TOE thread

[Jeff Wilson]

Carringer asked "where is the Hamlet in the Welles canon?" He should check out Welles' two-part Columbia Workshop radio broadcast of Hamlet from the fall of 1936, which he adapted, starred in, and supervised. Hamlet was hardly a role suited for Welles anyway, and I'm sure he knew it. Can you imagine Welles dying his hair blond for a film version?

[jaime marzol]

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jeff, that was carringer's feeble attempt at essay. it was laughable. that was the rosebud key to the unraveling of the ambersons.

when the carringer ambersons book arrived it was very dignified looking, not many pics, looked very academic, even the color of the pages pointed to an academic study-----------------> it was a lie. when i looked at it it could have been steak. when i finshed the carringer essay, it was popcorn.

what about that chronological history on the ambersons family that explains nothing about the film, or the unraveling, but carringer shoved it in anyway. i wonder what he was thinking.

[Welles Fan]

Jaime, I wouldn't dispute that the sexual imagery you allude to is in Welles' films. I just thought earlier on you were implying that it was some sort of unconscious phallic/breast fetish of Welles' that led to those bits being included. I think Welles' films (and other people's-like the Huston ones you mention) are richer for the many layers that make up the film, but I think they consciously incuded those bits.

I've always thought that Jed Leland's character was gay in Kane, or if he wasn't gay, he was latently gay because his reactions to Kane are more along the lines of a scorned lover. How many guys in movies of that era talk about love on their terms to each other? It is very subtle, but makes the film more interesting as the motivations of Kane's two closest associates are contrasted -Bernstein the toadying yes-man with Leland the friend of Kane's youth whose connection with Kane is stronger than anyone realizes.

The mistake that remake of Ambersons made in relation with Georgie and Isabel is it tried to make a subconscious Oedipal situation a conscious one. Georgie may behave the way he does because of Oedipal tendencies, but in the remake Georgie's and his mother's attraction was right up front and just made the story kinky.

BTW-I agree that Carringer does tend to credit everybody but Welles when possible, but I enjoyed the 'visual essay' he did for Kane on the old Criterion LaserDisc in the mid 80's, and the commentary for Ambersons (as to where the film was cut and re-shot, etc). It has been a long time since I listened to the Carringer Ambersons commentary, and since Christopher Banks corrected my recollection of it, I have to say he seems to be pretty accurate in his comments about what is missing and where it belongs, re-arrangement of scenes, etc.

[Fredric]

I'm with Welles Fan on the conscious/subconscious concept. That said, I am looking forward to Jaime's book eventually being published. The different critical approaches, ranging from sexual connotations to, let's say, elephant metaphors, sounds extremely original and intriguing.

[jaime marzol]

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welles absolutely put all that stuff in consciously. he was amusing himself. huddling with metty and tamiroff, giggling like school kids, inserting bathroom humor. and he did it within the frame of a picture largely considered a masterpiece. but then you take all this stuff that he intentionally put in, add it up with the subconscious drives and obssessions, and you come up with a new equation.

case and point:
early welles interview, interviewer asks, "in othello, when iago helps othello remove his armor, did you intend to let the viewer know that othello trusts iago." welles replied, "no, i hadn't noticed that." [not verbatim] that was put in as just a place to go and something for the actors to do and be interesting.

years later i hear welles/bogdanovich interview, bogdanovich asks same question, and welles replies, "oh, yes, it's that type of instant metaphor."

so you take all the clues you can gather on reocurring motifs, nuances, motions, the way one actor always leaves, or enter the frame. you collect and isolate these clues, you formulate a theory, and follow them till the end and see if it adds up. and sometimes it pays off.

i noticed that all visits to rancho graande never give us an establishing shot. each interior visit is covered from a different angle, at different times of day, the bar activity representing correct bar activity, making it look like different bars, and having no establishing shot, obscuring our sense of place.

imagine if welles had inserted that beautifull shot of the corridor where we see linnaker and zitaa. wwhy didn't welles use thaat? that would have made it a very comfortable film to watch, and add to the labrythine effect.

i follow this line of theory casting till the end of the film, and i find that vargas' rampaage through rancho grande is covered from many of the same angles that we were given on earrlier visits. i felt like it paid off. that recaping of angles told me that the director was aware of the elliptical landscape the film turned out with.

when i cast the theory that guns in touch of evil are penises, i follow that thread through the film and see how maany clues i can findd to support my theeory. i found tons of clues that aalloed me to make linkss to my theory. the biggest one being, after quinlan's verility is questioned at the whorehouse, when he gets his hands on a younger man's penis/gun, the first place he heads is the whorehouse. then i find welles quote that that gun was every cock in the world the way tamiroff looked at it. again i found the pot of gold.

