Welles at the Movies

[Holly Martins]

I was reading "Despite the System" recently and I found it interesting the part where he talked about films that put an influence on him. His Top Ten Films (according to a 1952 Sight and Sound Poll) were:

City Lights (Chaplin)
Greed (von Stroheim)
Intolerance (Griffith)
Nanook of the North (Flaherty)
Shoe Shine (De Sica)
Potemkin (Eisenstein)
La Femme du Boulanger (Pagnol)
Grand Illusion (Renoir)
Stagecoach (Ford)
Our Daily Bread (Vidor)

It is interesting his Top Four were silent (and Shoe Shine was filmed silently). I have started this topic because we often talk about how Welles made the greatest films. But what I really want to know is what did the greatest filmmaker watch. I think that list gives you a very good idea of what he liked, but it is from 1952. What about after that?

I know he didn't like Bergman and had his reservations about Fellini. Also, Peter Bogdanovich said recently Welles had said much of the Hollywood films of the 1970s (the so-called "New Hollywood") were nothing more than remakes of the director's favorate films. I know he often praised John Ford and had his reservations about Hitchcock.

What did he think of Italian Neo-Realism (besides Shoe Shine)? What did he think of the French New Wave? The German New Wave? What about the films of Japan? How did he feel about Kurosawa? Ozu? Mizoguchi? What did he think of Billy Wilder?

I know I am asking a lot but any information at all about what kind of films he watched would be helpful.

[jaime marzol]

what i find so interesting about welles is that his films don't look like the films that influenced him. if you watch mann, or aldrich, you see welles influence. but i find no renoir, chaplin, de sica, stroheim, ford, or griffith in welles. when i watch STAGECOACH i see what influenced welles, but he used it in his on way, he didn't rehash what some other guy did. unlike guys like depalma and speilberg.

i think i remember reading somewhere that welles liked BONNIE & CLYDE. but that might be because he was familiar with beaty and beaty could have done something for his directing career. at times welles' opinions are like a revolving door. but that is cool

[Roger Ryan]

Welles expressed appreciation for Kubrick (although I would imagine he might have found some of Kubrick's work lacking in emotion). He also loved Keaton (In rewatching Welles' introduction to Keaton's "The General", I admired the audacity of his assessment that Keaton's film was "100 times better than 'Gone With The Wind'"). Sticking with the Ks, it's been pointed out that he was an admirer of Kurosawa, whose influence might be seen in the battle of Shrewsbury in "Chimes".

[tonyw]

I think he would have understood why Kubrick downplayed emotion to make his own type of special cinema in much the same way as Welles borrowed elements from Ford and Toland only to mix them up into his own gourmet work of art.

As another mail stated, he was not DePalma or Spielberg, nor certainly that blatant untalented plagiarist Tarantino.

[jaime marzol]

i always thought of the battle of Shrewsbury in "Chimes as 'the third' manifestation. the first being the uncle joe strangle scene in TOUCH OF EVIL, the second being the closet flogging in THE TRIAL. the fourth being F-FOR-FAKE, the fifth being TOSOTW.

will have to see more kurosawa before i can compare the battle scene in CHIMES. to date i have yet to find obvious influences in welles' work with any one else. his stuff, to me, has always been fresh, and original

i'm not that familiar with kurosawa's work, but i saw a documentary where they elaborated on kurosawa's passion for ford's work, and ford's influence on him. then i see leone's work, and i know he was passionate about kurosawa. you can see in THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY flashes of ford, and kurosawa.

[jaime marzol]

"that blatant untalented plagiarist Tarantino"

haaaaaaaaaaaa, i love this.

[Terry]

:D

[tonyw]

Dear Jaimie,

I'm glad you like the comment. It got me blacklisted from one academic film journal by the editor and members of the editorial board who think it "cool" to bow down to what they think is student taste whereas students are often more discerning than these so-called intelligent types.

Last night I finished my Welles class with F FOR FAKE and the students have all immensely enjoyed a class devoted to someone with real talent.

Finally, the CTEQ Annotations of the next sensesofcinema.com due out in January will contain reviews of Welles films that the Melobourne Cinematecue will show in the New Year.

[The Night Man]

As another mail stated, he was not DePalma or Spielberg, nor certainly that blatant untalented plagiarist Tarantino.

I would place DePalma in the same category as Tarantino. Spielberg I would just deem a shameless shallow panderer.

Either way, thank you for pointing out the new emperor's new clothes.

[catbuglah]

Chatty but interesting

[jrs044]

I know he often praised John Ford and had his reservations about Hitchcock.

Bogdanovich says in his commentary on the Lady From Shanghai DVD that Welles liked early Hitchcock.

