St.-Germain-des-Près: Personal Craftsmanship

The best of the series is the one dealing with an intellectual neighborhood of Paris, St.-Germain-des-Près. This features a long interview with Raymond Duncan, an eccentric American artist who was a long time resident. Duncan has a philosophy of doing everything for yourself, and is a craftsman who makes everything from his own printing press and type fonts, to the clothes he wears. It is hard not to compare this to Welles himself, and his do-it-yourself movies. And while Duncan’s clothes are extremely unusual, Welles would spend much of his later years in costumes such as long capes and floppy bow ties, that were also both “artistic” and unique. Duncan’s other major personal philosophy, never to imitate others or be a conformist, but always to stretch out in one’s own direction, could also serve as a credo for Welles. So we are getting a philosophical statement of Welles’ own life and beliefs here, as well. Duncan is an articulate man with a rich, resonant voice and a love of Shakespeare, also like Welles himself.

Duncan’s authenticity serves as the direct opposite of all the swindlers and forgers to come in F for Fake (1973). He is an artist who represents the antithesis of these painters who use their skills to deceive. Both Welles documentaries have an artist at their center, both take place at least partly in France, both make philosophical statements about authenticity, both include Welles’ on-screen presence, both show celebrated French historical buildings and landmarks, both have real intelligentsia filmed, both show scenes of evening life and the French having after hours fun, both show French trains in stations from the outside. Picasso’s drawings of bullfighters are discussed in a later episode of Around the World with Orson Welles; a story about Picasso is dramatized in F for Fake.

There is a party atmosphere to this film. Everyone from Art Buchwald’s secretary to people on the street look as if they are enjoying being filmed.

The other episodes are not quite as good. Perhaps this simply reflects my own prejudices: films about artists such as St.-Germain-des-Près have always fascinated me. Plus it is hard to resist a portrait of Paris and its intellectual life.

The episode has “intertitles” in the form of brief statements being typed on a reporter’s typewriter. These newspaper scenes recall Citizen Kane. They also give a silent movie feel to the episode.

St.-Germain-des-Près: The Pan up the newspaper building

The pan up the newspaper building, the real Herald-Tribune in Paris, is a “Welles shot”: a moving camera work that creates a series of compositions-in-motion, based on the complex architecture of the building. In a small, much shorter way, it anticipates the famed moving camera opening of Touch of Evil, to be made the next year. Welles first pans upward, then executes a complex lateral turn. The opening camera movement in Touch of Evil also involves shifts of direction, also in 90 degree turns.

Sound poetry, Music, Dancing and Sports Movements

In St.-Germain-des-Près, Welles will have sound-poets give demos of “letterisme”, a sound-based art movement of the era. In the later episode, Pays Basque II (La Pelote basque), we will hear the unique long-distance cries of Basque pigeon-netters, and the musical score-keeping announcements during games of pelote. This interest in unique forms of vocal expression perhaps derives from Welles’ background in radio.

Welles also includes much about music and dancing in both films. Both films celebrate cultures where intricate dance steps play a major role in ordinary people’s entertainment.

Madrid Bullfight and Pays Basque II (La Pelote basque) focus mainly on sports: bullfighting and pelote. Both sports emphasize physical dexterity, and complex movements of the whole body. In this they resemble the dancing that plays a role in both St.-Germain-des-Près and Pays Basque II.

These two sports episodes are the closest in the series to conventional travelogues or documentaries. Both are quite absorbing to watch, and both have a great deal of visual style. Neither quite reaches the level of St.-Germain-des-Près, but both make gripping viewing.”

1.84GB | 720×560 | mkv
https://nitro.download/view/21E6D737B5469BC/Around_the_World_With_Orson_Welles.part1.rar
https://nitro.download/view/BC752433E4ACF23/Around_the_World_With_Orson_Welles.part2.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Orson Welles – Around the World with Orson Welles (1955) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Sean Axmaker, Keyframe wrote:
When handed the raw materials from an unfinished documentary about Elmyr de Hory, an art forger whose life was being written up by biographer Clifford Irving, Orson Welles took the opportunity to make something far beyond the concept of the traditional documentary. F for Fake has been called the Orson Welles’ first essay film, a true enough statement if you limit the accounting to feature films, but he had been doing short-form non-fiction since 1955, when he made Around the World with Orson Welles (a.k.a. Around the World) for British television.

It was ostensibly a series of travelogues, shot on location with Welles as tour guide, host, and narrator. Welles himself described them as “all sort of home movies—a vacation documented…,” but these are sort of home movies that only Welles could make. They are built on Welles’s public persona as much as on his directorial personality. He is “as always, obediently yours,” the worldly yet personable host who casts a spell with his voice, disarms with a boyish grin and invites the audience into his confidence as he tosses out cultural observations and historical asides.

Twenty-six episodes were commissioned. Six were shot, in Vienna, Lurs, Madrid, London, Saint-German-des-Pres in Paris and the Basque Country along the border of Spain and France. Welles pieced them together like jigsaw puzzles in which only he knew what the finished picture would look like but did not finish them all before the broadcast deadline. Six were broadcast in all, with some of the episodes completed by the production company, including an alternate version of the Pays Basques episode featuring alternate interviews shot by Welles. One unfinished episode, shot in Lurs and focused on a notorious murder case, was reconstructed as part of a 2000 documentary, The Dominici Affair by Orson Welles, by Christopher Cognet.

Gary Tooze, DVD Beaver wrote:
I thoroughly enjoyed watching this, almost 3-hour, series – as well as the fascinating The Dominici Affair documentary piece (almost an hour). You can always feel the director’s impressive story-telling abilities infused with multilayer’s of real, unrehearsed, personal interaction. The series is very close to being ‘an essay’ of sorts. The B2MP Blu-ray produces a fine presentation and Welles’ fans shouldn’t hesitate. Absolutely recommended!

https://nitro.download/view/29C98368F959195/Around.the.World.with.Orson.Welles.E01.720p.BluRay.x264-YELLOWBiRD.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/BCF8686E2A0DBF7/Around.the.World.with.Orson.Welles.E02.720p.BluRay.x264-YELLOWBiRD.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/771C5D5E6F10543/Around.the.World.with.Orson.Welles.E03.720p.BluRay.x264-YELLOWBiRD.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/34C17B1800F4CB9/Around.the.World.with.Orson.Welles.E04.720p.BluRay.x264-YELLOWBiRD.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/B623CF982989622/Around.the.World.with.Orson.Welles.E05.720p.BluRay.x264-YELLOWBiRD.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/B0CC9AFF8BBC660/Around.the.World.with.Orson.Welles.E06.720p.BluRay.x264-YELLOWBiRD.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Orson Welles – Around the World with Orson Welles (1955) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.