the guys in the trial having sex with that court room scrub woman, enter scenes in the extreme foreground, and travel towards the camera; the price of having sex with the courtroom scrub woman. maybe welles was aware, maybe not.

i don't know what all this stuff means. i'm not offering any aansweres of judgemeent. i'm just digging up the clues, cataloging, illustrating, let the viewer make up his own mind.

nothing in a movie can be exxcluded from a reading. everything that eends up on the screen comes into plaay.

now that i'm through with tthat raambling answer, i will trash lellaand.

have never liked cotten in anything, though i havbe liked some films he was in. lelland, very gay. school marm. sappy character. that is not to say that all gays are, just jed lellaand.

carringer did some good research, that i have been guiding myself by on the running times of the different cuts, on what was cut out, on what is missing, on wwhat was reshot. he completely cheesed out on the diagrams for the set designs, which is one of the things i was very interested in.
his essays other than what i just mentioned about i found pretty worrtthless.

i saw in houseman book the set welles designed for the stage production of 5 KINGS. it's only a simple diagram, but it shows an engenious design.

i would buy a book analyzing and diagraming the sets for ambersons, trial, 5-kings, faust.

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new keyboard, putting in more letter than i need. takes too long to fix.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

i did always wonder why jed leland didn't get hitched

as for books, sorry, just interested in the pictures. cant even understand the first sentence of the first page in most of them. then when i find out what it does mean, turns out to be a insult towards him anyway.

in some articles, just the headline tells me whether i'll want to read it or not.

bye now

[jaime marzol]

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jed lelland never got hitcheed because he was looking at the boys, then he was tossed out to a place where they never heard of lobster newberg.

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after steeler told me about houseman being attrated to welles and welles being such a lout to houseman to break sexual infatuation houseman had with welles. i never read the book that was in. but it sounds interesting, and possible. that angle of their relationship never occured to me. i kind of look at things a bit different now. maybe some of that houseman thing went into lelland.

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[dmolson]

Jaime,
I've always found your theories/opinions fascinating and many have steered me to looking deeper at a scene or film; looking at a piece of art objectively is a near impossible task when one is 'sparked' to it on some level, whether the surface or because of the artist. Attaching ourselves or our own impressions to it make it personal and alive, enriching the experience. You're right, some of the better ways to enjoy these pieces is by falling into them, finding and devouring moments that sate our appetites. I've never seen Quinlan's virility disputed except in the scene with Tanya, and that is also the typical 'lost/distant love' that every man has some experience with to me, not any overt sexual expose. It's all there, but whether we choose to search for it, interpret it and accept it, if it enriches our appreciation or becomes a turnoff is the true issue. My nature isn't to analyze things much if it might hamper my instinctive appreciation, tho on some occasion my enjoyment has been multiplied by a little more light and subjective viewing. But I'm always on your side, just lagging behind in the interpretive stage, that's all :")
On Cotten, I really believe he's one of those truly undervalued actors, who had standout efforts working with the right director in well-carved, average-joe parts. Welles, Hitchcock both took his bland/resolved face and brought incredible growth in both Kane and Shadow of a Doubt. He belongs on the same level as a Melvyn Douglas and John Malkovich, semi-leading men who were capable of pathos and defeat, more sympathetic, delicate characters, not suited for the manly romantic leads... Fredric March and Henry Fonda were the next level, who were able to cross into 'romantic/emotional' characters yet were not thought of as physical/heroic/sexual. Dustin Hoffman fits the 'Fredric March' line, but modern agents insist every actor should have a starring/heroic/sexual role... Can you imagine William Demarest or Dan Duryea as Roger Thornhill or Holly Martens? Who's to say they couldn't play the role, only it wouldn't be Cary Grant or even Jo Cotten. In the Third Man, you see an 'everyman' who knows his niche, accepts it yet dreams of stretching beyond it, earning the love of Anna. Frankly, I can't imagine anyone else as Martens, half defeated when he arrives yet willing to stand on his head and tell funny stories to win his girl's heart... But I digress. Yeah, Jed leland was probably gay, and I think Cotten played it perfectly. Just one man's opinion, damn it!! :p

[jaime marzol]

quote:
Jaime,
I've always found your theories/opinions fascinating and many have steered me to looking deeper at a scene or film.

dan, that's great. that is the whole reason for an analyzation. if only 20% of it you beleive, and adopt into your film watching, that is a lot of extra enjoyment. and once you start watching a film from a different perspective, you begin to look at other films the same way. it's just a method that helps us re-enjoy the films we enjoy watching over and over, and we also get to know the director better.

