Classic Audiobook Collection - The Cinema of Orson Welles by Peter Bogdanovich ~ Full Audiobook [biography]

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

The Cinema of Orson Welles by Peter Bogdanovich audiobook. Genre: biography In The Cinema of Orson Welles, filmmaker and critic Peter Bogdanovich offers an intimate, clear-eyed portrait of one of cinema's most daring innovators, tracing how Orson Welles made his mark through bold technique, restless experimentation, and an artist's refusal to play safe. Blending sharp film analysis with the immediacy of firsthand conversation, Bogdanovich guides listeners through Welles' key works, from the startling breakthrough of Citizen Kane to the later projects shaped by uneven financing, studio interference, and Welles' own larger-than-life ambitions. Along the way, the book explores what made Welles a singular director and performer: his theatrical instincts, his fascination with power and illusion, his bravura use of sound and camera movement, and his ability to turn limitations into style. Bogdanovich writes not as a distant scholar but as a fellow filmmaker trying to understand the choices behind the images, offering context for production struggles, creative decisions, and critical battles. The result is both a compelling study of landmark films and a revealing look at the costs and rewards of uncompromising artistry. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 00 (00:05:59) Chapter 01 (00:13:27) Chapter 02 (00:17:06) Chapter 03 (00:19:07) Chapter 04 (00:21:03) Chapter 05 (00:26:16) Chapter 06 (00:30:56) Chapter 07 (00:35:33) Chapter 08 (00:40:06) Chapter 09 (00:47:57) Chapter 10 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Cinema of Orson Wells Orson Wells is a giant with the face of a child, a tree filled with birds and shadows, a dog who has broken loose from his chains and gone to sleep on the flower bed. He is an active loafer, a wise madman, a solitude surrounded by humanity. Jean Cocktoe Orson's courage, like everything else about him,

imagination, egotism, generosity, ruthlessness, forbearance, impatience, sensitivity, grossness, and vision is magnificently out of proportion. Michael Mack Leamois. One, Orson Wells is enough. Two would undoubtedly bring about the end of civilization. Richard Wright. Orson Wells is without a doubt one of the ten greatest filmmakers in the world,

Francois Truffaut. The theater and cinema are a glitter with names. Despite those who decry the worst manifestations of the star system, this has always been so and always will be. Some, a very few of these names, shine steadfastly like fixed planets. Others shoot briefly across the night sky. There is one name, however, which burns as brightly as any,

but seems to have no fixed place. Orson Wells is a wandering star of spasmodic incandescence. You never know what he will be doing next. Michael Redgrave The American Cinema is not the cinema, of Hawks or Griffith. It is the cinema of Wells. Wells, the new Caravaggio.

Jean de Marche. I want to use this motion picture camera as an instrument of poetry. Orson Wells. The cinema of Orson Wells. Like the movies of Renoir, Chaplin, or John Ford, the films of Orson Wells are distinctively

autographed by their maker. Film is a very personal thing, Wells has said. more than the theater because the film is a dead thing a ribbon of celluloid like the paper on which one writes a poem theater is a collective experience cinema is the work of one single person the director footnote unless otherwise specified the quotations are taken from an interview with orson wells in cahier du cinema volume 15 number 87 september 1958 end of footnote in 20 years wells has made just seven pictures that can fairly be called his own. But there is a personal unity in his work

that can be found in only the very greatest poets of the cinema. I believe that any work is good only in the measure it expresses the man who created it. One may enter at any point in a Wells film and never doubt who its director is, not only because of his darkly lyric imagery, his mysterious brooding sense of the evil in the world, his remarkable technical ingenuity and originality. his witty probing dialogue, or indeed his own physical presence as an actor, but also because of the profound theme that runs through all his work, man as a tragic victim of the paradox between his sense of morality and his own dark nature. All the leading Wells characters are damned,

from Charles Foster Kane to Hank Quinlan and in touch of evil. All of them, larger than life, morally detestable men for whom somehow one has deep sympathy, As well as put it, I don't detest them. I detest the way they act. That is my point of tension. All the characters I've played are various forms of Faust. I hate all forms of Faust because I believe it's impossible for man to be great without admitting there is something greater than himself. Either the law or God or art.

