The Cabinet of Dr. Orsigari - Influences

[catbuglah]

P.S. I just realized that Glenn was paraphrasing, (Glenn has his own views, which is fine, cool, no prob) not a direct Welles quote - so to rephrase - the impression I get from Tony's quote and in general is that when Welles denies something in such a colorfully blunt manner, then the question is actually touching too close to home, as it were, so the response is more side-stepping than literal.

[Tony]

Monsieur Cat:

Very interesting idea: "too close to home" AKA "protesteth too much". My quote is a paraphrase too, though. I looked it up yesterday in "This is Orson Welles" under "symbolism", believe it or not (thanks Mr. Rosenbaum!) and the first page cited is a very nice quote: he says "I hate it" and he says a director should never think about it, but it's always there, as it is in life, so people will find it if they look, justifying both my and Glenn's postion (a rare thing, believe me)

:;):

[Glenn Anders]

Excellent!

Glenn

[catbuglah]

It's a good quote - there are quite a bit of pithy Welles phrases on art and aesthetics in that book, scattered about, here and there.

[Tony]

Neil Young wrote a song about Welles once, with a great line:

"You're just pithy in the Wind"

[catbuglah]

...and maybe Marlon Brando
would be there by the fire
to sit and talk of Hollywood
and the good things there
for hire...

[macchia]

very interesting

[catbuglah]

Thanky kindly, good sirrah - and a hearty welcome aboard to ye.

[catbuglah]

Tony wrote

I don't recall him speaking about this, though; however there are Wellsian shots, and in particular one stunning shot of the camera dollying up to Saul standing beside a column with that metaphysical vibrating, just as it dollies up to Othello as he makes his decision to kill Desdemona.

I grabbed a batch of column shots from David and Goliath & Othello. I didn't make any concerted effort to find specific correspondences between films. But I think there are a few striking similarities, so I did line them up so #'s 1 to 8 are roughly similar to the corresponding #'s 1 to 8 in Othello. The shot Tony describes, I think corresponds to Othello #1, as the camera zooms in for a close-up of Othello in this shot.

Gothello