Welles the Artist (from The Night Editor blog)

[Harvey Chartrand]

Check out this excellent essay on Orson Welles by blogger JAKE HINKSON @ http://thenighteditor.blogspot.com/
Hinkson contrasts the two predominant narratives on Welles's life and career. Here are a few excerpts from "Welles the Artist" (posted on "THE NIGHT EDITOR – ONE MAN'S MIDNIGHT JOURNEYS THROUGH THE DARK SIDE OF DREAM TOWN").

"There are basically two narratives about the career of Orson Welles. Narrative A says Welles made Citizen Kane and then slid into a 45-year decline of waste and failure. Narrative B says Welles stayed in Hollywood as long as he could, then moved to Europe and became an independent filmmaker of increasing skill and accomplishment. (...)

"Narrative B has the virtue of actually taking into account the career of Welles after Kane. By my count, Welles made five masterpieces: Citizen Kane, The Trial, Touch of Evil, Chimes At Midnight and F for Fake. You might also include the beautiful and butchered The Magnificent Ambersons, which is the cinematic equivalent of the Venus de Milo. The Immortal Story is excellent, and while the butchered The Lady From Shanghai isn't a masterpiece it's still a lot of fun, as are The Stranger, Othello, and Macbeth. Mr. Arkadin isn't a good movie, but it's an interesting failure."

The article links to Patrick Watson's long interview with Orson Welles on the set of Is Paris Burning? and to the sad and meditative Chartres scene in F for Fake.

[Glenn Anders]

I liked the essay, Harvey, and thank you for posting the link to it.

Perhaps a Narrative C exists: Orson Welles, after a series of experimental revolutions in Theater, Radio, the presentation of political as well as artistic ideas, combined all that he had learned in CITIZEN KANE, truly the most startling and revolutionary Hollywood picture of the early sound era. Then, a victim of the envy of lesser beings in Hollywood and Washington, he was deprived of the magnificent technical means to carry on from the Olympian platform he had created, and spent the next thirty years attempting create to movies as perfect, in new styles, without the necessary support he needed. Near the end of that long string of mostly butchered attempts, he created F FOR FAKE, a film as revolutionary and perfect in the personal documentary essay field as CITIZEN KANE had been in the epic theatrical film tradition.

F FOR FAKE contains all the mastery of elements on display in . . . KANE with Oja Kodar as a successful, confidentt woman in place of Charlie Kane -- plus the documentary is in color, European as well as American in scope, contains a genuine romantic love interest, sums up Welles' artistic creed, and presents in an intensely personal way with both warmth and humor the events of Welles' life and times in the moment as CITIZEN KANE did predictively, analytically, using Charles Foster Kane in a metaphor for the "lucky" failed American: The destiny of Orson Welles.

Narrative C avoids the dismissivness of A and the special pleadings cum denial of B.

What do you think?

Glenn