By RAY KELLY The story surrounding a little known, and unfilmed, Orson Welles screenplay will be explained at a forthcoming literary conference in London. Matthew Asprey Gear will deliver his paper, Surinam: Orson Welles’s Unproduced Victory Screenplay, at the Joseph Conrad Society Conference at the University Women’s Club at Mayfair on Sunday, July 7. Surinam […]
Updated on June 19: BSGU says it will not reconsider its decision. _____ Nearly a dozen prominent Wellesians were among the more than 50 artists, writers, and film scholars calling for the restoration of actresses Lillian and Dorothy Gish’s names to a theater established in their honor 43 years ago at Bowling Green State University […]
Orson Welles scholars on the East Coast will be happy to know the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University includes scripts and papers related to four early Orson Welles film projects. The movies — two filmed and two not fully realized — span the years 1940 to 1943 when Welles was under […]
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group of Maryland will publish “Marching Song” in August.
Janus Films has revealed its poster and trailer for the U.S. release of Mark Cousins’ acclaimed documentary The Eyes of Orson Welles. The film, which begins its run Friday, March 15, at the IFC Center in New York City, explores Welles’ life and career through a trove of paintings and sketches he created throughout his […]
By KATHLEEN SPALTRO During the Spanish Civil War, three Chicago-associated artists and supporters of the Spanish Republic— John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, and Orson Welles—intended to raise money for the Republican cause by working on a film, Joris Ivens’s documentary The Spanish Earth. Dos Passos, born in Chicago, initially joined with such other American writers […]
By RAY KELLY A series of Friday night dinners gave birth to a six-part documentary series, which will look at the private life of iconic director Orson Welles. Life with Orson Welles: The Man Behind the Legend comes from his youngest daughter, Beatrice Welles, and director Dax Phelan (Jasmine). The two were involved in the production of The […]
By RAY KELLY Wellesians will remember Chris Wade for his 2017 book Orson Welles: The Final Cut. Now, the writer, musician, filmmaker and illustrator is back with a hour-long documentary film examining the final two decades of the late filmmaker career. The Immortal Orson Welles boasts new interviews with actor Norman Eshley (The Immortal Story), personal assistant Dorian […]
Hot on the heels of The Criterion Collection’s 4K restoration of The Magnificent Ambersons, movie historian Joseph Egan has unveiled a website totally dedicated to Orson Welles’ sophomore Hollywood release. A four-month undertaking, The Complete Orson Welles The Magnificent Ambersons seeks to take full advantage of the website format, Egan said. “I wanted it to show that it […]
Update: The Other Side of the Wind will be shown April 19 and 23. ____ Jonathan Rosenbaum, noted film critic and consultant on the restored Touch of Evil and completed The Other Side of the Wind, will host a 14-week lecture series on the work of Orson Welles at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. Orson […]
By JOSEPH McBRIDE And now comes the authorship question about The Other Side of the Wind. Orson Welles shares screenwriting credit with his longtime personal and creative partner, Oja Kodar, who also plays the Actress in the film-within-the-film directed by Jake Hannaford (John Huston). Welles receives sole directing credit. But recently critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, who […]
By RAY KELLY Heritage Auctions has several unique Orson Welles items on the block between now and November 3, including three unpublished scripts and a short story. Other items up for bid include more than two dozen books, several signed, from the late filmmaker’s private collection. Also on the block is a revealing 1942 letter […]
(Editor’s note: Alberto Anile, author of Orson Welles in Italy, shared his views of The Other Side of the Wind after attending a preview screening at the 75th annual Venice Film Festival.) By ALBERTO ANILE The very first public screening of The Other Side of the Wind, reserved for critics and journalists, took place at […]
Italian public television’s RAI 3 will pay tribute to Orson Welles in the days leading up to the 75th annual Venice Film Festival and world premiere of his recently completed movie The Other Side of the Wind. The broadcast programming, except a showing of The Magnificent Ambersons, focuses chiefly on Welles’ connection to Italy and his many […]
The professional and personal papers of the late filmmaker Jonathan Demme have been donated to the University of Michigan Library in Ann Arbor. The materials will become part of the “Screen Arts Mavericks and Makers” collection, which also includes the works of Orson Welles, Robert Altman, John Sayles, Nancy Savoca, Ira Deutchman and others. Philip Hallman, […]
(Editor’s note:Museo Nazionale del Cinema’s once overlooked archive of Orson Welles scripts and personal correspondence in Turin has received a great deal of attention in recent months thanks to Massimiliano Studer, co-founder of Forma Cinema, and Alessandro Aniballi, co-founder of Quinlan.it. The Italian film scholars first publicized the contents of the collection earlier this year. Matthew Asprey Gear, […]
By RAY KELLY A previously unknown English-language novel credited to Orson Welles has been discovered in the archives of the National Museum of Cinema in Turin. The bound hardcover typescript of V.I.P. ― mistakenly cataloged at one point by the museum as a treatment for the movie The V.I.P.’s or V.I.P ― is an English version of Welles’ […]
The upcoming The Other Side of the Wind, directed by Orson Welles and co-starring Peter Bogdanovich, is not first project pairing of the two filmmakers. Their relationship dates back to 1961 when Bogdanovich organized a Welles film retrospective, the first in the United States, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Welles, […]
By RAY KELLY Orson Welles famously wrote, “A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.” He would have certainly been impressed then by Mark Cousins’ penetrating and engaging new documentary, The Eyes of Orson Welles, which had its world premiere today at the Cannes Film […]
By RAY KELLY Compared to other Orson Welles projects, relatively little has been written about Too Much Johnson, the Mercury Theatre’s ill-fated 1938 stage comedy, which would have included his first use of film in a commercial project. A two-week tryout of Too Much Johnson commenced at the Stony Creek Theatre in Branford, Connecticut in […]
