Hmmm...........I found this during a Google search for Welles:
"The 24 Brains of Orson Welles" by Philip Jose Farmer (Hugo award-winning author of the five volume Riverworld series).
Here Farmer shows he is a well-read Wellesian who has some fascinating insights; however, to me anyway, this is an obscurity: does anyone know where he's coming from, i.e the 24 brains and the 7 dimensions? There's a web-site link at the bottom for those of a curious disposition.
The 24 Brains of Orson Welles
Philip Jose Farmer links the Shadow and Leopold Bloom in his elaborate family tree of Doc Savage, Tarzan, etc. Welles played the Shadow on radio, poetically linking Welles with Bloom. Welles contemplated filming both Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses in the 1950's.
Dimension One:
Brain 1: Citizen Kane - modern primate imprint $ or L.s.d. (Pounds, shillings, pence), etc. The film begins with a death - the cessation of biosurvival. Kane reincarnates as all of us, the audience.
Brain 2: The Magnificent Ambersons - we all get our comeuppance in this sharkish reality (unless the cosmic studio recuts the ending).
Brain 3: The Stranger - The first union, but the guy seems like a rat, a rodent. In Gurdieffesque fashion, one can see these terrestrial dimensions as somewhat melodramatic
Dimension Two:
Brain 4: The Lady from Shanghai - everything gets turned upside down in this romantic mindblower. The shattering of the first dimension in a hall of mirrors. Alice begins to grow and a lawyer cross-examines himself.
Brain 5: Macbeth - The desire for territory and power. Welles saw this play as a tale of the end of the pagan religion and the rise of Christianity.
Brain 6: Othello - Uh, oh. Those imaginations can stir up those emotional second dimensional realities, ending the second union.
Dimension Three:
Brain 7: Mr. Arkadin - A deconstructing of the first brain. New ideas of identity and wealth and mind.
Brain 8: Touch of Evil - How does one enforce the law? How to maintain society - reason versus intuition, crossing borders.
Brain 9: The Trial - The end of linear-terrestrial mind-body. Gershom Scholem saw Kafka as a sort of kabbalist, fitting in with the third dimension.
Dimension Four:
Brain 10: The Chimes at Midnight - The three stages of the fourth dimension: the playboy Prince Hal, the responsible King Henry IV, the aging Falstaff, who both hints of a return to the infantile and points towards the fifth dimension.
Brain 11: The Immortal Story - Love bought and sold.
Brain 12: F for Fake, the deconstruction of our society - experts, selling out, simply selling.
Dimension Five:
Brain 13: Citizen Kane again: Kane returns to life, elusive, invisible like the Shadow. No Martians have invaded. Rosebud has at least two meanings.
Brain 14: The Magnificent Ambersons. The new technology of the automobile will change all of society. The awakening of the cosmic schmuck.
Brain 15: The Stranger. Welles wanted a woman to play the part that went to Edward G. Robinson. Alchemical rebus tantric union.
Dimension Six:
Brain 16: The Lady from Shanghai - metaprogrammer recursive hall of mirrors. The second most evil brain of them all.
Brain 17: Macbeth - Witches, prophecy, psychedelic castle music.
Brain 18: Othello - The ideal romance in Venice which crosses borders and ends with triumph of the terrestrial brains (Iago and Othello's jealous rage).
Dimension Seven:
Brain 19: Mr. Arkadin - seeking for the morphogenetic true self, floating on the path of elusive truths.
Brain 20: Touch of Evil - Long luscious crane shots of evolution, looking into the second-story windows of genes.
Brain 21: The Trial - Does he survive at the end? The door of the law.
Dimension Eight:
Brain 22: Chimes at Midnight - Hamlet survives and goes to Dublin, then grows old and looks at Universe with silent lonely eyes.
Brain 23: The Immortal Story - Humanity takes responsibility for Universe, seeking the triumph of love.
Brain 24: F for Falstaff, oops, Fake. The Cosmic Fun House. Magick in Theory and Practice. A return to wealth, to the Trick Top Hat. (What if Orson had directed a Fred Astaire film?) (Hail Astarte!)
Here's the link:
http://www.digital-falcon.com/articles/PJF.shtml
:;):
What on earth?
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by Glenn Anders » Sat Jul 08, 2006 12:06 am
Too far out for me, Tony, but a fascinating speculation, nevertheless.
Maybe we were all in Kane's glass ball, and now we are so many little crabs looking for a pond or a swamp.
There are such places, but Global Warming is drying them up!