But there must be something greater than man. I have sympathy for those characters, humanly, but not morally. And because of this compassion, Wells refuses to judge his people. He shows them for what they are. But his jacks are never one-eyed. He withholds judgment on the great bastards he portrays. One has no right to judge except by a religion, he has said, to decide if someone is good or bad as the law of the jungle.

The dark poetry of Orson Wells is peopled with men who in some form or another have made themselves a world over which to reign, have placed themselves above the law of God or art. Kane, who tried with his newspapers and money to win the love of the people, the Embersons, symbols of the false pride of a useless decaying aristocracy, Bannister, the lawyer, and a lady from Shanghai, who placed himself above the law. Macbeth with his vaulting ambition, Othello's green-eyed monster. Archidon, the adventurer who created a world unto himself,

and tried to destroy his past. Quinlan, the cop who thought he could be the law and final judge. These are the doomed classic characters of a Faustian world, the leading figures in the seven tragic poems of Orson Wells. For more than anything else, the cinema of Wells is a poetic one, painted with dazzling, florid, bold strokes. Not to speak of his accomplishments in the theater or radio. Wells is perhaps the most striking moviemaker of our time.

His films sing, flow, and vibrate with the vision of a thrilling, original talent, and a consummate, inspired artist. End of introduction. Section 1 of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich. The Slibervox Recordings in the Public Domain, read by Ben Tucker.

Citizen Kane 1941 Citizen Kane RKO Radio Pictures, a Mercury production directed and produced by Orson Well original screenplay by Wells and Herman J. Mankowitz. Photography by Greg Tolland, Art Direction by Van Nest Polyglaze, and Perry Ferguson, set direction by Daryl Silvera, edited by Robert Wise and Mark Robson, music by Bernard Herman, special effects by Vernon L. Walker, costumes by Edward Stevenson, sound by Bailey Fessler and James G. Stewart, released May of 1941, 119 minutes.

Cast. Wells, Joseph Cotton, Dorothy Cummengor, Agnes Moorhead, Ruth Warwick, Ray Collins, Erskine-Sanford, Everett Sloan, George Caluris, William Alland, Paul Stewart, Fortunio Bonanova, Gus Schilling, Philip Van Zant, Georgia Bacchus, Harry Shannon, Buddy Swan, and Sonnybop. Citizen Kane is a criticism of American plutocracy in the power of the popular press, but it transcends these social considerations. It is, as Wells calls it, a portrait of a public. public man's private life. Citizen Kane is the story of a search by a man named Thompson, the editor of a News Digest, similar to the March of Time, for the meaning of Kane's dying words. He hopes they'll give the short the angle it needs.

He decides that a man's dying words ought to explain his life. Maybe they do. He never discovers what Keynes mean, but the audience does. His researches take him to the five people who knew Kane well. People who liked him or loved him or hated his guts. They tell five different stories, each biased, so that the truth about Kane, like the truth about any man, can only be calculated by the sum of everything that has been said about him.

Kane, Footnote, Friday, Volume 2, Number 7, February 14, 1941, end footnote. We're told, loved only his mother, only his newspaper, only his second wife, only himself. Maybe he loved all of these, or not. none. It is for the audience to judge. Kane was selfish and selfless. An idealist, a scoundrel, a very big man, and a very little one. It depends on who's talking about him.

He is never judged with the objectivity of an author, and the point of the picture is not so much the solution of the problem as its presentation. By Well's own description, one can see the morality, humanity theme clearly developed throughout the movie itself. From the opening shot, no trespassing, to the last line, I don't think any word explains a man's life. It is evident that Wells has no intention of passing judgment on Cain. Kane is detestable, but he is a human being.

