MAGICIAN: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles (Chuck Workman/2014)

[Johann]

I'm seeing this film today and will write a review. (My first in Ages)
I'm looking forward to the treasure trove of archive footage, which apparently this film has clips from every single Welles project.
Orson Welles is considered an Enigma, a Genius, a Failure and much more. He was "Some Kind of a Man", and I suspect this documentary will showcase that beautifully. I consider him equal with Stanley Kubrick- he's just as fascinating. He's got quite a different story than Kubrick, but we all know cinema as we know it today would not exist without Orson Welles. Citizen Kane changed the game, raised the stakes, name your praise. The techniques he employed for the first time have been exploited by Hollywood ever since.
The man is not overrated. If you really pay attention, Orson Welles will put a magic spell on you...


www.cohenmedia.net/films/magician

[Johann]

"I BELIEVE IN BRAVERY"- Orson Welles


This film is a fine primer or introduction to the amazing Orson Welles. It could be much much longer than its 90 minutes, but it will serve cinephiles well as a starting point to understanding this man and his legacy. It is told in chapters, from birth to death, and we learn that children were to be seen and not heard during his childhood, and that if they were seen, they had better be saying or doing something interesting. Orson became a showman as a tot. He was a prodigy, putting on shakespearean plays at age 10 (!?)

He mastered radio, as we all know, with his "War of the Worlds" broadcast in 1938, which terrified listeners. Especially when the radio went "dead"- silent. People thought Martians were wreaking havoc!! Police came to the radio station, and Welles states on camera: I didn't go to jail. I went to Hollywood. Hollywood was enamored of the young man. He had made truly "theatrical" plays at The Mercury Theatre. A contemporary says "Orson brought theatricality back to the theatre". His Shakespearean adaptations were revolutionary, and when asked about his fascination with Shakespeare he said "It's always nice to be working on something greater than yourself". He is credited with making the best Shakespearean film ever: Othello. His first foray into filmmaking was Heart of Darkness, an aborted project due to fear from the backers. It was great to see stills of the sets and Orson at work on it- it qualifies as one of the great "lost" films. But his follow up at RKO (the Monolithic Citizen Kane) showed the world that a new Genius has graced the cinema. He was given practically free-reign to make Kane any way he saw fit, a luxury he would never have again. Orson speaks later on saying his films were always great when HE made them, when HE made the creative decisions. His next film The Magnificent Ambersons was taken from him and butchered. Orson says that the best scene in the film was taken out, the whole point of the picture, and he never spoke to Robert Wise again for editing it, right up until his death. Wise speaks in the film: "We did the best we could with it". They took a film from a Master and turned it into any old piece of shit that Hollywood cranks out. The fact that he was sent "As his Patriotic duty" to film Carnival in Rio for Nelson Rockefeller strikes me as a set-up. They gave him a million dollars and sent him to Brazil, to make It's All True. They were horrified when he returned with tons of footage and no money. They were incredulous that he had no script and filmed blacks too much. Rockefeller is a racist, I would say...
Orson was blacklisted. He took work as an actor. He had no choice. He needed money. His first acting gig was Jane Eyre. He is known as a great actor and director, but to me his acting is slightly over-the-top, slightly hammy yet always watchable. ANd he acted in more films than he directed, obviously. One of his wives speaks glowingly about him: "No Kingdom is great enough for Orson", and we learn that he felt being married and having three daughters was an encumbrance. He was not a family man. Most film scholars say that Welles was a failure on many levels. But I don't see that at all. Richard Linklater points out that Orson is the "Patron Saint of Independent Filmmakers", and he is. He is the Ultimate indy filmmaker, if you wanna get down to it. walter Murch and George Lucas speak about how Orson already did what they wanted to do with American Grafitti, they would just employ his same methods- and it worked! Look how long American Grafitti was the highest grossing independent film.
Steven Spielberg speaks as well, telling us that Kane is "one the greatest American experiences at the cinema". Welles speaks about the day Spielberg wanted to buy the Rosebud sled: "I told him: But Steven, we BURNED that sled!"
Martin Scorsese also discusses Welles- his camera moving, etc. Peter Bogdanovich also gets ample screen time- his book and interviews with Orson are essential reading for any film buff. We learn that Roman Polanski wanted to hire Orson but was unsure. He happened to be in an elevator with Orson's wife and he said he was worried Orson would be late to the set, that he'd heard he could be difficult. His wife said "If you are unsure, then don't hire him".


Welles was not only a storyteller- he was a liar. And that was part of his charm! We see clips of interviews where he clearly contradicts himself, telling a whopper. He knew how to hold your attention, Boy. He also ballooned in weight over the years- this man was not on a diet, we're told. A famous chef (Wolfgang Puck?) speaks, marvelling at how Orson would eat, like it was a symphony or something.

Film studios feared him as much as they respected his skills. They didn't trust him. He was known to try to take over a production, asking why you'd put a camera there, why you'd do a scene that way. His directing efforts after Ambersons consist of the awesome TOUCH OF EVIL, Kafka's The Trial , a film with his wife Rita Hayworth (who he praises) The Lady of Shanghai and attempting to make more great Shakespearean films with CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT considered his greatest film post-Kane. (It has no distributer to this day, still in limbo). Clearly he suffered the same fate as Erich von Stroheim, but he had light years more talent than Stroheim, and he actually said he has no regrets over what studios did to him but was disturbed by what they did to directors like Stroheim!. Hollywood basically made Orson into a shadow of his former self, a buffoon, acting in projects he should never have been near: Catch-22, The Muppet Movie, commercials for beef, etc... His main problem (possibly his only problem) was money. Studios demand that your film make money. It's the film business, after all. You want to keep working? Be involved in a film that is financially successful, that hopefully has staying power. Orson's films had staying power, but they hardly made a dime. But he says in voiceover that he was very lucky, and had no real regrets. He died at his writing desk of a heart attack in 1985. He said his body should be cremated, so that he can give something back to this world after taking so much. It was interesting seeing his last interview on camera, hours before he died. His mind was still sharp and witty. He's buried in Spain.

One important thing I learned while watching this is that the film business is cut-throat, and genius is not valued. Then or now.
Great artists will still be shunned, great works of art will still go lost and forgotten or simply unwanted. Hollywood knew what they were doing to Orson, and they didn't care. The FBI was on his ass from the day Kane was released until he died. J. Edgar Hoover was friends with William Randolph Hearst, and they were affronted by this Genius. I say fuck 'em. Hoover was a cross-dressing moron, and Hearst was a soulless animal. Orson Welles was the first punk filmmaker. He was 40 years ahead of everybody. And he took it in stride. He decided to LIVE in the face of such amateurs. And I love him just as much as Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick is mentioned in this doc, that he had unfinished films too, but he never had film in the can with them. Orson did. And we see clips from all of it. The man is important. Possibly the most important film Icon of the 20th Century. But that's open for debate. His films are touchtones, that's for sure.

[Johann]

All of Orson's lost films are discussed, but not in any great depth. Don Quioxte is the big one- it was wild to see even the miniscule footage left from that film. We get a glimpse of what might have been. What's glaring is lesser men ran roughshod over him. That's a fact. Orson is a towering figure. He was treated like a piece of meat, a commodity, even as comic relief- see Billy Crystal and John Candy making fun of Orson in a comedy clip.

These fuckers can't sniff his director's chair. And historically they all look like fucking idiots. Orson has the last laugh.