quinlan's veritity comes into question when tanner tells him her chilly may be too hot for him. uncle je's verility comes into question when he has to ask pancho for the gun; he doesn't carry his own gun. notice pancho's attitude at having to hand the gun over. no one gives uncle joe a holster, he has to shove the gun down the front of his pants. when uncle joe shoves the gun down the front of his pants leigh's eyes follow the path of the gun, looking at uncle joe's crotch.

who was responsible for pancho's attitude in handing the gun over, for uncle joe not having a holster, for leigh eyes following the path of the gun to uncle joe's crotch? welles was.

the film is rich with clues to be excavated.

dan:
in the next few days i'm doing some work on that uncle joe/susan scene, i will zero the counter and write down the times off all the clues i mentioned a few posts up. you will be able to zero your counter and arrive close enough to each instance of deviant, hidden sex welles inserted in this great film.

[ToddBaesen]

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Does anyone have a copy of the letter Welles wrote to THE NEW STATESMAN (London) in 1958 regarding TOUCH OF EVIL?

And here's some more entries from Mr. Heston's Journals on the filming of TOUCH OF EVIL.

----------------------------------------------------


Feb 20: We didn't perform quite as spectacularly today, out in the back lot, but the shots were interesting all the same. We shot in moving cars all day, using an 18mm lens Orson claims has been perfected for two years, but avoided almost universally. It certainly saves you from those deadly process scenes in mock-up cars.

Feb 27: I had the morning free while they finished murdering Akim Tamiroff, allowing me to get in a little tennis (welcome) and paper work (necessary). After lunch I persuaded Dennis Weaver to play the motel night clerk and saw the stuff we did yesterday, while I waited to shoot. I swear, some of (cameraman) Russ Metty's shots look like Cartier-Bresson stills.

March 7: I didn't work again till the very end of the day, but I saw two or three reels of rough-cut footage. Even misedited (Orson fired his cutter today) it looked special. We also acquired another classy bit player: Marlene Dietrich. I really think this one's going to go; it all looks better and better…and it started with a bright idea up in the snow in St. Helen.

March 12 - Venice: The shooting tonight with Dietrich was quite a thing, even though Orson greedily refused to write me into any of the bits he made with her. She looked fantastic. A gypsy makeup, with a cast-off black wig of Taylor's from MGM, in which Elizabeth never looked so good, and oddments of costume from every studio in town. The only sexy grandmother I know. I only did one scene with Janet at five of an icy morning, but it was worth it to be around.

March 13: Out to Universal for dailies… the burning car stuff…excellent; and Marlene's stuff, silent. Tonight in a scene with Janet, Orson got me to use a kind of adolescent diffidence. Sort of the manner Cooper has in scenes with women. I think he's right; if I got it right.

March 14: Slept late and satisfied and woke to play a little tennis, but no dailies. The main setup tonight was the damnedest shot I've ever seen, and that includes our first day's work. After Joe Cotten had finished his cameo scene, we started working on the opening shot of the film: a complicated setup with the Chapman boom moving three blocks, angling down over buildings to inserts, through two pages of dialogue to a car blowing up as I kiss Janet. The sun came up at six and wrapped our night, but I think we got it. To bed at seven, feeling great.

March 18: It poured all night long, but didn't affect us. We moved inside the hotel down in Venice, covering a scene scheduled for a set at the studio, in the DA's office. Orson never liked that set and when the rain washed out our night exteriors, he grabbed the chance to shoot this moving through the hotel lobby, into the elevator, up two floors, and along the hall, with dialogue all the way. That's a first, for sure. It would be remarkable as a planned and prepared shot; as a rain-cover pickup, it’s really something else.

March 19: We fished up the scenes in the hotel room and the lobby. They tell me you have to come early to get seats at the studio running of our dailies now. If we can just get the title changed now… I'm inclining increasingly toward BORDERLINE.

March 25: The dailies were brief, good shots of me clambering around those derricks. We shot, with immense effort, a scene with Joe Calleia and me checking the bugging equipment. Very proppy and difficult to shoot. At three in the morning, outside his house in the car, Orson and I killed a bottle of brandy and more or less agreed on partnership, which seems a very exciting prospect to me.

March 27: The shooting went swimmingly tonight, and the adjective is thoughtfully chosen. Thank God it was the warmest night we've had because I spent a lot of it treading water across that damn antique travesty of a Venetian canal. Orson also was very excited about a novel he's found to make (EARTH ABIDES).


