There is a new book from Italy on Welles's period in that country from 1947 to 1953, from Cagliostro to Othello, from Lea Padovani to Paola Mori: the book is by Alberto�Anile , and is in Italian:
There is a new book on Welles coming on January 15th; it is in French, but may be well worth acquiring even if you don't read that language, as it has many photos and documents: the authors, Jean-Pierre Berthom� and Fran�ois Thomas, aren't sure yet if there will be an English version.��These same authors published a book on Citizen Kane before, back in 1992, titled Citizen Kane.�� Their new book is entitled "Orson Welles au Travail". Here's what one of the authors, Fran�ois Thomas, (who sometimes posts rare information on this site) has to say about the book:��"There are numerous never-printed photographs in the book. There also are documents such as script pages, storyboard pages, sketches, production reports, letters, excerpts from memos and other production documents. The book contains some 350 photographs and 40 production documents, and offers a production history of all Welles films, based on archive research and interviews we did with Welles collaborators."��Here's a wonderful example of a page from the book:�� 
And here's Fran�ois Thomas, telling the story behind it:�"The two paintings on the right are Welles's. When CBS stopped backing "Orson's Bag", Welles had no money to afford an original score anymore. Composer Angelo Francesco Lavagnino [who had previously scored Othello and Falstaff for Welles] offered to write and record the music of "The Merchant of Venice" for free� or, rather, for a wonderful price: a dozen of Welles's watercolours of Shakespeare's characters from the film. Those are now in the hands of Alessandra, Bianca and�Iudica Lavagnino, the composer's daughters, who gave permission to reproduce some of them for the book. The book also reproduces the first page of Lavagnino's score for the turkish bath sequence of "Othello", revealing the instrumentation is comprised of terzini, mandolins, mandole, mandoloncelli, guitars and bass."��"The two paintings on the right are Welles's. When CBS stopped backing "Orson's Bag", Welles had no money to afford an original score anymore. Composer Angelo Francesco Lavagnino [who had previously scored Othello and Falstaff for Welles] offered to write and record the music of "The Merchant of Venice" for free� or, rather, for a wonderful price: a dozen of Welles's watercolours of Shakespeare's characters from the film. Those are now in the hands of Alessandra, Bianca and�Iudica Lavagnino, the composer's daughters, who gave permission to reproduce some of them for the book. The book also reproduces the first page of Lavagnino's score for the turkish bath sequence of "Othello", revealing the instrumentation is comprised of terzini, mandolins, mandole, mandoloncelli, guitars and bass."��If anyone has seen the interview in "Rosabella" with Lavagnino, they will understand how truly 'sympatico" he and Welles really were, and what a sweet genius the composer was. A terrible loss then is not only the missing reels of 'Merchant', but the possibility of a fourth Lavagnino score for a Welles picture, 'Don Quixote': just before Welles left Italy in haste in 1969 (as his affair with Oja Kodar had hit the tabloids) Welles had been working on the editing and post-production of 'Quixote' with editor Mauro Bonannini, and had asked Lavagnino to score the film. Of course, this was never to be.��
Here's a little info about the authors:��Jean-Pierre Berthom�, a professor of film studies based in Rennes, has written at least five books on the cinema, including a book co-authored with Trauner (the brilliant designer of Othello and many other films), a book on the history of set design, and�books on Jacques Demy and Max Ophuls.��A professor of Film Studies, Fran�ois Thomas currently heads the School of Film at Universit� Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle. He devoted his Ph.D. to Orson Welles' sound style in films and its relationship with his radio and theatre work (1997). He teaches film history and analysis and co-heads a research group on alternative versions.��His books include "L'Atelier d'Alain Resnais" (1989), and, together with Jean-Pierre Berthom�, "Citizen Kane" (1992) and "Orson Welles au travail" (2007).��Both authors have written numerous articles about Orson Welles.��Here's where you can find out more about their new book, which was published in France on November 9th, and will be published here on January 15th:��
URL: Orson Welles au Travail
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Happy New Year!