It has been argued that the final shot of the sled is a sentimental oversimplification of Cain's life, but, though it is one of the most successfully surprising and poignant final moments in cinema, it is clear in the script that it was not Well's intention to make that shot the film's all-encompassing solution. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get or something he lost, but it wouldn't have explained anything. I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, a missing piece. Though the director supplies that missing piece,

it serves only as a kind of moving reminder that, in spite of everything, Kane was a man with feeling, passionate, it and with courage. Technically, Citizen Kane is a treasure chest of the screen language. With his first film, Wells climaxed the sound cinema. He explored all the possibilities of movie-making, sharpened old devices, gave new life to tired ones, and brought in some startling new ideas. He thus synthesized what had gone before, foreshadowed what was to come, and made everything

seem original and fresh. Perhaps the most valuable innovation in the film was. its inventive use of sound, which Wells brought to movies from his years of radio work. The overlapping dialogue, now a Wells trademark, gives the picture a remarkable flow and sense of reality, making most other films seem stage-bound because of their cued delivery. First A talks, then B, then A, then B. But in life A and B are very often talking at the same time, and Wells makes abundant use of that fact. The sound in Cain, as in all his subsequent

work is also used for a vivid economy of gesture. When Kane is eight, Thatcher is seen saying, Merry Christmas. And with that, the scene cuts about 18 years forward to Thatcher saying, And a Happy New Year! With one sharp transition, we have jumped into the story of Kane's adult life. Later, we see Leland campaigning for Kane before a handful of people, announcing that, Kane entered this campaign, and we cut to Kane speaking at the lectern of a huge auditorium, with one purpose only. Again, the point has been made directly, briefly, effectively. Or, of course, the famous breakfast table sequence between Kane and his first wife,

where the nine-year deterioration of a marriage is summed up through one continuing conversation, over five flashpans. Among the other aspects of Citizen Kane, which struck the 1941 public with the force of extreme novelty, the News on the March sequence is outstanding. A perfectly imitated news digest. It is also, aside from Wolcott Gibbs' profile of Henry Luce, the sharpest of all parodies of time style. For 40 years, appeared in Cain Newsprint,

no public issue on which Cain papers took no stand. In photography, the most important feature Wells brought to Cain, and to all his later movies, was the deep focus lens, developed for him by photographer Greg Tolland, enabling him to keep the entire frame in equally sharp focus. and making for economy of editing. The contract signing scene for one example in which, within one frame we see the equivalent of a close-up,

Bernstein, a medium shot, Thatcher, and a long shot, Kane, all equally sharp. This lens made it possible for Wells to compose his frames with maximum depth and allow him to use kuroskiro in a new way. Beyond all these considerations and their effect on the subsequent directors, The script and its significance is all important. It broke with exciting success all the Hollywood cliches of movie construction and brought to the screen an adult personal style.

Citizen Kane is the only one of his films made and released exactly as well as wanted, so it becomes easy to call it his best picture. But we shall see that he developed much further, both technically and intellectually. Kane remains an extraordinary achievement, important, not only for itself, but because it set the theme that haunts all the films of Orson Wells. End of Section 1, Citizen Kane. Section 2 of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich. The Slibervox Recordings in the Public Domain, read by Ben Tucker.

The Magnificent Ambersons, 1942. The Magnificent Ambersons RKO Radio Pictures, a Mercury production, directed and produced by Orson Wells, screenplay by Wells based on the novel by Booth Tarkington, photography by Stanley Cortez, art direction by Mark Lee Kirk, edited by Robert Wise, music by Bernard Herman,

special effects by Vernon L. Walker, costumes by Edward Stevenson, sound by Bailey Fessler and James G. Stewart, released August of 1942, 88 Minutes, cast, Joseph Cotton, Dolores Costello, Tim Holt, Anne Baxter, Agnes Moorhead, Ray Collins, Richard Bennett, Donald Dilloway, Erskine Sanford.