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[jaime marzol]

here is the new statesman letter

TOUCH OF EVIL
Sir-Without being quite so foolish as to set my name to that odious thing, a 'reply to the critic', perhaps I may add a few oddments of information to Mr Whitebait's brief reference to MY Picture Touch of Evil (what a silly title, by the way; it’s the first time I've heard it). Most serious film reviewers appear to be quite without knowledge of the hard facts involved in manufacturing and, especially, merchandising a motion picture. Such innocence, I'm sure, is very proper to their position; it is, therefore, not your critic I venture to set straight, but my own record. As author-director I was not and normally would not be-consulted on the matter of the 'release' of my film without a press showing. That this is an 'odd subterfuge', I agree; but there can be no speculation as to the responsibility for such a decision. As to the reason, one can only assume that the distributor was so terrified of what the critics might write about it that a rash attempt was made to evade them altogether and smuggle Touch of Evil directly to the public. This is understandable in the light of the wholesale re-editing of the film by the executive producer, a process of re-hashing in which I was forbidden to participate. Confusion was further confounded by several added scenes which I did not write and was not invited to direct. No wonder Mr Whitebait speaks of muddle. He is kind enough to say that 'Like Graham Greene' I have 'two levels'. To his charge that I have 'let the higher slip' I plead not guilty. When Mr Greene finishes one of his 'entertainments' he is immediately free to set his hand to more challenging enterprises. His typewriter is always available; my camera is not. A typewriter needs only paper; a camera uses film, requires subsidiary equipment by the truck-load and several hundreds of technicians. That is always the central fact about the film-maker as opposed to any other artist: he can never afford to own his own tools. The minimum kit is incredibly expensive; and one's opportunities to work with it are rater less numerous than might be supposed. In my case, I've. been given the use of my tools exactly eight times in 20 years. just once my own editing of the film has been the version put into release; and (excepting the Shakespearean experiments) I have only twice been given any voice at all as to the 'level' of my, subject matter. In my trunks stuffed with unproduced films scripts, there are no thrillers. When I make this sort of picture-for which I can pretend, to no special interest or aptitude-it is not 'for the money' (I support myself as an actor) but because of a greedy need to exercise, in some way, the function of my choice: the function of director. Quite baldly, this is my only choice. I have to take whatever comes along from time to time, or accept, the alternative, which is not working.
Mr Whitebait revives my own distress at the shapeless poverty of Macbeth's castle. The papier mache’ stagy effect in my film was dictated by a 'B-Minus' budget with a 'quickie' shooting schedule of 20 days.. Returning to the current picture, since he comments on the richness of the Urban scenery of the Mexican border' perhaps Mr White head will be amused to learn that all shooting was in Hollywood. There was no attempt to approximate reality; the film's entire 'world' being the director’s invention. Finally, while the style of Touch of Evil may be somewhat overly baroque, there are positively no camera tricks. Nowadays the eye is tamed, I think, by the new wide screens. These 'systems’ with their rigid technical limitations are in such monopoly that any vigorous use of the old black -and-white, normal aperture camera runs the risk of seeming tricky by comparison. The old camera permits of a range of visual conventions as removed from 'realism' as grand opera. This is a language not a bag of tricks. If it is now a dead language, as a candid partisan of the old eloquence, I must face the likelyhood that I shall not again be able to be able to put it to the service of any theme of my own choosing.


Rome

ORSON WELLES

[ChristopherBanks]

Finally, while the style of Touch of Evil may be somewhat overly baroque, there are positively no camera tricks. Nowadays the eye is tamed, I think, by the new wide screens. These 'systems’ with their rigid technical limitations are in such monopoly that any vigorous use of the old black -and-white, normal aperture camera runs the risk of seeming tricky by comparison. The old camera permits of a range of visual conventions as removed from 'realism' as grand opera. This is a language not a bag of tricks. If it is now a dead language, as a candid partisan of the old eloquence, I must face the likelyhood that I shall not again be able to be able to put it to the service of any theme of my own choosing.


Rome

ORSON WELLES

This quote is extremely interesting in light of aspect ratio debate on ToE. It sounds like Orson *was* composing this film for 1.33:1, despite the fact he would have known it probably wouldn't be shown that way.

[jaime marzol]

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good point, chris

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it's sad, when i watch MAN IN THE SHADOWS and see that beautiful, wide panavision screen. arnold gets the new and improved equipment to make his movie, welles gets old and crappy.

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[Fredric]

On the other hand...

Didn't Kubrick use antique equipment to film Barry Lyndon? I think he even did the old "if you're going to just throw that stuff away, I'll take it" con to the studio.

Not trying to be contrary, just my thoughts.

[jaime marzol]

welles fan, you are funny, "not trying to be contrary..." we are all trying to be so clinically proper after the gunfight at the stranger thread last week.

what chris just pointed out, to my knowledge, is all that has come from welles on the size he filmed. he framed for a square screen.

so the compositions are clipped, the lbx dvd does have flawed framing. and not one critic world wide noticed that.

where is atant when you need him?