Case Study: Orson Welles
Orson Welles is regarded as one of the most important directors of the century, arguably an equal to Griffiths or Eisenstein in terms of his contribution to the motion picture form. Welles’ career, however, is one marked by increasing frustration and disappointment, much of which has been attributed to studio mistrust and interference. This interference, which on several occasions amounted to physical sabotage, can be partly explained by the fact that Welles was a radically innovative director, often years ahead of his contemporaries, working in a highly conservative and commercial environment.
Welles’ first film, ‘Citizen Kane’ (1941) is commonly described as the greatest film ever made, and consistently voted a favourite by critics worldwide. ‘Citizen Kane’ pieces together the life of a newspaper tycoon, as a journalist attempts to solve the meaning of his final word ‘Rosebud’ spoken on his deathbed. In fact, the film was recognized as a thinly-veiled portrait of the real-life megalomaniac newspaper proprietor William Randolph Hearst, who almost succeeded in having the film destroyed. ‘Citizen Kane’ is famous for many reasons. Its complex use of flash-back for narrative organisation; the brilliantly layered sound track including (realistic) overlapping dialogue; the deep focus, chiaroscuro photography of cinematographer Greg Toland; and perhaps most importantly, Welles’ use of the long take and highly expressive and daring manipulation of mise-en-scène. Almost every scene of the film is a technical triumph and has been shown on film courses to illustrate the artistic possibilities of the medium. ‘Citizen Kane’ has been hailed as changing the course of American cinema, instituting a ‘look’ that was adopted in film noir, the dominant visual style of the decade.
While ‘Citizen Kane’ was not an expensive film to make (produced, remarkably, for under one million dollars) the box-office takings disappointed RKO who had signed a six feature contract with Welles giving him full artistic control. This failure may, in part, be because the Hearst press did its utmost to suppress publicity and the critical acclaim which greeted the film’s release.
Consequently, upon completion of his second feature ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ (1942) Welles’ film was subject to audience previews and, after adverse reaction, cut from 132 to 88 minutes, with a happy ending reshot and tacked on. Despite these crucial cuts (RKO destroyed the excised sequences) ‘ The Magnificent Ambersons’ is regarded today as a great film. As Cook (1996) comments:
‘The Magnificent Ambersons as it stands today is a masterpiece of mood, décor, and composition in depth. It is also a remarkably intelligent and prophetic film which suggests (in 1942, and in a story set in 1905) that the quality of American life will ultimately be destroyed by the automobile and urbanization.’
Following the commercial failure of Welles’ second feature and a third film ‘Journey Into Fear’ (1943) to which he had contributed, Welles was recalled from South America where he was filming ‘It’s All True’, which was to be a film promoting the government’s policy of pan-American co-operation. He and the Mercury Players, whom Welles had brought to the studio from the theatre to act in all his films, were fired without notice and most of the negative for ‘It’s All True’ dumped into Santa Monica Bay .
The commercial success of ‘The Stranger’ (1946) about a Nazi war criminal on the run (which Welles was obliged to shoot strictly according to a studio schedule) allowed him to direct ‘The Lady from Shanghai’ (1948), a noir thriller, for Columbia. However, the film, which starred himself and his wife Rita Hayworth, met with anger and incomprehension from the studio head Harry Cohn and was extensively re-edited under Welles’ supervision (O’Neill 1996). The film is remembered as one of Welles’ finest achievements and the famous shootout in the hall of mirrors is a classic in cinema history.
To all intents and purposes the commercial failure of ‘The Lady from Shanghai ’ ended Welles’ career in US studios. In 1948 he made ‘Macbeth’ for the B studio Republic Pictures in 23 days using paper-mâché and cardboard sets. After this date he went into self-imposed exile in Europe and spent the rest of his career trying to raise money, often through his numerous acting roles, for various projects, many of which remained unfinished. He returned to make one more highly regarded film for Hollywood , the low budget ‘Touch of Evil’ (1958) but the film failed at the box office and Welles was never again entrusted with studio money.
Of his largely self-financed European films, his last, ‘Chimes at Midnight’ (1966) in which he plays Falstaff, is his best work. Some of his other projects were partial successes such as ‘Othello’ (1952), ‘Mr Arkadin’ (1955) and ‘F for Fake’ (1975) which were completed on tiny budgets. A number of films remained uncompleted due to lack of finance as in ‘The Other Side of the Wind’, or other misfortunes as in ‘The Deep’ (the death of an actor), ‘The Merchant of Venice’ (the theft of a negative).
Orson Welles is one of the most influential directors of the century. While many regard his style as mannered and self conscious, he has been recognized as an inspiration for countless filmmakers, including many in the European New Wave for whom he was a pioneer in the use of the long take and a master of composition in depth. In this sense alone he is as important to the development of the sound feature as Eisenstein was to montage, or Griffiths to continuity editing. Cook (1996) concludes his analysis of the director:
‘Welles was always an innovator and a radical experimenter – an authentic American expressionist with a decidedly baroque sense of form which has profoundly influenced the course of Western cinema.’