Wells does not appear in the magnificent Ambersons. He narrates. But the representative character of his theme is George Minifer, archetype of a dying plutocracy, the Ambersons. Proud, rich, spoiled, reactionary, he dominates his weak mother's life and ruins it along with the happiness of Lucian Eugene,

how he, and indeed his whole way of life, receives his comeuppance is the story of the film. Though it is clear that progress is what Wells is affirming, he paints a nostalgic, moving picture of life before the horseless carriage, and brings to the screen a faithful recreation of Tarkington's novel. George Minifer is a decidedly disagreeable and unlikable boy, and yet it is impossible not to pity him, and as he kneels by his mother's bed at the end and asks softly,

mother forgive me God forgive me He is a poignant symbol of a dead society With Amberson's Wells adopted a different style from that of Kane More lyric and tender with a technique as different as the subject Purposely he holds many of his scenes for an extended time Either with a stationary camera As in the cake-eating scene between George and Aunt Fanny Or with a long tracking shot

George and Lucy in the carriage so that the mood of the film is the sad, slowly developed atmosphere of the late 1800s. Wells displays an exquisite understanding of the period and its style, as in the beautiful opening shot with a fuzzy quality around the edges, framed with the archaic quaintness of tin types, and his narration evokes a deep nostalgia for a time gone forever. Since he was not allowed to do the final cut of Ambersons, it looked as though somebody had run a lawnboard,

mower through the celluloid. Footnote. Peter Neubel, the fabulous Orson Wells, Hutchinson, and Company, 1956. In footnote. And because a few of the scenes were neither written nor directed by him, it becomes difficult to evaluate exactly what Wells wanted the finished film to look like. It is known, for example, that he had shot a lot more footage of the growing, ever-industrializing town that is shown in the movie. Clearly it was to have been used as a counterpoint to the amber.

decline. Wells was then nearing the end of his tenure at R.K.O. and Ambersons is a mutilated work. It is the more amazing that so much of Wells' conception survived the released print. End of Section 2. The Magnificent Ambersons. Section 3 of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich. This Libervox recording is in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker. Journey Into Fear 1942 Journey Into Fear Archeo Radio Pictures

A Mercury production directed by Norman Foster produced by Orson Wells Screenplay by Joseph Cotton and Wells Based on the novel by Eric Ambler Photography by Carl Strus Music by Roy Webb Edited by Mark Robson

released February 1943 71 minutes Cast Wells Joseph Cotton Dolores Deloros del Rio Ruth Warwick, Agnes Moorhead, Everett, Everett, Jack Moss, and Richard Bennett. This is not a Wells film.

It features the Mercury Players, was scripted by Joseph Cotton, supposedly with Wells' assistance, and Wells is credited as producer. But RKO assigned Norman Foster as director. He was considered safe. Wells was not. Asked about Journey, Wells has said,

For the first five sequences, I was on the set and decided angles. From then on I often said where to put the camera, described the framings, made light tests. I designed the film but can't properly be called the director. It is just possible to approximate what Wells might have done with the picture

if he had been allowed to direct it, or at least edited. A kind of light parody of innocence abroad or a take-off on the Casablanca-type thriller so popular around that time. Anyway, as he put it, I was in South America waiting for the rushes while some RKO Grimlins

headed by a brace of vice presidents and the studio janitor Cut the film. End of Section 3. Journey Into Fear. Section 4 of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich. This Librovoc's recording is in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker.

The Stranger 1946 The Stranger RKO Radio International Directed by Orson Wells Produced by Sam Spiegel Screenplay by Anthony Veeler and John Houston From a story by Victor Trevis Photography by Russell Metty

Art Direction by Perry Ferguson Music by Bronislau Kaper Released May 1946 85 minutes Cast Wells Loretta Young Edward G. Robinson Philip Maryvale

Richard Long and Billy House Since Wells had no hand whatever in the screenplay of this picture, he did write a few scenes, but they were all cut. We cannot include it among his personal works. Because he directed, he does refer to it as one of his movies, but says, The Stranger is the worst of my films. There is nothing of me in that picture. I did it to prove that I could put out a movie as well as anyone else. It is absolutely of no interest to me.

I did not make it with cynicism. However, I did my best with it. Decidedly, a minor effort. The Stranger is an exciting little film with some striking small-town atmosphere, particularly the scenes in the drugstore, but its only real interest is Well's own performance of the Nazi. Again, he is able, through his own personality and charm,

to invest the character with considerable sympathy, despite a script that wants to paint him totally black. However, this is probably just a matter. of Wells magnetism as an actor, and it is doubtful if he was consciously trying to make him sympathetic. End of Section 4. The Stranger. Section 5 of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich.

