May 6, 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of filmmaker, and larger than life personality, Orson Welles.
While there have been and will continue to be a number of tributes throughout the year, including a recent retrospective at NYC’s Film Forum, it is interesting to note what has happened to Welles’ reputation as filmmaker and actor since his death 30 years ago.
It has been in decline. It is not unusual for an artist’s reputation to take a dip, especially if they haven’t done anything in years, or were as self-aggrandizing as Welles was when he was alive. After being number one in Sight & Sound’ s list of top films published every 10 years since 1952, Citizen Kane was finally toppled in 2012 by Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
This is not only an indication of changing tastes among Sight & Sound voters, but of recognition of a film that many more people are familiar with. Outside of cinema enthusiasts, Citizen Kane, along with the rest of Welles’ movies, are films that are generally unknown to the public at large.
No one back in 1941 would have predicted that. At 25 Orson Welles was on top of the world. Three years earlier he had caused a nationwide panic with his War of the Worlds radio broadcast, which was so real, many people believed an alien invasion was actually taking place. Before that he formed the Mercury Theatre to create low-budget, stylized productions of classic plays for the WPA.
After conquering the theatre, and then radio while still in his early 20s, movies were the next logical step for Welles. Citizen Kane, which was shot for a modest amount of money, revolutionized 1940s Hollywood by reminding them of many of the silent film techniques they had forgotten, such as deep focus photography and montage editing.
Unfortunately, the screenplay, which was written primarily by Herman J. Manciewicz, was a very thinly disguised attack on newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, whose papers refused to promote the film. Hollywood even offered to reimburse RKO all the money spent on the film if they would destroy the negative. Contrary to popular myth the film did not lose money, but it really didn’t make any either.
Welles had completed his second film, The Magnificent Ambersons (see my DVD pick), and had gone to Brazil to make a documentary for Nelson Rockefeller when his string of successes ended. Backed by Hearst and pressure from stockholders, RKO fired the studio head, cancelled Welles’ contract, and cut Ambersons from 131 minutes to 88. It naturally tanked, and from then on Welles was labeled box office poison as a director.
Between 1944 and 1958 he would direct only four more films in Hollywood. They were The Stranger (1946), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Macbeth (1948), and Touch of Evil (1958). None were released in the versions Welles wanted, and only The Stranger made money.
Welles was always in demand as an actor and used money from those appearances to try and finance several independent projects in Europe. Some, like Othello (1952) and Falstaff (1965), succeeded critically, while others like Mr. Arkadin (1955) and The Trial (1962) did not. None of these films ever got major releases.
By the 1960s Welles was an expatriate whose size had grown to biblical proportion along with his reputation as the artist ruined by Philistines. This was greatly aided by Welles himself, a natural raconteur, who inflated his contributions to such films as Jane Eyre (1944) and The Third Man (1949), movies that he did not direct. He continued to appear in movies throughout the 1960s and 70s. Notable appearances included A Man for All Seasons (1965), I’ll Never Forget What’s ’is Name (1967), and Catch 22 (1970).
To people of my generation, he was the overweight spokesman for Paul Masson wine (“We will sell no wine before it’s time”), along with many other products. He was the man in black with the big cigar who made numerous appearances doing magic tricks on The Tonight Show – a man who always seemed short of breath. Although occasionally honored by outfits like the American Film Institute, his cinematic achievements were largely neglected except on college campuses.
Welles died of a heart attack, brought on by a crash diet, at the age of 70 on October 10, 1985. His ashes now rest in an abandoned well in Spain. He left behind a number of incomplete projects which some of his friends and colleagues are still trying to finish. Welles loved to say that he started at the top and worked his way down.
Now that a restored version of Falstaff just premiered, and a new documentary called Magician is due to be released later this year, his movies may finally receive the attention that they deserve.
