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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