This Libra Box recording is in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker. The Lady from Shanghai 1984 The Lady from Shanghai Columbia Pictures. Directed and produced by Orson Wells, screenplay by Wells based on the novel by Sherwood King, photography by Charles Lawton Jr. Art direction by Stephen Gusson and Sturgis Korn.

Set decoration by Wilbur Meneffey and Herman Schoenbrun. Music by Heinz Romheld. Edited by Viola Lawrence. Sound by Lodge Cunningham. Released, June 1948, 87 Minutes. Cast, Wells, Rita Hayworth, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders, Ted DeCorsia, Erskins, Sanford. The Lady from Shanghai returns to the bravour

style of citizen Kane, and is perhaps even more dazzling and fluid. Much of the editing and composition is more daring, and the courtroom scene, the chase in the Chinese theater, and the final gunfight in the deserted Hall of Mirrors, are sequences as good as anything he has ever made. Thematically, Shanghai develops the motif of Kane and Embersons in its criticism of the corruptive powers of plutocracy, and begins to probe into the morality of the law, something he was to take even further and touch of evil. Bannister isn't extremely successful, I never lost a case, wealthy and powerful criminal lawyer, but he himself is a criminal, a spokesman for the law, he thinks he is above it, and this is his tragic fault. His associate, Grisby, has been thoroughly

perverted by his position as a defender of criminals. We're going to commit murder and not break laws. And indeed the malignant cancer of the two lawyers has spread to Elsa, Bannister's pretty wife. The three of them envelop O'Hara, a basically innocent bystander, in their machinations, and though he lets himself be carried along he is in opposition or contrast to them. O'Hara is the poet and the victim, says Wells. He represents the aristocratic, the cavalier point of view, and corresponds to very ancient European ideas. O'Hara speaks for the author in his haunting, frightening, po-like anecdote about the sea of sharks, driven mad by the taste of their own blood, as they eat first each other and then themselves. Shanghai takes many sly thrusts at

the immorality of law and the judicial system, reinforcing Wells' continuing anti-judgment motif. The scene in the courtroom, for example, where one juror has to be shushed and too quiet from a laughing fit, where another has a sneezing spell interrupting the proceedings, in Indeed the witty circus tactics of Bannister taking the stand and cross-examining himself, all these are satiric comments on common morality and a witty parody of the American obsession with right and wrong. And there is that subtle juxtaposition of images when the film cuts from the judge at a chessboard to an overhead shot of the deserted courtroom waiting for the jury's return. If the fact of dragging a murderer in front of a jury is an important and just task in itself,

It loses all importance, everything like peace and happiness, if one has to arrive at it at the expense of man's dignity. The lady from Shanghai is a morality play without preachment. It can be taken as a bizarre adventure yarn, a bravura thriller, a profound drama of decay, or all three. Bannister is a crippled spider limping through his infected world, but his love for his wife is genuine and deep, and at the end he truly kills the thing he loves. And Elsa Bannister, beautiful and fatal, conveys the quality of unconsciously perverted innocence. She is never quite aware of her own evil. The forthright, imaginative development of the lady from Shanghai is unendingly inventive.

The day-long picnic, the scenes on the boat, the love scene in the aquarium, the scenes in the courtroom, the Chinese theater, and the Hall of Mirrors. Well's camera work in editing show an abandon and freedom. a slashing, driving energy decidedly advanced from Citizen Kane. Though the film was re-edited by the studio, it still retains its force and impact. The script is elliptic, witty, and evocative, and the images cling to the imagination. The lady from Shanghai remains Well's wildest, most restless picture, and one of his most elusively significant.

Behind the magic showmanship is the voice of a poet, decrying the sin and corruption of a confused world. And O'Hara, the victim, the innocent, has been irrevocably touched by the abyss into which he fell. Maybe I'll live so long I'll forget her. Maybe I'll die trying. End of Section 5, the lady from Shanghai. Section 6 of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich. This Librovoc's recording is in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker.