Amazon.ca has a new book listed to be released Feb. 28th, 2007: this one is only for those true devotees of the character Welles called "...a Christmas tree decorated with vices [but] the tree itself is total innocence and love."
The book is titled A Critical Edition of Two Modern Plays on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight, by Orson Welles, and the Knight of the Moon, or Sir John Falstaff, by Fernand Crommelynck. Bert Cardullo is listed as editor.
And don't forget:
Many thankstoWellesnet correspondent Leslie Weisman for sending along this comprehensive report on the Yale University ORSON WELLES Symposium, that occurred in New Haven, Conn. a few weeks ago.
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THE TRANSNATIONAL ORSON WELLES
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By LESLIE WEISMAN
The weekend of November 30 to December 2 was a rare opportunity for Wellesians who were able to get to Yale Universitys Whitney Humanities Center, which hosted a free, open to the public Orson Welles symposium for a small but knowledgeable audience of students, scholars, film professionals, and, given its nature, presumably a sprinkling of interested or curious spectators. A cooperative venture under the auspices of the Whitney in coordination with Ron Gregg, Senior Lecturer and ProgramingDirector in the Film Studies Program at Yale, Whitney students, and a number of corporate and private sponsors, the conference was a convivial event; the attendees were treated with warmth and solicitude, with pastries and coffee to start each day, and elegant dinners to end them.
The program began with an introduction by Dudley Andrew, Director of Graduate Studies in Yales Film Studies Program, who recounted how Orson Welles changed my life as a sophomore at Notre Dame four decades ago, when he was recruited as an usher at a Wellesian film series. Welles subsequently became a key figure in the European sensibility that was to inform his filmic and intellectual weltanschauung.
Here are two pieces on approaches to acting inKING LEAR. The first isby Orson Welles, the second an interview with the distinguished stage star, Morris Carnovsky.
Welles wrote his piece on KING LEAR for the January 8, 1956 edition of The New York Times shortly before he opened in KING LEAR at the New York City Center. He mentions, in passing that LEAR hadn't been presented on the New York stage for five years, but fails to note that his old partner, John Houseman was the man who directed the 1950 Broadway presentation at the National Theater,starring Louis Calhern as King Lear.
Housesman's version, like Welles own production, featured music by Marc Blitzstein, as well as several actors from the Mercury theater.In fact, Houseman's staging of LEARhad more Mercury actors than Welles own production. Everett Sloane was slated to play the fool, until he clashed with Louis Calhern and resigned. He was replaced by Norman Lloyd.Martin Gabel played the Earl of Kent;Nina Foch was Cordelia; Joesph Wiseman was Edmund and both Wesley Addy, who playedEdgar andArnold Moss, who played the Earl of Gloucester would go on to act with Welles (but playing different roles), in the Peter Brook TV version of LEARbroadcast in 1953.
As an introduction, I have taken Welles comments about Shakespeare's Othello, fromFilming Othello, and substituted King Lear where Welles actually says Othello.
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King Lear is something more than a masterpiece. It stands through the centuries as a great monument to western civilization. Take an arbitrary figure: Twelve. Name twelve plays which could be called great. King Lear must be one of those twelve. Of that twelve, at least nine (which is another arbitrary figure) are by Shakespeare. That leaves three on our list for all the other writers who ever lived. Is that putting it too strongly? Or is it too high? You can't go higher than that, and Shakespeare remains immortally number one. Among all dramatists the first. The greatest poet, in terms of sheer accomplishment, very possibly our greatest man.
