David Thomson weighs in on the Marc Welles/Kimberly Reed doc

[Tony]

Here's the URL for a David Thomson piece on the documentary I posted about yesterday on the blog. I should add that although the film is mainly about Kimberly, there's also plent of Marc, and Oja is in a segment as well. In addition, there are some paintings shown of Welles that I've never seen before, perhaps by Welles. The kicker is that Marc is the son of Rebecca Welles.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/aug ... rsonwelles

[Terry]

I keep checking archives.cbc.ca for the full program. Hopefully they'll post it.


Terry

[Kane76]

Thomson mentions a new documentary, The Unseen Orson Welles. What is that and who did it?

[Glenn Anders]

Kane76: I rather think that David Thomson is referring to the 2006 documentary, SEARCHING FOR ORSON, brought together by the Croatian Brothers, Dominik and Jakov Sedlar (possibly friends of Oja Kodar?), who devote a small segment to Welles' grandson. The film has never had a proper release, and it is possible that at some point it had the title The Unknown Welles, or that Thomson confused its title with Stefan Droessler's road show of the same name.

You may find details of the documentary below:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0904131/

Don't neglect to read Robert Koehler's review of SEARCHING FOR ORSON in Variety, listed under "external reviews." It, too, contains mention of Welles' grandson, Marc, being featured. The picture, btw, contains an absolutely beautiful and moving love letter from Welles to Ms. Kodar, which she reads at sunset, somewhere on the Dalmatian Coast. She tells us that the letter came to her just a few weeks before Welles' death.

As Thomson, a most renowned commentator on Welles in most civiiized circles, has seen SEARCH FOR ORSON, by whatever title, let's hope the picture will come out soon, at least on DVD!

Glenn

[nextren]

Thomson's writing is generally gorgeous and entertaining and stimulating. But not perfectly factual (whose is?). He has some attitudinals against Welles and on occasion balls things up considerably. (The conclusion of "Rosebud" - the alternative life with Rita - is wrongheaded to the point of absurdity when the actual people involved are given a cold look. His dismissal of the last third of Welles's life as a story not bearing the telling - or the investigating? - grates, too.)

I guess I like to keep poetic fancy separated from forensic biographical inquiry. With a subject as improbable as Welles, this is not easy to do, although IMO Callow strikes a better balance than does Thomson. (Callow tends to be careless but not willfully so; he doesn't seem to have a strong emotional agenda.) Thomson seems not to care a fig about facts whenever there is a "good" story to tell. Which filmmaker does this remind us of?

All that is an explanation of why Thomson remains on my shelf and - remains on my shelf.

He is vastly better than "Higgum," though, who seems simply to have had it out for Welles. I don't find the adult Orson Welles in "Higgum" at all, just an insecure dim bulb dressed in Welles's clothing. ("Higgum's" tracing of Welles's childhood and family seems to be the most valuable part of his work on the great director's life.)

[Christopher]

Just a few facts for the record. Rita Hayworth put her daughter Rebecca's illegitimate child up for adoption. Rita made all the arrangements and Becky never saw her baby. She was then a college student. The father was an alcoholic who later committed suicide and never knew he had had a child with Rebecca. About a year before Becky died, she was contacted by her natural son, Mark McKerrow, who sent her a photograph of himself, his wife and his two children. Already ill with cancer, Becky was not sure how to respond. In any case, Marc and Becky never met and, thankfully, Becky never knew Marc had been in a car accident which had left him with serious brain damage. After she died, her husband invited Marc to the funeral in Tacoma, Washington, and it was there that Marc discovered his grandparents had been Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles. Although Rita had always known of Marc's existence, Welles never did.

[Glenn Anders]

Thanks, Christopher, for the informative rundown, especially the fact that Orson Welles never knew of Marc McKerrew's existence. I don't think I had known that before.

We've been around the tree a few times, nextren, on these various biographers. As for Thomson, your statement, "I like to keep poetic fancy separated from forensic biographical inquiry," is a very defensible position. Having met Thomson a couple of times, having been to that spot he describes at the end of Rosebud, I am more sympathetic to Thomson as a man and as writer. He is by no means the monster Baesen makes him out to be -- Baesen has never read Rosebud, only a review of it -- and I found Thomson very respectful toward Welles. I'd put his Rosebud up against Callow's The Road to Xanadu any day for showing sympathy for our idol. Anyway, I believe your summation of these various biographers to be fair and accurate.

Peter: I agree with you, especially in light of Christopher's information, that the new documentary does not add to our direct knowledge of Welles, but my impression is that the picture is intended to explore Kimberly Reed's odyssey, and that of her family. Welles provides only a peripheral but maybe magical, ironic footnote to their story. The fact that Marc McKerrew had this savant's ability on the piano does add a touch which tempts "poetic fancy." McKerrew, as does Welles, may have an almost mystical part in the whole story.