Macbeth 1998 McBeth Republic Pictures A Mercury production directed and produced by Orson Wells From the play by William Shakespeare Photography by John C. Russell Art direction by Fred Ritter

Set direction by John McCarthy Jr. And James Redd. Costumes by Wells and Ritter for the men Adelae Palmer for the women Music by Jacques Ibert Edited by Louis Lindsay Released October 1948

107 minutes cast Wells Jeanette Nolan, Dan Hurleyhee, Roddy McDowell, Edgar Barrier, Alan Napier, Erskine Sanford, John Deerks, Christopher Wells, Lorraine Tuttle. Macbeth was made in 23 days, including one day of retakes, as Wells tells the story. People who know anything at all about the business of making a film will realize that this is more than fast. I never thought I was making a great film, or even an imitation great film. I thought I was making what might be a good film, and what, if the 23-day shooting schedule came off,

might encourage other filmmakers to tackle difficult subjects at greater speed. I am not ashamed of the limitations of the picture. Macbeth, for better or worse, is a kind of violently sketched charcoal drawing of a great play. Footnote. Orson Wells, The Third Audience, Site and Sound, Volume 23, No. 3 January, March, 1954. In footnote. Shakespeare has had a tremendous influence on the work of Orson Wells,

not only in the largeness of his poetry and vision, but also in his philosophical ideas. The great quality of Shakespeare is that he had neither moral nor political partisanship. Shakespeare never wrote real tragedy. He wrote melodrama that had the stature of tragedy, and all his interesting characters are bastards. In that opinion, Wells reveals his own code. The moral aspect is the only one.

one of importance. I am more interested in character than in virtue. I call it artistic morality above bourgeois morality. Macbeth is detestable until he becomes king. After that, he becomes a great man. In his Macbeth, which he accurately describes as a rough sketch, we can see the beginnings of his filmic conceptions of Shakespeare, which he was to perfect an Othello. That is, of interpreting the bard for the screen, rather than the other way around as other movie versions of Shakespeare have done. He takes Shakespeare's theme, story, and poetry, and freely adapts them into motion-picture terms. That way, he uses the play as a starting point in developing his own visual design. He rearranges the speeches, so they flow more naturally on the screen, and elaborates on Shakespeare's stagebound directions.

Lady Macbeth's death is described in the text as a cry of women, within, but on the screen there is no reason not to let her hurl herself from one of the heavy brooding cliffs that surround the action of the peace. There is a claustrophobic quality to the world of Wells Macbeth that is perfect in intention. The crimes of that dank world are exposed yet entombed. Macbeth is a cursed man, but he is a great character. That is Shakespeare, and that is Wells. Since the film was shot in 23 days, perfection was neither intended, nor can it be expected. Therefore, the performances are uneven in execution.

Jeanette Nolan is too pale a figure as Lady Macbeth, and many of the supporting parts are not entirely realized. Wells himself gives a freewheeling, inspired reading of the title role, a performance that, like the film, is a violently sketched charcoal drawing of the character. The photography and the atmosphere are almost completely successful. The weird opening with the witches, the grimly terrifying invasion at the end, the shadowy foreboding mood of the entire film, as well as the initial conception of making the people of Macbeth barbarians. And the movie remains of interest, not only for itself,

but because of the way it foreshadows Well's technique of filmed Shakespeare, which he was to bring to fruition with his next film. End of Section 6. Macbeth. Chapter 7 of The Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker. Othello 1952, Othello United Artists, a Mercury production directed and produced by Orson Wells, from the play by William Shakespeare, photography by Ancice Britsi,

G. Araldo, George Fanto, Obadon Troaunya, Roberto Fusi Music by Francesco Lavanino and Alberto Barbieri Edited by Jean Satcha Renzo Lucidi John Shepridge Art Direction by Alexander Troner

Costumes by Maria D'Metis Released in United States June 1955 95, 92 Minutes Cast, Wells, Suzanne Cloutier, Michael McLeomore Robert Coutt, Hilton Faye Compton, Nicholas Bruce Doris Dowling, Gene Davis, Michael Lawrence.