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There is a new book on Orson Welles now available by Bart Whaley.� It looks to be chock full of thrills and interesting information and since it's an e-book, it can be ordered and read�in the same day.�
I've just gotten my copy, and while�I've only been able to glance through a few of it's 663 pages, it looks to be a fascinating piece of work, focusing a great deal on Welles'�work (and works) as a Magician.��
A glance at one of four Appendices, "When the credits roll" seems to be a�piece that throughly demolishes books by�those noted Welles authors, C. Higham, P. Kael and D.�Thomson.�
Here,�for example are Whaley's comments on� Thomson's "Rosebud:"
Begun in 1992 by seeking to answer the rude question �Why didn't this man accomplish more with his life?" Ends with a portrait so grossly inaccurate as to make one suspect the author of perpetrating a hate crime. Thomson, an English immigrant in the USA, is a highly esteemed movie historian and critic. Judging from this effort, I can�t imagine why.�
And Whaley on�Higham's Welles book:�
Although widely cited as authoritative because it seems the most nearly complete in its description of film content, this book was inadequately researched at many crucial points relating to biographical details. This, after all, is the book that reheated the old Hollywood canard that Welles was too erratic to be trusted to even complete a film much less do so on schedule or within budget. Higham, moreover, is the author of the 1980 biography of Errol Flynn in which he makes him out to be a homosexual (on untrustworthy evidence) and a Nazi secret agent--a flat-out error and at best, given Higham's selective editing of the relevant documents. Higham further undermined his credentials with his 1989 bio of Cary Grant by promising �facts� about that star�s alleged homosexuality but only rehashed the stale rumors.�
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Here is the link to publisher Chris Wasshuber's Lybrary.com website�where you can download the book:
www.lybrary.com/orson-welles-magic-p-400.html��
And here is the book's Table of Contents:
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As any good director working in movies will freely admit, they have been influenced by the cinema of Orson Welles in making their own films. And just having seen Alfonso Cuaron's masterful new movie "Children of Men" (which will be opening from Universal Pictures on Dec 25th), I want to give everyone a very good recommendation about seeing this picture, because I found it to be not only exciting, well-acted and extremely moving, but also one of the most audacious feats of cinematography to come out of Hollywood for quite awhile. The camerawork is by the three-time Oscar nominated cinematographer, Emmanuel (Chivo) Lubezki, who dazzled us with his work on Terrance Malick's "The New World" last year, and was also responsible for Tim Burton's "Sleepy Hollow" and Cuaron's "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and "Great Expectations."
And quite possibly, although it may be a stretch for me to say this, I really think I haven't seen such an innovative use of the camera since Orson Welles "Touch of Evil" in 1958, (which by coincidence, was also released by Universal, but as we know, that was in a different era, and by a much different regime).
Anyway, despite the involving story, I found myself quite in awe of the camerawork in "Children of Men" as I've seldom been while watching a movie.
Of course, Alfonso Cuaron is a Mexican director, and since "Touch of Evil" takes place in Mexico, it seems rather fitting that Cuaron was probably influenced by that film in making his current movie. And it might be ironic if Cuaron's and Chivo Lubezki's superb work brings the long take back into fashion in the movies again, since most of today's younger directors, who come to film from directing music videos, don't seem to know that a take can last over 20 seconds.
One reason I think it's fairly safe to say that Cuaron was influenced by Welles, is because it seems to me there are also several other other classical film influences at work in his movie, including subtle homages to Hitchcock (Psycho), Kubrick (Full Metal Jacket), and Ingmar Bergman (Shame).
Here is some of what Cuaron had to say about his long take camera style for "Children of Men" which strangely enough seems to echo what Charlton Heston reported about the long rehearsal's Welles needed for "Touch of Evil's" long takes, as well as using the long takes in a moving car, which Cuaron does in his movie, but was of course preceeded by Welles wide angle shooting of Heston and Mort Mills driving through a back street of Los Robles.
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Here is Peter Bogdanovich's repy to the interview with Charles Higham, below, that appeared in TheN. Y. Times on September 17, 1970.
Mr. Higham'sinterview, it should be noted, was conducted with himself. In other words,he wrote both the questions and the answers,which is of course,why itis nowso apparent as a piece of gutter journalism.
