, Wellesnet will only be able to offer between 6 to 12 copies at the cost of $15.00 each plus shipping.  Ms. Welles will personally sign and enscribe each copy with the following message:  

"This book, inspired by my father, Orson Welles, is for all who admire the true artists among us and the masterworks they create."  

--Chris Welles Feder  

Because the number of copies we can offer is so limited, please e-mail me if you have an interest in obtaining a copy.  

 e-mail: lrfrench@yahoo.com  

Meanwhile, here is another selection from the book, which describes a fictional meeting between Mr. Welles and a Mr. Big producer.  Of course, Welles' only Kafka film was The Trial, but the following poem reminds one that Welles was quite an expirimental filmmaker in the early sixties, not only inspiring the New Wave directors with his Mr. Arkadin, but also creating films in their spirit with works like The Trial and his London staging of Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros with Sir Laurence Olivier.   

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Rattling My Tin Cup 

The producer is depressingly young and lean. I imagine him playing vigorous golf with Bob and Bing. And winning. Across the expanse of his mahogany desk, I watch him polishing his sunglasses. Well, is it yes or no?  Jesus, he makes me feel rumpled, overweight, old.   

“Now, about this picture you wanna make,” he begins, “I was wondering: does the hero hafta wake up a cockroach? I mean, couldn’t he change into something less disgusting? Whaddaya call those butterflies that fly down to Mexico?” “Monarchs,” I breathe, trying hard not to hate him.   “You got it!” He grins at me through perfect teeth. “We could work in some local color, know what I mean, 

like a bullfight or Mexican bimbos dancing on tabletops..." “But Kafka set the story in Prague!” I blurt out. “A jewel of a city! If it’s local color you want....”   “Sweetheart, forget Kafka and think box office, what’ll play in Biloxi.” He pounds his desk, triumphant. “I got it! Small Town Invaded by Giant Cockroaches. That’ll really pack ‘em in. Hey, we might even win 

an Oscar for special effects. Whaddaya say?”   “I'm sorry.” Sweat is trickling down my spine. “I’m just not the man for the picture you have in mind.” “I’m sorry, too,” he shrugs, “but I’m a businessman, see, not a genius like you, and I can’t spend millions on a movie about some bozo who turns into a cockroach. Jeesuz!   

“Cockroaches are dirty, unhealthy! They gimme the creeps! And who even knows what “Metamorphosis” means? We’d hafta hand out dictionaries in the lobby.”  “I do have a following,” I sigh, “small though it is.  There was a time when Hollywood made offbeat films...”   “Times have changed.” He rises, my exit cue. “Well, it’s been a real privilege.” He pumps my hand. “Hey, kids in college are studying your old movies, You’re a living legend! What more do you want?” Not to live in the past, I think, as I walk out, dead.   

  

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Chris Welles Feder’s “The Movie Director”

Sunday, June 25th, 2006

I just received a copy of Chris Welles Feder's book of fictional poems entitled The Movie Director and I was struck by several of the pieces which form a "wonderful portrait of Chris Welles' father - although it's a portrait that the author stresses is in many places entirely fictional.

Below is one of the poems that I think beautifully captures the general reception Welles received during his last years in Hollywood.

MARINA AT HOLLYWOOD'S MEMORIAL

Producers, deal-makers, lured by his death
to this hired hall, where were you all
when he needed you? Easy to call him your "Poet of Film"
now he is dead. While he lived, you locked arms
against him and called him a "failed genius."

How sadly he told me, "They think I'm too old,
but what about George Bernard Shaw, Picasso
or Monte Verdi, seventy-five when he wrote his last opera?
For a man of his time, he was older than God,
but nobody told him, 'You're history, baby.'"

Now hear this about your "self-indulgent genius!"
How often he worked from dawn to dawn,
rewriting scripts, cigar stub clamped between his teeth,
the floor around him papered with ideas!
New ways to win you drove him through the days.

When I raged at the lack of justice, he observed,
"I don't believe in justice but in luck. You never know
what kind you'll get; that's why you can't give up.
I learned that from my father who died broke but happy.
If you lose today, you could still win big tomorrow."

