Orson Welles (1915 - 1985)
If
Orson Welles had only made Citizen Kane (1941) his place among the
great directors of film history would be secure. He never quite matched
Kane but continued working as a maverick in the US and Europe
struggling for the rest of his life to raise funds for the films he
wanted to direct, often acting to pay the bills.
Perhaps it was the fact that he had made a lot of enemies in Hollywood
after Citizen Kane (1941) was revealed to be thinly veiled portrait of
William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper tycoon with plenty of power back
then. Before this Welles had been widely acclaimed and given complete
freedom to make his first film any way he wanted, the notoriety of the
War of the Worlds broadcast which caused such panic made him a
household name. The freedom remained for Welles' second feature The
Magnificent Ambersons (1942) but somehow the honeymoon period was over.
It is a very good film till near the end when studio interference
pretty much ruins it. The botched editing job took place while Welles
was out of the country filming his third feature, a documentary which
was never released.
So by the end of 1942 Welles was reduced mainly to acting jobs in
Hollywood. He was a fine actor in films like Journey to Fear (1942)
(supposedly partly directed by him, it certainly has many Wellesian
touches) and Jane Eyre (1944). Later in the decade he was employed by
Harry Cohn at Columbia to direct their biggest star Rita Hayworth (also
Orson's wife for a time) in The Lady from Shanghai (1948), again the
studio interfered with Welles' vision. He wasn't to work in Hollywood
again for about a decade.
After a great acting turn as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's brilliant The
Third Man (1949) Welles worked on a few intermittent directorial
efforts in the Fifties and Sixties including Confidential Report (aka
Mr Arkadin) (1955), The Trial (1961) and Chimes At Midnight (1966)
probably the best of his attempts to bring Shakespeare to the screen.
His last important Hollywood film was Touch of Evil (1958) a very dark
film noir which is probably his best work outside Kane, his last
released feature was F for Fake (1973). Welles was the ultimate
maverick director but he was certainly no spendthrift just somebody who
didn't really fit into the system.
Written content copyright Derek McLellan,2005.
Copyright © The Fedora Chronicles
Orson Welles image from
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