Orson Welles

George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) is generally considered one of Hollywood's greatest directors, as well as a fine actor, broadcaster and screenwriter. His first feature film, Citizen Kane (1941), is universally acknowledged as an important step in the history of cinema and widely cited by critics as among the best films ever made.

Welles after Hollywood

Frustrated by his experience with the studio system, Welles left Hollywood in 1948. The following year, he made a notable appearance in front of the camera. In Graham Greene's The Third Man, Welles (as Harry Lime) gave the infamous "Cuckoo Clock" speech. 'In Italy for 30 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 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.' This is the only piece of dialogue in the film which Greene himself did not write: Welles penned it himself and insisted that it be put in. Greene is reputed to have hated it (possibly because the cuckoo clock was not, in fact, a Swiss invention).

Related Topics:
1948 - Graham Greene - The Third Man - Harry Lime

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From 1949 to 1952, Welles made a remarkable Othello, filming the entire work on location in Europe and Morocco. The film was not well received, partly because the dubbing after the fact was very poor. In 1992, this film was restored from a nitrate negative that had been feared lost. The entire score was rerecorded, and the result is a powerful rendition that belies the usual view that Welles had lost his touch. He made a virtue of the choppiness due to having no chance to fill holes in the studio after filming on location. The cinemetography is remarkable, and the entire effect gripping.

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Barring a brief return in 1958 to make Touch of Evil (which was also butchered by the studio, but has since been restored to something close to Welles' vision), the rest of Welles' directorial career was spent in Europe, his films self-financed with acting fees or, later, funded by sympathetic producers. On almost all of these projects he retained final cut, but the independence thus gained also resulted in drastically reduced budgets and technical facilities. Despite such setbacks, some of Welles' best work was produced during this period. He was an aficionado of stage magic and often appeared at Hollywood's Magic Castle. He even did TV, performing a few tricks with Lucille Ball as his assistant in an episode of I Love Lucy. In his later years, when his weight had ballooned, he appeared in a sketch on Johnny Carson's show, playing an extremely heavy and tyrannical king not unlike Henry VIII.

Related Topics:
1958 - Touch of Evil - Stage magic - Lucille Ball - Johnny Carson - Henry VIII

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Welles starred in many of his films and wrote the scripts, often using the talents of the Mercury Theatre. These included several stories from English literature, such as Macbeth (1948), Jane Eyre (which he produced uncredited, and in which he appeared opposite Joan Fontaine), and Chimes at Midnight (1965), an underrated classic in which Welles played Falstaff.

Related Topics:
Macbeth - 1948 - Jane Eyre - Joan Fontaine - Chimes at Midnight - 1965 - Falstaff

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