Welles and Alexander Nevsky's Big Sky - A stylistic connection

[Sir Bygber Brown]

I was just watching Alexander Nevsky (1938 - three years before Kane, and thus presaging the entire body of work of Welles) the other day, and couldn't help noticing Eisenstein's recurring composition of a figure or line of figures down the bottom of the frame, with a massive sky filling the rest of the frame - and couldn't help thinking of Welles, particularly in Othello and Chimes.

Perhaps for both men it was a practical matter - if you shoot that much sky, you can compensate for your lack of a sizeable army/or sets in the case of the opening sequence of Othello. But it is so beautiful in all three movies, that i figured that it had to be primarily a stylistic choice. Had anyone else noticed this big sky composition, and the connection with Welles?

[Ecnerwal]

The same technique is used by Alexander Dovzhenko, another Russian director, even earlier, particularly in Arsenal (1929) and Earth (1930). Here the technique is even more extreme, with only the top half of people's bodies visible a lot of the time. Again it is wonderfully beautiful, particularly in Earth. For Dovzhenko it certainly wasn't a practical problem, since in one scene it is only of one man running through fields.

I have noticed many similarities between Welles's style and that of early Russians, particularly Eisenstein - the montage, the lighting and the positioning of characters at the edge of the frame seem the most obvious example. It would interesting to know whether Orson had seen many Russian films, or simply invented the techniques himself.

[Glenn Anders]

You see it very clearly in what we have of IT'S ALL TRUE.

Glenn

[Sir Bygber Brown]

I haven't noticed it as much in Ivan the Terrible or Battleship Potemkin, but i noticed it in the stills from Eisenstein's uncompleted pastoral film Bezhin Meadow (on the Criterion Nevsky DVD) - the prominent objects, the focus of the shot, are in the very bottom of the shot.

[R Kadin]

In contrast to the Soviet directors cited, Welles is likely to be more remembered for his use of sets than for his exteriors - notwithstanding some noteworthy exceptions.

[andrej]

I agree with Sir Bygber Brown about the stilistic choice in Othello and that not in opposition to Eisenstein of course.

I want to add a little narration, reported to me by Oberdan Trojani. He told me, during an interview, that they were together in Mogador, shooting a scene of Othello, when arrived on the set the bad new that Sergej Eisenstein was dead. Welles was terribly struck by that, and after a little while he ordered to stop the shooting, because he wasn't able to go on. He felt guilty to have replied to Eisenstein (it seems they have a lasting mail) something he would tell in a better way.. .

[Glenn Anders]

Interesting, andrej. Welles had written a quite scathing public criticism of IVAN THE TERRIBLE (Part 2, I think). Eiesenstein died two years later, in 1948, just as Welles was starting on on OTHELLO, I imagine.

Glenn