Just in time for the Orson Welles centennial, The Critical Press has published Orson Welles: Power, Heart, And Soul by filmmaker and critic F.X. Feeney.
It is described as an incisive introduction to Welles’ life and work with special attention paid to the political, social, and cultural milieus in which Welles lived and worked. “This in-depth personal essay and biographical portrait brings to life a filmmaker who is too often either mythologized or misrepresented, fully humanizing the man behind masterworks like Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Chimes at Midnight, and many more.”
Noted Welles’ author Joseph McBride gives high marks to the book.
“Among the many virtues of F.X. Feeney’s book is that it conveys, as no book ever has before, what it must have felt like to be Orson Welles,” McBride said. “He manages to give us that sense through his deep empathy, understanding, and close yet still clear-eyed identification. Every reader will be grateful to him for opening the full cornucopia that was Orson Welles and analyzing those riches so acutely.”
The book is available online from The Critical Press as an e-book or hardcover.
Feeney’s essays, reviews and interviews have been published in L.A. Weekly, Vanity Fair, People Variety and Fade-In.
Since 1996 he has been a contributing editor to Written By, the magazine of the Writer’s Guild of America, and a founding contributor to the L.A. Review of Books. He is the author of two books: Roman Polanski and Michael Mann. His screenwriting credits include Frankenstein Unbound, for director Roger Corman, and The Big Brass Ring, adapted for director George Hickenlooper from a story by Orson Welles.
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