Discussing his film, Wells said, Othello, whether successful or not, is about as close to Shakespeare's play as was Verdi's opera. I think Verity and Boitow were perfectly entitled to change Shakespeare in adapting him to another art form, and assuming that the cinema is an art form, I took the line that you can adapt a classic freely and vigorously for the cinema. Wells, speaking the credit titles of the film, they do not appear on screen, is careful to say, This is a motion picture based on the tragedy of Othello by William Shakespeare.

The play itself, therefore, is only a starting point, and Wells is creating a visual variation on its theme. His Othello is pure cinema, in contrast to the stage-bound Shakespearean adaptations of Olivier, Mankowitz, or Cooker. Changing the verbal into visual magic, he does not, for example, use the line, I kissed thee ere I killed thee, because he films the murder of death. Desdemona, with that line in mind. Placing a thin veil over her face so that she looks like a helpless, terrified child, he passionately smothers her with his kisses. The image remains in the eye, just as the line sticks to the ear.

Made over a period of four years, and almost completely financed by Wells himself, he was forever flying off to act in other director's films, so as to invest his earnings in Othello. The picture is in many ways a greater work than Citizen Kane. the camera is freer, more daring, the images more striking and poetic, the editing bolder and more incisive, how economically, for example, he sets up at the outset the entire mood and struggle of the story, the bodies of Othello and Desdemona being carried to their grave in a series of evocative dissolves, then the rough encasement of Yago into an iron cage high above the crowds, edited in staccato style. effectively summarizing what is to happen against the breathtaking beauty of Venice

evoked in a series of lyric dissolves as the credits to the film are narrated then with the first line of dialogue the conflict that haunts the story is set forward I told thee often and I tell thee again I hate the more and immediately the story moves forward without a wasted motion to its inevitable tragic end Wells had said Othello is not detestable the jealousy is. And here again one can see his refusal to pass judgment on people. Even Iago is not so totally black a villain as he is usually played.

We feel a strange kind of pity for him and an understanding. At the end, when Othello says, Demand of that dimmy devil why he hath thus ensnared my soul, Iago replies, Demand me nothing, what you know, you know. And there is a swift exchange of looks between the two, which make it clear that Othello has seen Iago in the deepest sense and cannot despise him, and neither can we.

Because of the time, patience, and courage it took him to make the film, Othello is clearly one of Well's most personal works. Beyond that, it is his most deeply poetic and richly visual one. And finally, what we see in his movie is a bloody, brooding, dark, evil, passionate, tender, harsh, poetic, and profoundly tragic story of some great larger-than-life people. And that's who Shakespeare was writing about. End of Section 7, Othello. Section 8 of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich.

This Librovoc's recording is in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker. Confidential Report 1955. Mr. Arcton Confidential Report, Warner Brothers. directed by Orson Wells, produced by Lewis Dollavitt. Original screenplay by Wells, photography by Jean Bourgol, music by Paul Mizraki, decor and costumes designed by Wells,

edited by Renzo Lucidi, released in Great Britain, September 1955, 99 minutes, cast Wells, Paola Mori, Robert Arden, Michael Redgrave, Patricia Medina, Akeem Teme Temaeroff, Misha Auer, Katina Paxino, Peter Van Aik, Suzanne Florey, This film, Wells said, has been butchered more than any of his works, and it looks it. Originally told through a complex flashback technique developed and expanded from Citizen Kane, the distributors have tried to put it into chronological order, which is somewhat like starting Kane with his birth and ending with his death.

This so violates Well's dramatic conception that one must be extremely well acquainted with his style to approximate what the picture looked like when he finished it. Confidential report, the British release title, concerns an almost mythical, fantastically wealthy financier, Archidon, who hires Guy Van Stratten, a cheap young American smuggler to prepare a confidential file on his Arcton's activities before 1927. Claiming to have forgotten his past, he fears it was shady, and wants it concealed from his daughter, Raina, whom he loves with possessive passion. Van Stratton proceeds to gather information from various people, a tailor in Zurich,

a flea trainer in Copenhagen, a fence masquerading as an antiquary in Amsterdam, a Polish baroness, and discovers that Arkaden began his career as a member of a white slave gang, run by the Baroness. No sooner has Van Stratton found the necessary information than Arkadon's emissaries

begin to kill off the people who could implicate their boss. Van Stratton soon realizes he too is on the list and flies to tell Arkadon's beloved daughter the truth about her father. Failing to stop him, Archadin commits suicide, but Raina leaves Van Stratton when she learns that he caused her father's death. Toward the middle of the film, Archadon tells a fable about a scorpion who wants to get across a lake, and asks a passing frog to give him a lift.

