Favorite Welles' films? - Lay it down, yo!

[nextren]

Fascinating to learn that the rediscovered longer MB may not have been the release cut. Callow, I blame you for my error!

Lance, the second, shorter version released to theatres in the early '50s (and seen for decades as the definitive version of the film) is IMO easier to understand. But the longer version is richer, and my favorite. Both films IMO are let down by their Macduff and Malcolm, who pose no counterweight to Welles's Macbeth and make the last half of the film(s) a bit dull at times.

Welles wasn't completely satisfied with MB. So maybe we can divide his films into two categories: those he liked, and those he didn't?

And what will happen to all our lists and figurings, when TOSOTW comes out in, er, 2010?

[Terry]

The short version of Macbeth, with the opening narration, is the Welles-approved studio-compromise release version and is quite hard to find (though every now and then I see it available on DVD in France for a day or two.)

The long version is either the Welles-approved rough cut or preview cut, or a reconstruction of same done by the Folger Shakespeare Library (when they weren't drinking coffee.)

Both are good versions of the film, and I found I enjoyed the shorter one more, for whatever reason (though my print of it is quite poor, and thanks again to the long-lost Mteal for sharing that.)

But I'm the guy who thinks Falstaff would be better less twenty minutes (goodbye Shallow and Silence recruiting scene from the first half and I haven't decided what from the second.) Why? Pacing, primarily. Chimes gallops along until it bogs down in quicksand, and that's no place for a film to be. And no screeching cockatiel with a transparent eye to "wake 'em up" either.

If TOSOTW is released, of course there will be mixed feelings about it. I'll be hesitant about the new PB footage for the opening or frame, fascinated by the Welles footage, and focused like "Bill Clinton on the economy" on the editing to see if I can discern the new splices from the 1970s ones done by Welles.

Its brothers, sisters, or transgenders will be the other reconstructed unreleased films, the likes of Don Quijote (ouch,) It's All True (gawd, but "Four Men on a Raft" is gorgeous,) and the many projects headed by Stefan (all of which I've enjoyed, or the generous portion I've seen at least.)

That's not bad company.

Others will say "crap reconstruction of crap original film," after which with freshly vented spleen they may go have a nice nap.

A Callow error? There were a lot of them in his second book Hello Americans, which is why I didn't finish reading it. It should have a place on my Welles shelf though, seeing as two Higgam books lurk there already (no David Thomson however; there I draw the line.)


Terry

[ToddBaesen]

___

Here is what Welles told Andre Bazin in 1958 about the films he had final cut over. This statement, quite obviously means Welles felt he did not consider any film he made after CITIZEN KANE (including MACBETH) a movie he had final control over, with the sole exception of OTHELLO.

Now, interestingly enough, after TOUCH OF EVIL -- Welles's last major studio film -- he basically went completely and totally independent, which presumably is why Welles managed to keep control over the editing of the last four films he managed to bring to fruition.
___

Q: You made TOUCH OF EVIL because nothing else turned up?

WELLES: It was my eighth film! You know, I've been working for seventeen years, I've directed eight films and I've only controlled the editing for three of them.

Q: CITIZEN KANE and...?

WELLES: OTHELLO and DON QUIXOTE, in seventeen years!

Q: What about THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI?

WELLES: No, not the final cut. My editing style is still discernible, but the final version of the film is not at all mine. Films are always violently ripped from my hands.

[Roger Ryan]

That's odd that Welles would mention DON QUIXOTE as a film where he had control of the editing since, in 1958, he had only begun shooting footage for it a year earlier and probably hadn't edited much of it at all when the interview took place. Ironically, Welles would lose control of this film's editing as well when Jess Franco took over in the early 90s!

In "This Is Orson Welles", Welles comments on the editing of MACBETH: "Then they asked me to take out two reels and I did - but I cut out the two reels, they didn't. I thought they shouldn't have been cut out, but I'm the one who cut it. Not some idiot back at home."

While Welles clearly preferred the longer cut of MACBETH, he did the cutting himself (or provided the editing notes) for the shortened version. However, it's easy to understand that Welles would see this circumstance as "losing control of the editing" since he followed through on studio orders against his better judgement. With the long version out of circulation for most of Welles' life, MACBETH was classified as a film tampered with by the studio. These days, however, I think it would be appropriate to consider the long version of MACBETH to be one of the films that Welles had total control over.

[Terry]

Joseph McBride wrote that the full-length Macbeth was released, had a bad response, was subsequently pulled, and recut, with Welles returning to America to record his dubbing (and probably do finishing touches.) McBride also wrote that the 1970s version was restored with the help of Richard Wilson (and not Welles?)

It's worth noting that when the It's All True footage resurfaced in the 1980s, Welles passed on involving himself with it.

Didn't Welles lament that once his films were in the can they were dead and he couldn't make changes to them? Odd that he'd pass on any opportunities to do just that.

[Glenn Anders]

My memory of the time is that Republic objected primarily to Welles having his actors speak in Broad Scots, which was actually most innovative and interesting. Republic just thought audiences would have enough trouble handling Elizabethan English and Shakespearian blank verse, etc, and so they had him cut and redub the film. The restored version returns the Broad Scots.

Glenn

[Terry]

The other factor was that it was released opposite Olivier's Hamlet, which is as gorgeous as it is accessible. Welles' challenging experiment didn't need that apple to its orange.

But were his films not so dense, oblique and eccentric, we wouldn't be rewatching them decade after decade .


Terry

[A Sled in Flames]

12) The Immortal Story
11) The Stranger
10) F for Fake
9) Macbeth
Mr. Arkadin
7) Othello
6) The Lady from Shanghai
5) Touch of Evil
4) The Trial
3) Citizen Kane
2) Chimes at Midnight
1) The Magnificent Ambersons