The films of your "failed genius" are hailed in every land
except his own, where his foreign work is damned
as "technically flawed" (in other words, not made in Hollywood).
Listen! Genius is not a wisdom tooth a man can lose
but the handprint one man makes on the wall of time!

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And thank's to Eve for posting this article with more details on The Movie Director from the Locarno film festival.

My Father The Hero - How it felt to grow up with a legend

by Geoffrey Macnab - Pardo News August 11, 2005

In Locarno for the Orson Welles retrospective, the late director's daughter Christopher Welles reminisces about her father; discusses the book she has written about him, and reflects on her own career as author and inventor.

No specific name is mentioned in Chris Welles's book, The Movie Director, but she doesn't expect readers will have much difficulty in working out who it is about. "This is not meant to be a literal portrait of my father. It's a fictive portrait, a work of imagination. The idea is that the movie director becomes a metaphor for the artist working in Hollywood." The book includes poetry and dramatic monologues. Here in Locarno, she has been selling copies in aid of the Munich Film Museum, where Orson Welles's unfinished films are lodged.

Born in the late 1930s, Chris Welles grew up in Hollywood. Welles divorced her mother when Chris was still a very young child, but her parents remained on amicable terms. They were very friendly. He lived next door to us and was in and out of our house all the time. Chris was five years old when she first saw her father on stage, performing as part of The Mercury Wonder Show to raise the morale of US troops in the Second World War. This was a magic show featuring lions, leopards, clowns and acrobats as well as plenty of magic tricks from the maestro himself. One of Welles routines, captures for posterity in the propaganda film Follow The Boys, especially captivated his young daughter. Every night, he would saw a woman in half. The first time Chris saw the trick performed, the woman in the big long box was Rita Hayworth. He would start sawing away and the box would separate. Then he would put the box back together and the woman would come out and she would be fine.

Chris clearly shares some of her father's ingenuity. In 1992, under the slogan It's OK to be Smart, she invented an educational card game called Brain Quest. The game, based on information children need to learn during their schooling, has become a bestseller. Since Orson Welles died in 1985, she notes, many new books about him have been published. Plays are being written in which he is a character. There are many documentaries. Here in Locarno, Chris has learned something new every day about her father. In particular, she was inspired by Robert Fischer's work-in-progress, Citizen Of America, about Welles's radio campaign to bring justice a racist cop. "I loved learning this because not only was my father a great artist but he was a man of high principle who fought for his ideas, even if it cost him personally."

Her philosophy about how Welles legacy should be handled is unequivocal. "I believe my father's work should be shown at every opportunity, even his unfinished work. Everything should be shown because everything is valuable."

This is not a view shared by her half-sister Beatrice Welles, who has stopped certain screenings of Welles's films at festivals and retrospectives. "I'm not in touch with my sister Beatrice and I am not in agreement with what she is doing," Chris declares. "I am as amazed as you are. I don't understand it."

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Jean Cocteau’s poem to Orson Welles

Saturday, June 24th, 2006

While re-reading Jeanne Moreau's poem on Welles, I began thinking about other poets who have written about Welles, and felt it might be interesting to post some of these poetic pieces as well. So upcoming will be pieces by Patti Smith and Welles own daughter, Chris Welles Feder, with any additional suggestions being most welcome. And as can be seen from Welles quote below (from a 1958 article he wrote for the International Film Annual), he obviously considered himself to be a poet with his camera. 

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A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. Distributors, naturally, are all of the opinion that poets don't sell seats. They do not discern whence comes the very language of the cinema.   Without poets, the vocabulary of the fim would be far too limited ever to make a true appeal to the public. The equivalent of a babble of infants would not sell many seats. If the cinema had never been fashioned by poetry, it would have remained no more than a mechanical curiosity, occasionally on view like a stuffed whale. 

--Orson Welles, Ribbon of Dreams 

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Jean Cocteau's poem for Welles:  

Orson Welles is a poet
through his violence
and through his grace.
Never does he tumble
from the tightrope
on which he crosses cities
and their dramas.
 
