Links and info of interest

[Harvey Chartrand]

According to IMDB, Welles may have directed all or part of an obscure US/Argentinian coproduction based on Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit in 1962. The film is credited to Ted Danielewski (never heard of him; he only has a few credits). No Exit starred Viveca Lindfors, Rita Gam and Ben Piazza. Anyone ever see this film, also known as Sinners Go to Hell?

[Terry]

We all know the AFI sez Kane is the best, followed by Ambersons, but what do you all think was his finest film after these? (After Variety called him Hollywood's youngest has-been.)

[blunted by community]

a friend sent me this. it's too good not to share.

WHAT THEY SAY/WHAT THEY MEAN

STATELY= Nothing happens for two hours

MYTHICAL/LEGENDARY= It's high melodrama but they like it so they call it this.

JINGOISTIC= The most overused word for the past year or so. Means the film doesn't agree with their political views.

BITTERSWEET= Half the cast dies

POIGNANT= All of the cast dies

GRACEFUL= See STATELY

DRY= Same as STATELY but with no dirty parts

TENDER= Lots of pointless staring

REWARDING= Nothing happens for the first three hours

UNIQUE VISION= Historically inaccurate

OVERRATED= Everyone likes it but them

SADLY NEGLECTED= Bombed in the theaters

FORGOTTEN MASTERPIECE= A movie no one else wants to see by a director no one has ever heard of on a subject everyone wants to avoid.

BRITISH RESTRAINT= A derogatory term that means the lovely heroine remains fully clothed throughout the entire movie. (GASP!)

SUBTLE COMEDY= Not funny

[Vidamonte]

Could this have been Orson's F-for Fake 2?
It would have been nice to know his opinion.

http://www.sirhenryneville.com

[Tony]

In 1988, Douglas Gomery read a fascinating paper at the New York University's conference "Orson Welles: Theatre, Radio, Film", a paper which was printed (or perhaps excerpted) in the book of the conference, the special issue of Persistence of Vision (The Journal of the Film Faculty of the City University of New York) in 1989; in that paper Gomery argued that Welles was not a Hollywood filmmaker who was exiled from the community, but rather a sort of independent who used Hollywood. Jonathan Rosenbaum developed a variation of this idea in his chapter entitled "Orson Welles as Ideological Challenge" which appeared in his book 'Movie Wars' (2000). And Rosenbaum gave credit to Gomery in the section entitled "Welles as an Independent Filmmaker". And more recently, Joseph McBride quotes and discusse Gomery twice in 'What ever Happened to Orson Welles".

So it's interesting to see an idea put forth, then quoted and discussed 12 years later, and then 6 years after that.

Here's a recent little excerpt written for a conference in Austria in 2005, and I think it's a nice little riff on the Gomery idea:

". As an independent artist, he shuttled between Italy, England , Spain, Germany and France, realizing a series of outstanding films with meagre means and the money he earned as an actor: Othello, Mr. Arkadin, The Trial (based on
Kafka) and Chimes at Midnight (revolving around Shakespeare’s Falstaff). Due to his piecemeal work style, many of Welles' projects were never finished, such as his re-interpretation of Don Quixote. Supposedly "minor works", often made for television, were overlooked for a long time or remained inaccessible. Yet it is only the meshing of the various
formats which allows us to comprehend the modernity and complexity of his work, shaped by an all-media approach. Welles’ early experiences with radio plays, for example, were
decisive for his amazing use of film sound, and his stage career determined his choice of material. The ambiguous character of his late work F for Fake, which in a certain sense
represents Welles' last word on the intangibility of his own oeuvre, can already be made out in earlier films like the special trailer for Citizen Kane, as well as in the deceptively
conversational tone of Portrait of Gina. And this is merely one of the threads that can been drawn through the baroque labyrinth of Orson Welles' art ..."

I like this little excerpt very much; particularly these lines:

"...it is only the meshing of the various
formats which allows us to comprehend the modernity and complexity of his work, shaped by an all-media approach."

and:

"...the intangibility of his own oeuvre..."

and:

"...this is merely one of the threads that can been drawn through the baroque labyrinth of Orson Welles' art ..."

A very nice use of language; My guess is that it's by a fellow named Bert Rebhandl, or a writer summing up his idea; here's a blurb which appears above the quote:

"...a new Film Museum publication will be presented on September 1st: "Orson Welles: Genie im Labyrinth" by Bert Rebhandl is the first Welles biography to appear in German for many years. It represents an endeavour to portray Welles as the modern artist par excellence and as a central figure of the "media century".

I wonder how many great ideas and insights to Welles's art are to be found in non-English texts? I know that personally, two of my most treasured are translations: Bazin and Bessy.

Here's the URL:

http://www.filmmuseum.at/jart....e-mode=

The intersting thing about this for me is that Gomery's article is very brief: it runs only 4 1/2 pages, but obviously contains an inportant insight, one which is still percolating almost 20 years later. An interesting aside to this idea is that though Rosenbaum, Rebhandl and McBride have all run with this idea of Welles as always having been an independent from the beginning, Gomery doesn't quite agree:

"I have tried to turn the notion that Hollywood exploited Orson Welles on its head. The common notion would have us believe that Hollywood used Welles and eventually crushed him, whereas I have argued that Welles used Hollywood...only when the system required stable independent producers was Welles forced out. He could not bring films in under budget, could not avoid conflict with the studio managers, and could not produce money-making films. He would struggle in Europe to see if he could make independent films that fit his vision. Hollywood was closed to him."