As forHigham's facts,fromthe first moment when I read his fantastical report about the octopus and shark battle, I failed to believe it.So I've always wondered how any intelligent adult could seriously acceptsuch a report, let alone someone who is the editor of a national news magazine. That Mr. Sokolov "swallowed" such a ridiculous "fish story" in his review of Higham's book for Newsweek, must have been a tremendous embarrassment for him for the rest of his (thankfully) short lived career as a journalist.
It now seems obvious that his acceptance of this canard colored his reply to Bogdanovich, which also appeared in The N. Y. Times, right after Higham's own fatuous self-interview.
Peter Bogdanovich's reply to both Higham and Sokolov follows, with some additional comment added by me, which includesnew information thatmakes Mr. Bogdanovich's case against Mr. Higham even more damning.
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Orsonology
By Raymond A. Sokolov - NEWSWEEK -August 3,1970
It is a shame that good books on film history have only recently begun to appear with any frequency. For the most part, however, the lack of good documentation about movies is a minor tragedy compared with the danger, still clear and present, that many of the old films still surviving will fade, disintegrate, explode or simply be junked. But in the case of the work of Orson Welles, a uniquely talented director, the opposite is luckily true.
All of Welles's completed films are safe and available. But so much well-publicized controversy surrounds the making of every one of them from "Citizen Kane" on, that it is impossible not to ask questions about what went on off camera too. How much of "The Magnificent Ambersons" did RKO tamper with? Did Universal mangle "Touch of Evil"? Was Welles forced to accept Tony Perkins as the lead in Kalka's "The Trial"?
Heres an interview with that self-proclaimed scholarly author, poet and noted authority on the work of Orson Welles, Mr. Charles Higham. It was published in The New York Times on September 19, 1970 as a rebuttal to Peter Bogdanovichs own article in The Times, Is It True What They Say about Orson? (see Wellesnet November 12th entry), which claimed that the scholarly work Higham did in his first book on Orson Welles was not all that scholarly.
As is made plain by Mr. Higham in his rebuttal, it looks like Mr. Bogdanovichs attack on Highams scholarly book mayhave indeed been motivated by the need to advertise his own forthcoming interview book with Orson Welles. Because as we now all know, This Is Orson Welles would need someadvance publicity, since it was going to be published very soonin fact in 1992only a scant22 yearsfrom the date of Mr. Bogdanovich'sarticle attempting togenerate some advance publicity for his book.
AND NOWTHE WAR OF THE WELLES
Q: Why, in your opinion, Mr. Higham, did Peter Bogdanovich attack your book, "The Films of Orson Welles," in The Times Art and Leisure Section of Aug. 30th as "a collection of half-truths, misrepresentations, mythical anecdotes, factual lapses, and conclusion based on false information?
MR. HIGGHAM: Simply, sir in order to advertise that Mr. Bogdanovichs forthcoming, and long delayed book on, with, and frequently recast by the same subject will be, by contrast, a collection of whole truths; correct representations, true anecdotes, factual accuracies, and conclusions based on the only true source of information, namely Orson Welles.
Q: Dirty pool?
MR. HIGGHAM: Quite so. But let us not embarrass ourselves by pursuing the tactics of competitive authors any further. We want the reading public to have a few illusions left!
Q. Why didn't you, as Mr. Bogdanovich accusingly says, either see Mr. Welles, or answer Mr. Welles request to read the book?
MR. HIGGHAM: For the very good reason that Mr. Welles refused all interviews and that Mr. Welles made no such request! Due to Mr. Bogdanovichs share-of-the-profit agreement with Mr. Welles, which invalidates his own book as a work of objective scholarship since the object of that scholarship is a partner in that endeavor, all other interviews were forbidden. When I appeared on Welles TV magic show set at the converted Los Angela County Museum Theater to interview Welles in person, Mr. Bogdanovich personally had meand the author of another Welles book, Howard Suber, of the UCLA Theater Arts Departmentremoved from it in a most humiliating fashion. (more...)