He is a poet too in the
Loyal friendship he bears
our dreams and our struggles. 
 
Others will know better than I
how to praise his work. 
I content myself with sending him
my fraternal greeting. 
 
His handshake is as firm as he is
and I think of it each time my work
obliges me to leap over an obstacle.

 

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JEANNE MOREAU on A FREE MAN

Friday, June 23rd, 2006

To Orson where ever you are: I love you.
I’m still with you, with all of my heart.

—Jeanne Moreau in Durga Strana Wellesa

                         (The Other Side of Orson Welles)

A documentary film on Orson Welles career in Yugoslavia

By Daniel Rafaelic and Leon Rizmaul 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Film historians Daniel Rafaelic and Leon Rizmaul have put together a very nice documentary on Orson Welles years in Yugoslavia, Durga Strana Wellesa, which begins in 1924 when world traveler Welles was only nine years old and taken to Dubrovnik by his father, Richard Welles.

Of course, Yugoslavia was to play an extremely important part in Welles career, since it later became the place where he would not only film The Trial, but also meet his muse and longtime companion, Oja Kodar.

Yugoslavia was also where Welles (as an actor) was to film David and Goliath, The Tartars, and Austerlitz, between 1959 and 1962.  

And between the years 1967 and 1970, Welles would again find himself based in Yugoslavia, (and welcomed by President Tito), while he was filming his own projects in that country, including The Deep and the The Merchant of Venice. 

Welles also appeared as an actor in The Battle of Neretva, which was magnificently scored by his longtime friend, Bernard Herrmann. 

Among the the highlights of Daniel Rafaelic and Leon Rizmaul's documentary are generous excerpts from a interview Welles did with a Yugoslavia TV program entitled 321 Action  around 1980, and a recent interview with Jeanne Moreau, whose comments quoted above close the film.  And Ms. Moreau, athough she could not attend the AFI's  Life achievement award dinner to Orson Welles in 1975, sent along this beautiful poem which was printed in the AFI's tribute program:  

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JEANNE MOREAU on A FREE MAN

Orson Welles
where are you?
 
Hunted hunter in your non ending search,
where are you?
 
Everywhere.
 
How many planes? How many flights?
How many airports? How many cities and countries?
 
How many hotel suites?
How many stamps on your passports?
How many phone calls?
How many cancelled rendezvous?
 
You're supposed to be here, but you're already there.
 
"In the old days when wishing still helped", you
would have owned the world. Now there is no happy
land, no peace, no beauty to be owned, but no one
can be divested of his fantasy.
 
In 1938 thousands of Americans were panic stricken,
taking the most incredible fantasy, The War Of The Worlds,
for a genuine reportage.
 
That terror brought fame overnight.
The bad spell had grown.
 
As soon as he became famous, Orson Welles had to face hostility,
distrust, suspicion, and solitude.
 
Thomas Wolfe wrote:
"Time passing as men pass who never will come back again...
and leaving us, great God, with only this...
knowing that this earth, this time, this life are stranger than a dream."  
 
Orson Welles always knew that, and naturally,
became a breeder of dreams, a sorcerer of sounds,
a poet, a filmmaker.
 
When he owns the screen he owns us.
 
Flowing sequences, close-ups, words, camera movements;
the eye of Orson Welles' camera, looking, staring, gazing, glancing,
creates the magic spell that breaks the bad one.
 
We watch. We know we won't be misled.
 
We're engrossed, carried away, and then suddenly
the tale is not a tale,
the fantasy is no make-believe, we are face to face
with the harsh beauty, the sweet cruelty of naked truth.  
 
Castles in Spain are not made of everlasting stones, human faces are scribbled by years obstinately flying away, human love ends with life and even before, faithfulness is as rare as a white fly, self-pity and selfishness populate the earth with the blind; desperation and cruelty abound.
 
But still we stand the disillusion because Orson Welles exists, searching for truth which is as near as lucid destruction, so to stay faithful to one's self.
 
A poet helps us to live.
 
A free man
is everywhere.

 

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