Obviously, McBride and Rosenbaum wouldn't agree with the latter part of his summary.

:;):

[Harvey Chartrand]

Check out LEAVE US PLAY "WHAT IF?" at ACIDEMIC blogspot:

http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2008/02/le ... at-if.html

You'll be glad you did.

Beautifully written meditation on "creative genius, which comes with thorny, poisoned tentacles attached..."

[K Dobry]

I’ve been re-reading volume 4 of Scott MacDonald’s wonderful (and essential) series A Critical Cinema (made up of interviews with independant and experimental filmmakers like Peter Watkins and Stan Brakhage), and was pleasantly surprised to find several appreciative references to Welles' work that I had forgotten about.
Actually, it’s not so surprising, for, as the late Gary Graver once said in an interview, Welles was “the foremost experimental filmmaker we have in this country.”

Just a couple of the more interesting mentions:

Shirin Neshat:
“In Rapture, I filmed in the fortress city of Essaouira, because this space was a relevant location for my concept.[...]Another reason this fort was attractive to me is that Orson Welles shot some scenes of his Othello there. Orson Welles spent a lot of time in Essaouria; he is very much loved by the local people.”

Stan Brakhage:
“I remember a compelling moment when I saw Orson Welles on the Tom Snyder Tomorrow show, back in the early seventies I think it was, being asked about film, and he said, ‘It has destroyed my life. It has absolutely destroyed my life.’ Of course, he had other things he could do, so I couldn’t say exactly what he says.”

[nextren]

Here are YouTubes of Welles and "The Magic Show," with other material thrown in.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=orson+magic+show&search_type=&aq=f

Magical!

[Kane76]

Just looking though my rack and I've got:

Mr. Arkadin, The Criterion Collection set, which I just got a couple of months ago for $19.99 and worth it;

Othello, Beatrice's version. Thank God, I still have the laserdisc;

Macbeth;

Lady From Shanghai;

Citizen Kane;

Magnificent Ambersons (the French version);

It's All True;

various public domains of The Stranger and The Trial;

Touch of Evil (the new set and the previously released DVD;

F for Fake;

Chimes at Midnight (Oh how I wish this were given a great transfer);

and yes, I have a European release of the Franco cut of Don Quixote and a dub on DVD of The Fountain of Youth.

On laserdisc, I have:
Magnificent Ambersons, the singular reason I bought a laserdisc player;
Citizen Kane;
Othello;
Macbeth;
Confidential Report;
Working with Welles;
AFI Tribute to Welles.

So, what am I missing and where can I get it?

[Harvey Chartrand]

Does anyone out there in Wellesland have any more information on this?

THE LOVE OF D'ANNUNZIO AND DUSE (1952)
Orson Welles wrote this screenplay for Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin.

Welles, who also wanted to direct the film, described the project as a story about two crazy monsters in degenerate hyper-romanticism, with a ridiculous and theatrical passion.

Neither Chaplin or Garbo wanted to do it.

SOURCE: GARBO by Barry Paris

[Harvey Chartrand]

Hollywood on the Tiber (from Variety, Sept. 24/09)

(Documentary -- Italy) A Cinecitta Luce, Studio Universal presentation and production. (International sales: Cinecitta Luce, Rome.) Produced by Luciano Sovena, Luca Federico Cadura. Directed, written by Marco Spagnoli.

With: Louis Armstrong, Lauren Bacall, Brigitte Bardot, Ingrid Bergman, Ernest Borgnine, Claudia Cardinale, Charlie Chaplin, Joan Collins, Sean Connery, Tony Curtis, Salvador Dali, Bette Davis, Dino De Laurentiis, Vittorio De Sica, Walt Disney, Ella Fitzgerald, Audrey Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, Charlton Heston, Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Sophia Loren, Frank Sinatra, Alberto Sordi, Gloria Swanson, Elizabeth Taylor, Alida Valli, Monica Vitti, Orson Welles.
Narrator: Daniela Cavallini.

By BOYD VAN HOEIJ
Italo docu "Hollywood on the Tiber," by journo-turned-helmer Marco Spagnoli, plays more like a DVD special feature than a proper documentary. Nominally looking at the influx of filmmaking Yanks in the Italian capital in the '50s and '60s, the, pic is largely reduced to showing pretty pictures of familiar faces set to a loud, eclectic soundtrack, with the v.o. narration, in headache-inducing run-on sentences, offering little guidance. Pic's best bet is as film-channel filler.

[Wellesnet]

FROM WELLESNET FACEBOOK:

Thanks to Seth Alexander Thevoz for bringing this article to Wellesnet's attention!

http://theibtaurisblog.com/2012/08/30/o ... 1947-1970/

[jrosenbaum2002]

Please go to jonathanrosenbaum.net in the future and change your bookmarks accordingly. Thanks, Jonathan

[Wellesnet]

http://diaboliquemagazine.com/episode-n ... lo-f-fake/

[Wellesnet]

Tony Williams on his OW film class at Southern Illinois University. Sounds like a great class:
http://www.wellesnet.com/teaching-orson-welles/