I wouldn’t call it absolutely “essential” like Citizen Kane or Touch of Evil but I think his part in the 3rd Man is rather brilliant. Not his film but of interest for his acting career.
Yeah I’ve seen that one too. For awhile there I actually thought it was his film. 3rd Man is essential viewing under any circumstances though.
True enough! Was just thinking in terms of your original basis of the thread for Orson though.
F FOR FAKE.
Please see it ASAP if you have not. Everybody. I only saw it around age 27…because nobody had screamed at me, “THIS IS THE BEST, MOST AMAZING, MOST INSANE ORSON WELLES FILM OF ALL!!!!!” Hopefully I can remedy this from now on. No, really…the extreme extents to which voice-over narration ties together completely disparate visual elements into a cohesive story is AWE-INSPIRING. Welles’ ultimate exercise in cinema-as-sleight-of-hand and his ultimate demonstration about the power (and pitfalls) of media to hold us in its thrall (see also: WAR OF THE WORLDS, CITIZEN KANE).
i just got magnifecent ambersons in the mail from amazon and i’m watching it for the first time… on vhs, unfortunately, but so far it’s in perfect condition…
the weird thing is how faithful it is to the book, which i read a few months ago. a LOT of the same lines and dialogue
I personally enjoy all of his Shakespeare work that he completed.
Othello, Macbeth, Chimes at Midnight (which is a mixture of several plays)
I enjoy these because they feel to be some of his most personal … this was after he was blacklisted and had trouble gathering funding in the US so he went over to Europe but still had trouble gathering funding … they’re orson welles doing “indie films” basically … funding out of his own pocket from acting jobs and a few other producers in europe but not much … also Chimes is his own personal favorite of his.
I quite agree with Ben Simington about “F For Fake.” It has in fact become my favorite Welles film. His TV film “The Fountain of Youth” is also teriffic, and “The Immortal Story” ain’t chpped liver either.
“Chimes at Midnight” and “Othello” are the best of his Shakespeare films. The battle of Shrewsbury in the former is one of the greatest action sequences ANYONE has ever done — and I’m looking at you, Akira Kurosawa.
“F for Fake” is the only film I know where a singular revolutionary film visionary makes a film in the style of another singular revolutionary film visionary. It is Welles doing Godard.
Frankly, all of ’em.
F for Fake, sure, but The Trial is my favourite of his. Chimes at Midnight is also wonderful.
After you’ve seen all that, check out Mr. Arkadin – it’s extremely flawed, but very intriguing.
“The Stranger” and especially “The Lady from Shanghai” are excellent noirs, with “Shanghai” having one of the most visually provocative climaxes in the history of the genre. He only has, by my count, 12 finished films (one of them under an hour), so you might as well, as Parks said, see em all.
as a joke. Transformers :D
He did a voice in it. How sad that was among his last output :( Even with fond memories of the animated film and transformers in general from my childhood it has not aged well.
I would say The Third Man. It was the first film I ever saw by Orson Welles and one the films that got me interested in cinema in general. I thought the photography in that movie was great. Orson Welles is also an actor in the film and either way, you can watch the film just for the Cuckoo Clock speech.
Welles didn’t direct The Third Man. Carol Reed did. He was just an actor in it. Great, great movie, though.
Welles is rumored to have contributed to the dialog in a few scenes of THE THIRD MAN, however. iirc, the scene at the amusement park with Holly Martins, where he add this line…
“You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
I also wonder where the inspiration came for all the skewed shots. Sure looks Wellesian to me.
and to be fair, the little cuckoo clock speech is not Orson’s creation, it’s from another source. It was his idea to include it in the film.
And Welles own skewed shots came from German Expressionism.
Rodney, please pass along more info about the Godard’s you felt most influenced F FOR FAKE…I’ve yet to click with any particular Godard flic, but these are obviously the ones I want to see.
I couldn’t point to one Godard film in particular — it’s just that the whole cross-cutting style of F for Fake has that same sort of rambling, improvisational feel: here’s this strand, now here’s this, and hey, over here, is this, which leads us back to that. I greatly liked F for Fake in that it seemed to achieve this kind of random stream of consciousness narrative flow without being incoherent. It also seemed to me an answer to his own critics: the ones who hailed him as a genius and then decided he was overrated, because one of the points the movie made over and over is that just as people are easy to fool, so too are professional art experts. He was far more on the side of Emile de Hoyer than on the critics who were hoodwinked.
Also, although it seemed to me very Godardian, it is also exceptionally Wellesian, especially in the final reel, where he is circling Oja as she tells her story. It had a real “Lady from Shanghai” feel to it in tone, mood and staging.
The Lady From Shanghai
F for Fake would be tops for me followed by Chimes at Midnight.
F for Fake.
I would really add nothing that has not already been said. A truly amazing piece of work that is great on so many different levels.
The only negative discourse that I am perceiving is that he “borrowed” too much from other sources. Is this not one of the main points of this film? The message of fakery is thus also in its delivery.
I have not studied film as some here may, I am only expressing how I see it as a casual viewer.
Whoops, double post
Smokeypsd, where did the cuckoo clock speech originate?
Not a single mention of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS? Butchered as it is, it is most impressive on every level.
BLACK MAGIC (1949) is a great Welles starring role. He plays Count Cagliostro in it. He’s not credited as director or writer, but IMDB insists he was a director (uncredited) on it. It sure plays like a Welles creation.
And if you like that speech in THE THIRD MAN, you should check out PRINCE OF FOXES (1949), shot in Italy, in which Welles actually plays Cesare Borgia.
(Wow—THIRD MAN, PRINCE OF FOXES and BLACK MAGIC— all 1949! What a year for him.)
I’ll also recommend LADY FROM SHANGHAI. A rare major studio release that was almost experimental in its visual audacity and the way it uses the studio’s biggest star at the time, Rita Hayworth. Studio head Harry Cohn was furious at Welles. Meanwhile, we’ve forgotten all the films that Cohn was happy about at the time. LADY’s got a pulp story, but it’s told in such a wild and original way that it never gets tired. Just like TOUCH OF EVIL.
That’s what’s so teriffic about Welles, Vic. He was a genuinely innovative entertainer — but he was an entertainer first and foremost. “Touch of Evil” and “Lady From Shanghai” are thrillers — and so is “Kane” in some ways. Though he dies ofnatural causes, the plot proceeds as if Thompson were trying to find out who killed him.
The Trial first and foremost for the amzing sense of claustrophobia and helplessness realized and the fact that most of the adr recording is Welles filling in for several of the other actors. F for Fake second because of the reasons already listed.
Honestly, I believe Chimes at Midnight is more essential than Touch of Evil, simply because it’s the best Shakespeare film adaptation of all time. It’s incredibly exciting and paints the tragedy of the Falstaff character remarkably well. The acting ensemble easily trumps Citizen Kane’s and the cinematography and art direction are some of the finest of the 60s.
I’d say Chimes at Midnight because it’s a seamless marriage of Welles & William, two giants of stage & screen.
Hidden Behind the Screen
Be sure to include the “why?” part.
Also any idea where someone can see the original Welle’s film Magnificent Ambersons?