Director: Chuck Workman/Featuring: Orson Welles, Steven Spielberg, Henry Jaglom, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, Charlton Heston, et al.
What has been written and expressed in film about the late great Orson Welles could occupy a storage unit the size of the Empire State Building. It seems every cinephile, myself included, is pretty familiar with Welles' work and his private life, so I pondered Workman's motives for making yet another film about a subject that is all too familiar. But isn't there always more to say, to explore? Can there ever be a definitive statement about someone whose contributions to cinema may stand above all others?
Workman's film is very comprehensive; chock full of archival footage and talking heads. Interviews with Welles himself are generously supplied while film critics and filmmakers like Spielberg, Sidney Pollack, Richard Linklater and Paul Mazursky offer their own appraisals of his work.
What does Workman's film offer that others haven't? I must say I knew little about Welles' early life in Woodstock, Illinois, where he was instantly recognized as a prodigy by the school faculty. Lacking athletic propensity, Welles gravitated to theater and performed in many school productions, including Shakespearean plays, for which he demonstrated a precocious grasp. The photos of a cherubic Welles as a child are fascinating, as are the accounts of former classmates. One classmate remembers him as lacking empathy and caring little for what others thought of him. It is also astonishing to see photos of Welles in school productions; clad in makeup and costume.
Aside from biographical detail about his early childhood, the rest of the film covers what has become common knowledge: his early passion for dramatic radio productions and the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast, his creative transition to film; his ill-fated contract with RKO; who never quite got Welles and who were far from supportive of his vision and his masterpieces Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.
Other well-documented material the film addresses is his life-long antagonism toward Hollywood and the film industry; his many loves, including his marriage to Rita Hayworth, his struggles to get films made and completed, his prodigious appetite and his celebrity at home and abroad. Someone in the film, with a nod toward the ironic, mentions the numerous awards he received for his work all through his life yet very few were willing to fund his projects or hire him for their own.
In spite of his persona non grata status, Welles managed to film what many believe to be the best cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare ever, including MacBeth, Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight, and Othello. Interviewees praise his groundbreaking camera work and his uncanny ability to do so much with feeble budgets; financing that sometimes vanished mid-production.
Aborted film projects, due to either budgetary constraints or Welles' fickle tastes, make up most of his filmography but one film that was completed to his tastes and bears his unmistakable creative stamp was the 1958 film Touch of Evil. Welles' directorial role was made possible through the intervention of Charlton Heston but the film was subsequently butchered when studio reactionaries decided to re-shoot some scenes and re-cut the film, thereby denying him another fully-realized effort.
Workman covers Welle's participation in Carol Reed's The Third Man but fails to include the crucial detail about his authorship of the film's famous Cuckoo Clock dialogue.
Facts about of his life; womanizing and living as an itinerant are briefly touched upon.
The final product is something akin to a primer rather than a subject fully explored and examined. There is no shortage of talking heads testifying to his genius, but what exactly makes Citizen Kane the most celebrated film of all time? What visual innovations did Welles' spawn? What sets Welles apart from other directors aesthetically? The film unfortunately offers little or no illumination.
I must say Workman's musical instincts also leave much to be desired. Beautiful pieces like Satie's Gymnopedie and Albinoni's Adagio come off as schmaltzy sentimentality in their clumsy deployment.
Magician left me feeling exhausted rather than energized and eager to revisit the master's films. For the uninitiated, Workman's film might be enlightening, but for Welles enthusiasts and cinephiles alike, it tells us what we already know though it does shed much light on his childhood.
An unreleased Welles' film mentioned in Workman's documentary; the 1985 The Other Side of the Wind, will finally make its way to screens in the Spring. The film will no doubt be highly scrutinized and analyzed and it's sure to cause a kerfuffle. I can't wait to see it myself and as I wait patiently, I'll put aside Workman's well-meaning but flawed film.
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