Orson Welles

Soured on life, Mr. Clay decides to play games with the lives of others. He decides to make the “immortal” legend of a sailor seducing a rich man’s wife come true and even picks the sailor himself…Read More »

In 1975, the American Film Institute bestowed upon Orson Welles their third Lifetime Achievement Award. (The first went to John Ford and the second to James Cagney.) This program, which originally aired on CBS, features a host of actors and other celebrities — Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, Joseph Cotton and Charlton Heston — who pay tribute to Welles’ brilliant but tumultuous career.

Throughout the night, many different people speak about the filmmaking contributions Welles made throughout his career, and clips from many of Welles’ films — Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil, Falstaff etc. — are shown. It’s rumored that Welles didn’t want to show up unless the AFI would let him show some clips from his then in-production but now-incomplete film, The Other Side of the Wind, so the AFI indulged him and let him show a few clips. (The last screen grab is from one of the film’s scenes.)

For Welles fans, this is a must-see event, as it’s great to see him honored by so many of his colleagues.Read More »

Citizen Kane is a 1941 mystery/drama film released by RKO Pictures, the first feature film directed by Orson Welles. It tells the fictional story of Charles Foster Kane, a man whose fight for power in the publishing world transformed from sheer thrill-seeking to ruthless war, and how his life affected everyone in his orbit. The storyline follows a reporter seeking to find what Kane meant by his dying word: “Rosebud.”

The film’s main character, Kane, is a composite of several historical individuals: newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst; the reclusive aerospace and movie mogul Howard Hughes; and the Chicago utilities magnate Samuel Insull. Citizen Kane is widely considered to be a masterpiece by critics and viewers alike, and is often cited as being one of the greatest and most innovative works in the history of film.Read More »

Probably the best interview with a film director ever.
“This is one of the finest, if not the finest, documentary on Welles’ career. What makes this stand out from the rest is the huge amount of interview footage that shows Welles to be good-natured, open, and incredibly funny. He has lots of great stories about his career (one which involves him attending a party for L.B. Mayer with a rabbit in his pocket – absolutely hilarious) and each one is a joy.

The documentary skips around his career a bit, breaking his career up not chronologically but more by sections of films he directed and films he appeared in. It will make you want to go out and see them all again, and even hunt up the rare ones like “The Immortal Story”.

Also included are good interviews with Charleton Heston, Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau & John Huston. By the way, did you know that Welles turned down a role in “Caligula”? There are more juicy tidbits to be heard.

I don’t believe that this title is available on video in this country (I may be wrong), but it does play from time to time on television. Seek it out! “(imdb)Read More »