Perhaps, Terry will come up with a YouTube of one of these documentaries, so we shall all be able to judge the place of Welles' unknown prodigal grandson a little more fairly. I know that I liked SEARCHING FOR ORSON. Baesen and I met the producers at the Tiburon Film Festival, and they claimed that they were making a few changes in the film (perhaps along the lines suggested by the Variety critic), and that it would be "out in the Spring." But, as in close examination of a number of these anecdotes, that prediction was made a couple of years ago.

Glenn

[Terry]

No, I don't see the documentary anywhere online yet, but here's that deleted silent scene from The Trial with added dialogue captions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QSFxfP02kE

[ToddBaesen]

Store:

Many thanks for that link... I've long been wanting to see that Katina Paxinou cut scene, but somehow I never got the French DVD.

What's even more astonishing, is what I think it would add much to the film, if Welles had left it in. To my mind, it's far more interesting that many of the scenes that are in the movie. I'm wondering if Welles simply wanted to cut something to make the film run only two hours. According to Oja Kodar, he didn't want any film to run past that length, which seems rather silly to me...

Now, if only the soundtrack could be found, it could be cut into the film for yet another "alternate Welles version" of one of his films.

[Terry]

That scene works very well with the captions. I never really understood it before. A rather light and silly sequence until the end, which is quite powerful. I think the film would have benefited from its inclusion.

Anyone else notice K runs across the desks with his arm raised the same way that Kane did with the showgirls?

[Tony]

Keats:

I can almost hear you sniffing in disgust.

But here's a suggestion: try reading the piece by Thomson or seeing the documentary in question before you pass your stern judements from on high.

How about it?

[nextren]

This should be under a "The Trial" thread, but anyway...maybe the omitted scene was problematic thematically. The Scientist tells K he will likely commit suicide. That turns the ending of the movie a bit darker, doesn't it? K seems to hold on to that dynamite a little longer than he should, and his laughter is not what you would readily call reassuring! Combined with the earlier prophecy of suicide... Since Welles wanted the ending open - with K neither dying like a beaten dog nor clearly surviving his ordeal - the suicide prophecy would skew things too far in one direction.

The interesting thing is that Welles always struggled a bit with screenwriting - not in terms of situations, dialogue, character, etc., but in construction. The suicide prophecy, if too leading, would be a construction error. (TOE succeeds in spite of its construction; Peter Bogdanovich mentioned his own opinion that Welles was a better director than writer and tells in THIS IS ORSON WELLES how extraordinarily touchy Welles could be about the quality of his original writing; and in FFF, Welles sardonically asks if he is now making "yet another movie with a story rotten with coincidence.") In the quote Mr. French posted in the main page entry, Welles says the prophecy scene is his own original work.

Perhaps when viewing TT as a whole before the release, he spotted the error of putting "suicide" in the audience's mind, and chopped the scene out to avoid this error. It wasn't Kafka's scene, after all - so it could go. In speaking with interviewers about it later, he probably felt he couldn't say, "I screwed up in the writing and cut a scene to keep my intention clear." (Even though such things are done all the time by almost all writer-directors.)

It's a shame he cut that scene, though, because it's good in itself. Might the fanciful, funny, rebellious opening of the scene have become regarded as being as Wellesian and iconic as the TLFS Hall of Mirrors sequence, especially so on the crest of the New Wave?

[Alan Brody]

That's pretty good stuntwork by Perkins in that scene. His first few steps on top of the desks look almost like goosesteps. Whoever put that together did a good job with the dialogue and integrating the surviving sound bit from the trailer.

[Tony]

Keats wrote"There have to be judgments we can make based on writings about film, otherwise nobody would write about film".

I find this...odious. What kind of logic is this? If you haven't seen a film, shouldn't you not pass judgements about it? i.e. clam up?

"As for passing judgment from on high. I'm sitting on the floor right now". More specious logic. I don't care if you live on the floor, as this has nothing to do with the character of your pronouncements.

"But you're right about one thing. Right now I am sniffing in disgust." Well, this sounds pretty condescending to me.

" And here's a suggestion for you: use spell check." More specious logic: correct spelling does not determine the quality of a view.

But thanks for your humour, Keats: you're a funny guy!

[Glenn Anders]

I find keats' advice admirable. Let us stick to facts, at least informed opinion.

[The caveat here is that our neglect of direct citation from a primary souce will probably vitiate our opinions, as in Todd Baesen's fulminations against works he has never actually seen or read. This failing often leads to hurt feelings when one is called to question, and subsequently, unfortunate displays of pecksniffery.]

Let us therefore try to gather more facts or informed opinion about PRODIGAL SONS, beyond the controversial David Thomson's ruminations, since the film itself, despite favorable reviews and evidently widespread audience response, has never found a distributor. Here is a balanced review by a reporter at last year's Telluride Festival:

http://blog.spout.com/2008/08/30/prodig ... ride-2008/

The first entry under Blog Comments is useful, too.

Glenn