Glenn
Maybe we were all in Kane's glass ball, and now we are so many little crabs looking for a pond or a swamp.
There are such places, but Global Warming is drying them up!
Glenn
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Glenn Anders - Wellesnet Legend
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by Tony » Sat Jul 08, 2006 1:43 pm
I agree it's far-out, Glenn, but I think some of the observations are interesting and thought-provoking; these statements work more as poetry, and evoke ideas that perhaps otherwise could not be spoken of:
"Citizen Kane: ...The film begins with a death - the cessation of biosurvival. Kane reincarnates as all of us, the audience. Kane returns to life, elusive, invisible like the Shadow."
Kane does start with a death, and there is something I react to in the idea that we are all reincarnated in his reincarnation; perhaps this is a Christian concept in code, hence the films power. But Kane is no Christ, and his name is a homonym for the killer of Abel. Certainly there is a deep identification on the audience's part with Kane, and the futility of his fighting against his fate.
"The Magnificent Ambersons - we all get our comeuppance in this sharkish reality."
Similar to Kane, the audience has a guilty (in the actual sense) identification with the sins of Georgie; when he is on his knees, praying and begging for forgiveness, and so are we.
"The Lady from Shanghai - everything gets turned upside down in this romantic mindblower. The shattering of the first dimension in a hall of mirrors. Alice begins to grow and a lawyer cross-examines himself."
Here the writer has honed in on the absurdist aspect of Shanghai, the Lewis Carroll aspect of this story where nothing is as it seems, and there is a hall of mirrors and a lawyer does cross-examine himself, and...is Michael "Alice"?
"Touch of Evil - How does one enforce the law? How to maintain society - reason versus intuition, crossing borders."
Reason versus intuition: I've watched this film many times since I was 10, and never have I thought about it in these terms: Vargas's somewhat banal "reason" and literalism as regards the law, versus Quinlan's intuition, the latter of which quite probably catches more criminals. Quinlan says "All lawyers care about is the law", and Vargas reponds with "The job of a cop is to uphold the law"" to which Quinlan reponds "I don't know about you, but when a murderer is loose, I intend to catch him". I know Welles didn't support Quinlan's point of view, at least not consciously, but that doesn't mean he didn't on a deeper level as betrayed by his performance; of course, Welles debated this in his '58 interview with Bazin, where the latter maintained that the ordinary rules should not apply to persons of genius.
"The Trial - The end of linear-terrestrial mind-body."
Well, if any film displays the "end of linear-terrestrial mind-body", it's The Trial; in fact, I think the difficulty for most viewers is precisely this, the inanely topsy-turvy world that Welles creates in that train station of hell.
"The Chimes at Midnight - The three stages of the fourth dimension: the playboy Prince Hal, the responsible King Henry IV, the aging Falstaff, who both hints of a return to the infantile and points towards the fifth dimension...Hamlet survives and goes to Dublin, then grows old and looks at Universe with silent lonely eyes."
I have always thought of Falstaff and King Henry as two fathers, but here the writer thinks of them as the 3 stages of life: the irresponsible youth, the boringly practical middle-aged (Welles called middle-age the "enemy of art") and the return to joy and spontaneity of old-age. Here Falstaff joins the young Henry with his older self, possibly affecting how he will fulfill his kingly duty. The Hamlet idea Welles also thought about, as he once said tha Falstaff could be the older Hamlet, who didn't die but secretly moved to England.
"The Immortal Story - Love bought and sold. Humanity takes responsibility for Universe, seeking the triumph of love."
The Immortal Story may well be about love: Clay has never had any, and may be trying to find some, in a strange and clumsy way. Are not the "lusty jumping jacks" mere stand-ins in Clay's mind for himself and a young lover? So only on the surface is Immortal about buying and control and revenge: Clay may represent humanity, "taking responsibility...and seeking the triumph of love".
"F for Fake, the deconstruction of our society - experts, selling out, simply selling. F for Falstaff, oops, Fake. The Cosmic Fun House. Magick in Theory and Practice. A return to wealth, to the Trick Top Hat."
Of course, postmodernism and deconstruction were being formulated in the late sixties and early seventies: Welles was deconstructing art, cinema, architecture, magic...he's pricking a lot of balloons: "It's pretty, but is it art?" "What's in a name?" And he is, in a way, Falstaff, and we are Hals, listening and learning, as he takes the stuffing out of authorship, experts, posterity, and authenticity, in a whirling dervish of humour and magic.
So, while this is far-out stuff, I find it to be stimulating in unique ways...or maybe I'm just far-out.