[Le Chiffre]

Tonight at 2:30 am est (tommorrow morning, technically) TCM is showing Pietro Germi's classic 1961 black comedy DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE, a film that Orson Welles liked very much, judging from this exchange with Peter Bogdanovich:

OW: I think more highly of Lubitsch as the years go by, all the time. Everytime I happen to see anything of his again I see... (undecipherable). Not only that, but there was a sort of spirit that pervaded his films that you can't analyze.

ON DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE:

PB: Really? I only saw it on television.

OW: I've seen it three times. No really, I think it's one of the marvelous comedies of all time.

PB: Recently I saw it on television dubbed, and maybe that...

OW: Oh, it's marvelous in Italian, and such a great script. Peter, it's marvelous. One of the best scripts I've ever seen. It's Lubitsch level of construction.

PB: You know it may have been cut and everything. I'll see it properly.

OW: Marvelous put together as a script. He's enormously talented, Germi. Very underrated man, I think.

PB: Really? I've only seen the...

OW: Very good actor too. Super director, I think. He's made marvelous Westerns and action pictures. Yes, he has a big range as a director. Very much your kind of a director I would say. You know in the tradition of the kind of directors you admire, like Hawks.

PB: I'll have to go see it.

OW: Do see DIVORCE ITALIANO in Italian once. It's a riot, it's so funny.

PB: I will, I will. I do like Mastrianno in that, but I only asked you because I expected you would say he was good.

OW: In fact, it's the only thing I didn't like Mastrianni in. I didn't believe he was Sicilian because they made the mistake of using real Sicilians...

PB: You're trying to trap me.

OW: ...I was trying to trap you...because they had real Sicilians and then they had a Roman actor made up to look like a Sicilian. And you believe him as that until he walked in the street with real Sicilians around him. You wouldn't think there would be that much difference in an Italian-speaking country, but it's enormous. He was as foreign as if he'd been an American or something, when he was in a real street with real people. But when he was alone with the other actors I found him immensely effective. But I like him. I think he's an awfully good actor in those. You say he's a bore, but I think he's awfully good at playing those boring people. Because he is, I think, intrinsically interesting. And if he weren't good he would vanish in those Antonioni things.

[Glenn Anders]

Some very interesting suggestions made here.

I should think that the main "classic" influences on early Welles would have been Eisenstein, F.W. Murnau, G.W. Pabst, and Von Stroheim. That's where his interest in early Hitchcock comes in because Hitchcock, like Ford, went to Germany to study the techniques of German Expressionism. Hitchcock and Welles play catch-up with each other, from the the former's early films on, exchanging techniques, themes, actors, musicians, etc.

The evidence of German Expressionism, to me, seems all over Welles' early films, such as Pabst's handling of women (LULU, DIARY OF A LOST GIRL), and Murnau's dealing with the Devil (FAUST) and presenting old age (THE BLUE ANGEL). That influence blends with Eisenstein later, and then with Brecht's ideas. You can see it very clearly in his handling of Falstaff in CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT.

Ford's German Expressionism, applied to the Western, and films like THE LONG VOYAGE HOME, may have shown Welles ways in which the techniques of one culture might be applied to another. That may be the incongruous meaning of his study of STAGE COACH. And of course, Ford had a "stock company," as did Welles. He would also have liked Ford's successful independence, so unlike that of Griffiths and Von Stroheim.

I would like to suggest that his contemporary influences were, more than the record might suggest, those of Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks. Sturges and Welles would have known each other back east. Both were independents. Both had stock companies. Both had an interest in outre story telling, and mixing ironic humor with serious themes. Welles hung out with Sturges at the latter's club.

Welles hung out with Hawks, too, writing script's on Hawks' yacht, for instance. And one may be sure Hawks gave Welles lots of advice on navigating the jungles of Hollywood, not that Welles followed much of it in a positive sense.

Finally, it has always struck me that, with the exception of Ford, Welles tended to disavow his influences, saying he never saw the films of the older directors; suggesting that it was Bogdanovich who liked Hawks' work, not he; writing a highly critical review of Eisenstein's IVAN THE TERRIBLE (yet, not mentioning that his unseen IT'S ALL TRUE was full of similarities to IVAN . . . and QUE VIVA MEXICO).

In that period, such admissions would have gone against his reputation for having invented the wheel.

We are all influenced by others. What counts is what we do with the influences. Welles was not only a masterful innovator, but also a marvelous assimilator.

Glenn

[Nate H]

I believe Gary Graver made a comment that the film within the film of TOSOTW is a parody of Antonioni, whom Welles did not like

[Le Chiffre]

Yeah, I can kind of see that it is, now that you mention it. It also reminds that when I saw Gary Graver host a showing of THE IMMORTAL STORY some years ago, he told the audience an anecdote about how Welles and friends were having dinner at a near-empty Italian restaurant one night, when in walked Antonioni with an entourage of his own. Welles and Antonioni didn't greet or even acknowledge each other, and Graver said that you could cut the tension in the place with a knife.