I’ve known only one great cameraman: Gregg Toland, who photographed Citizen Kane. —Orson Welles, 1967 Photographing Citizen Kane was indeed the most exciting professional adventure of my career. —Gregg Toland _______________ Given the fact that Citizen Kane has long been considered the greatest film ever made, here is a wonderful piece about the cinematography for Kane, written only a […]
People always tell me how difficult Orson Welles is. The only people I’ve ever met worth working for were difficult people—because they’re interested in achieving something. Just spare me the charmers. Welles in every other way might be difficult, but when it comes to making artistic decisions he’s like the Rock of Gibraltar. —Bernard […]
The ever witty, brilliant friend of Orson Welles, writer Gore Vidal, wrote a review in 1989 of Frank Brady’s Citizen Welles and Welles own script for The Big Brass Ring. The article itself is fairly well known (it was reprinted in Interviews with Welles), but if you haven’t read it, it can be accessed here: […]
In February of 1941, just three months before Orson Welles first film as a director would be universally acclaimed as a masterpiece, Welles, who was only 26, had the gall, the nerve and the temerity to write a piece that was extremely critical about what he felt was wrong with the Hollywood system. This brilliant […]
� There is a fascinating article on the Citizen Kane trailer in the Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Volume 15, No. 2. The article runs from pages 96 to 113, and is the first article to my knowledge to�focus on�a Welles trailer. The author remarks that only recently are trailers becoming understood as works of […]
Shortly after receiving the AFI’s Life Acheivement award in 1975, Orson Welles was asked to contribute a foreword to Marion Davies oral history, The Times We Had. In his foreword, Welles reflects on what people assumed where some of the Hearst like elements in Citizen Kane, and purports that only one scene in Kane “was […]