:laugh:
"Citizen Kane: ...The film begins with a death - the cessation of biosurvival. Kane reincarnates as all of us, the audience. Kane returns to life, elusive, invisible like the Shadow."
Kane does start with a death, and there is something I react to in the idea that we are all reincarnated in his reincarnation; perhaps this is a Christian concept in code, hence the films power. But Kane is no Christ, and his name is a homonym for the killer of Abel. Certainly there is a deep identification on the audience's part with Kane, and the futility of his fighting against his fate.
"The Magnificent Ambersons - we all get our comeuppance in this sharkish reality."
Similar to Kane, the audience has a guilty (in the actual sense) identification with the sins of Georgie; when he is on his knees, praying and begging for forgiveness, and so are we.
"The Lady from Shanghai - everything gets turned upside down in this romantic mindblower. The shattering of the first dimension in a hall of mirrors. Alice begins to grow and a lawyer cross-examines himself."
Here the writer has honed in on the absurdist aspect of Shanghai, the Lewis Carroll aspect of this story where nothing is as it seems, and there is a hall of mirrors and a lawyer does cross-examine himself, and...is Michael "Alice"?
"Touch of Evil - How does one enforce the law? How to maintain society - reason versus intuition, crossing borders."
Reason versus intuition: I've watched this film many times since I was 10, and never have I thought about it in these terms: Vargas's somewhat banal "reason" and literalism as regards the law, versus Quinlan's intuition, the latter of which quite probably catches more criminals. Quinlan says "All lawyers care about is the law", and Vargas reponds with "The job of a cop is to uphold the law"" to which Quinlan reponds "I don't know about you, but when a murderer is loose, I intend to catch him". I know Welles didn't support Quinlan's point of view, at least not consciously, but that doesn't mean he didn't on a deeper level as betrayed by his performance; of course, Welles debated this in his '58 interview with Bazin, where the latter maintained that the ordinary rules should not apply to persons of genius.
"The Trial - The end of linear-terrestrial mind-body."
Well, if any film displays the "end of linear-terrestrial mind-body", it's The Trial; in fact, I think the difficulty for most viewers is precisely this, the inanely topsy-turvy world that Welles creates in that train station of hell.
"The Chimes at Midnight - The three stages of the fourth dimension: the playboy Prince Hal, the responsible King Henry IV, the aging Falstaff, who both hints of a return to the infantile and points towards the fifth dimension...Hamlet survives and goes to Dublin, then grows old and looks at Universe with silent lonely eyes."
I have always thought of Falstaff and King Henry as two fathers, but here the writer thinks of them as the 3 stages of life: the irresponsible youth, the boringly practical middle-aged (Welles called middle-age the "enemy of art") and the return to joy and spontaneity of old-age. Here Falstaff joins the young Henry with his older self, possibly affecting how he will fulfill his kingly duty. The Hamlet idea Welles also thought about, as he once said tha Falstaff could be the older Hamlet, who didn't die but secretly moved to England.
"The Immortal Story - Love bought and sold. Humanity takes responsibility for Universe, seeking the triumph of love."
The Immortal Story may well be about love: Clay has never had any, and may be trying to find some, in a strange and clumsy way. Are not the "lusty jumping jacks" mere stand-ins in Clay's mind for himself and a young lover? So only on the surface is Immortal about buying and control and revenge: Clay may represent humanity, "taking responsibility...and seeking the triumph of love".
"F for Fake, the deconstruction of our society - experts, selling out, simply selling. F for Falstaff, oops, Fake. The Cosmic Fun House. Magick in Theory and Practice. A return to wealth, to the Trick Top Hat."
Of course, postmodernism and deconstruction were being formulated in the late sixties and early seventies: Welles was deconstructing art, cinema, architecture, magic...he's pricking a lot of balloons: "It's pretty, but is it art?" "What's in a name?" And he is, in a way, Falstaff, and we are Hals, listening and learning, as he takes the stuffing out of authorship, experts, posterity, and authenticity, in a whirling dervish of humour and magic.
So, while this is far-out stuff, I find it to be stimulating in unique ways...or maybe I'm just far-out.
:laugh:
- Tony
- Wellesnet Legend
- Posts: 1014
- Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2002 11:44 pm
by Tashman » Sat Jul 08, 2006 2:27 pm
"...Alice begins to grow and a lawyer cross-examines himself." ...is Michael "Alice"?
Alice is Alice. As in:
or
But I think our beatnik friend mostly means our last images of dear screaming Rita:
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Tashman - Wellesnet Veteran
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