Scene from "L'Uomo, La Bestia e La Virtù"

[Le Chiffre]

Here's a scene from the 1951 Italian film "L'Uomo, La Bestia e La Virtù", which translates as "The Man, The Beast, and Virtue". Welles plays the Beast, a Sea Captain. It's based on a play by Luigi Pirandello, and as far as I know, there is no English language version. Welles here is dubbed by an Italian actor. I thought I read in one of the Welles books that this was a lost film, so it's good to know it at least still exists. Whether it's a good film or not is pretty hard to judge without subtitles, though:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 313873656#

[ToddBaesen]

Quite a rare find, Mike!

Apparently, this film was released in the US by Paramount in 1953 as MAN, BEAST AND VIRTUE. Obviously one of the many projects Welles did as an actor while he was filming OTHELLO in Italy. It was directed by Steno, and featured the Italian comedian Toto, who both would go on to work with Christopher Lee on the vampire comedy, MY UNCLE WAS A VAMPIRE (1962). What I find interesting about this clip, though, is that Welles is dressed in the costume and beard he would don a few years later for his own film, when he played Gregory Arkadin!

[Roger Ryan]

Thanks for sharing! You usually don't get to see Welles moving quickly around a set in this manner; in his own films, Welles would often have the camera tracking with him and from a low angle so you wouldn't see his feet. Look closely and you'll notice that Welles' false beard changes color and density on some of the close-ups!

[Le Chiffre]

You're right about that beard, Roger; Welles's closeups must have been filmed later. A couple of them do look like they could have come straight out of Arkadin, particularly the one of Welles getting his cigar lit. It makes me wonder if Welles didn’t have a hand in the direction of those shots. He was known to often direct his own scenes in other people’s movies.

Very interesting Todd, that the film was released in America. If so, was it an English-language dub or a subtitled version? If it was the dub, was that dubbed version done by Welles himself? We know from the Peter Bogdanovich book that Welles raised money around that time by creating English language versions of Italian films. Why not this one?

An additional note on Pirandello: According to Bret Wood’s Bio-bibliography, Welles also wanted to make a film of Pirandello’s HENRY IV, one of two Pirandello plays (the other being SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR) that are considered icons of surrealist theatre. The film never came to fruition, but may have had an influence on the surrealist aspects of both MOBY DICK REHEARSED and DON QUIXOTE, which the title character in HENRY IV bears some resemblance to in his mad delusion of being a figure out of the past.

[DexyMan]

It appears that the whole movie is available through that website, I'd be fine with Welles's voice dubbed if there were subtitles available since I believe Italian is the language the movie was shot in.

On a somewhat related note, I typed Oedipus the King into the google video search engine and found that movie is available in it's entirety through youtube. It was pretty interesting and nice to cross another one of the ole list.

[Le Chiffre]

Thanks for the tip on Oedipus, DexyMan. I'm about halfway through it, and although I'm not that crazy about it so far, I'm glad to have the opportunity to finally see it. And it may not be fair to judge it from Youtube. Hopefully a video release will come along sometime.

[Honest Iago]

There's quite a bit of information about the shooting of "L'Uomo, La Bestia e La Virtù" in the book Orson Welles in Italia. I don't have it at hand, but a few things I remember reading:

Angelo Francesco Lavagnino did the music, and as a sort of in-joke, included some musical allusions to his Othello score when Welles' character appears on screen.

Sergio Leone and (according to imdb) Lucio Fulci worked as assistant directors.

This was apparently one of the jobs Welles took only to earn some money, and his contract stipulated that he be paid for each day of work, with no actual limit on the amount of days. He supposedly tried to draw out the shooting by causing little delays: messing up his make-up and beard, etc..., so as to earn as much as possible. I suppose it was a somewhat similar situation to the one he worked out for David and Goliath years later.
Finally, the producers informed him they wouldn't pay him anymore, so he stormed off the set. The rest of the scenes were reportedly modified to either eliminate his presence, or else filmed using long shots with a double. According to the Welles in Italia book, he left a farewell note complimenting the crew but cursing out the producers.

The book also mentions that at one point during production there was a hiatus, so Welles made a deal with the producers: instead of giving him his normal salary during those days, the producers would lend him the film crew to work on a project he was preparing. The scenes they shot were eventually used in the pier scene shoot-out in Mr. Arkadin.
I'm not sure if this is mentioned in Orson Welles in Italia, but supposedly Sergio Leone reported that the actor who had to run in front of the train (the peg-leg guy, I suppose), was afraid that Welles was going to get him killed by doing such stunts.

[Lance Morrison]

Wow, thanks for all that fantastic info Honest Iago. It's great to think that Welles leaving early forced them into the kinds of filming and editing trickery that became so common in his own work. I also had no idea that Leone had any Welles experiences -- two men that knew how to block and edit a compelling scene better than just about anyone.

[Le Chiffre]

And Lavagnino having done the score is yet another reason to want to see it right there. Too bad the Orson Welles in Italy book hasn't been translated into English. Sounds like a good one.

[Wellesnet]

Complete film on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOLdfi8RA58

Here is an excerpt from "Understanding Pirandello" by Fiora Basssanese, which discusses Pirandello's original 1919 play:

Like any standard farce, the plot is characterized by visual humour and sudden complications. Nothing in the storyline is presented very seriously, although the situation is serious indeed and could move toward tragic as well as comic resolution.

The Virtuous wife has been impregnated by the tutor and the apathetic husband must be made to respond to her sexually before departing on another journey so that the child will be considered his. The situation is further complicated by the Captain's arrangements. A lecher, he keeps a concubine and second family elsewhere while pursuing available women in every port. His visits home have become a means of obtaining a welcome sexual lull. The tutor, as the brains of the operation, concocts a series of stratagems: an aphrodisiac is baked into a cake, the wife is made up to resemble a harlot that's appealing to her husband's lower nature. Flower pots are to be placed on the balcony as signals of success.

In one memorable scene at the end of Act 2, the presumed identity of the main protagonist is captured in an ironic tableaux: the wife assumes the pose of the Virgin annunciate, her lover that of the Archangel Gabriel, holding out a potted Lily. In visual language, Pirandello has defined the lover's perception of his beloved: virginal in her maternity, pure in heart, Madonna-like. This contrasts sharply with the painted woman the tutor fabricates to seduce the captain. Of course neither image is valid. What makes this tablet and the whole play Pirandellian is its dichotomous, even duplicitous quality.

The action is filled with deceptions and concealments as roles and poses are manufactured to hide the actual nature of things. Reality and appearance are once again the playwright's central issue. The virginal virtuous wife is unescapably pregnant by a man who is not her husband. The rational ethical lover lectures against hypocrisy but lives it. Preferring a chaste rapport with his spouse, the animalistic husband wants no part of sexuality. Nothing, Pirandello appears to be saying, is really what it seems - at least not on the evidence of mere appearance.

As in all comedies, the ending is a happy one. The baby will be legitimate for the world, including the duped husband, while the lovers can continue their liaison with discretion. But, as always in Pirandello's comic works, there is the hint of a bitter aftertaste. The difference between virtue and bestiality is not clearcut. For all his ethical posturing, the lover as representative man, contains within himself more then a little of the beast.