The frog refuses thinking the scorpion may bite him, but the scorpion reassures him, saying that if he were to bite him, they would both die, for the scorpion would surely drown. So the frog agrees and they start across the lake. In the middle of their journey, however, the scorpion does give the frog a fatal sting. As they are going under, the frog asks the scorpion why he had done it since now he too was to die. And the scorpion answers, I know, but I can't help it. It's in my character. Wells has developed this theme clearly from Shanghai through Arkadon into touch of evil,

and as he himself describes it, the point of the story is to show that a man who declares himself in the face of the world. I am as I am, take it or leave it, that this man has a sort of tragic dignity. It is a question of dignity, of verve, of courage, but doesn't justify him. The story serves a dramatic purpose, but is not meant to justify Arcton or to assassinate him. Arcaden uses barbarian intelligence for profit. He is a barbarian in conquest of European civilization, but only the morality of Arcton is detestable. It is impossible to detest anyone who is passionate. Arcaden is a parasite who feeds off the corruption of the universe. He never seeks

to justify himself. He is a Russian adventurer. Arcadon created himself in a corrupted world. He doesn't try to better that world. He is a prisoner of it. This was the first well script since Citizen Kane to be based on his own story. It continues and elaborates the depiction of an evil and disintegrating world begun in the lady from Shanghai, except that by now, even the frog, O'Hara before. is corrupt. The photography in what remains of Wells' original editing market as perhaps Wells' most ambitious film to date. End of Section 8. Confidential Report.

Section 9 of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich. This Librevox recordings in the public domain, read by Bin Tucker. Touch of Evil 1958. Touch of Evil, Universal International, directed by Orson Wells, produced by Albert Zugsmith, screenplay by Wells, based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson, photography by Russell Meddy, art direction by Alexander Goletson and Robert Clatworthy,

music by Henry Mencini, edited by Virgil W. Vogel and Aaron Snell, released February 1958, 95 Minutes, Cast, Wells, Charlton Heston, Janet Lee, Joseph Killea, Akeem Timmeroff, Joanna Moore, Ray Collins, Dennis Weaver, Marlene Dietrich, Zsaacobor, Unbilled, Mercedes Macambridge, and Joseph Cotton. In The Lady from Shanghai, Wells dramatized the corruption of a crooked lawyer. In touch of evil, he extends that world to portray a crooked policeman. Hank Quinlan is the incarnation of everything I fight against politically and morally,

Wells has said. Touch of evil is not critical of plutocracy, but of the state, because the state is more powerful than money. I firmly believe that in the modern world we have to choose between the morality of the law and the morality of basic justice. That is to say, between lynching someone and letting him go free, I prefer to let a murderer go free than to let the police arrest him by mistake. As morally detestable as Quinlan is, a police may be everything but a judge.

It is impossible to hate him. Quindlin is sympathetic because of his humanity, not because of his ideas, because he is a man of heart. One can't help feeling sympathy for him. The struggle in touch of evil, then, is between Quinlan and Vargas, who is civilized and of a higher culture. He also understands what it means to be good. Vargas argues intelligently against Quinlan and gives us part of Wells' conception when he says, the law protects the guilty as well as the innocent. It's only easy to be a policeman in a police state.

That's the point, don't you see? Who's the boss? The cop or the law? But Quinlan is not judge in the final sense. Years ago, he was a man of integrity and passion, but his wife was strangled, and although he knew the killer could not prove it, he declared a personal war on crime.

A pitiable figure who thereafter really believes he is aiding justice that all those people he strapped in the electric chair were guilty guilty guilty Quinlan never realizes he has no right to be judge and jury Wells Epitaph in the last lines Schwartz he was a great detective Tanya and a lousy cop Schwartz is at all you have to say for him

Tanya he was some kind of man what does it matter what you say about people And with this, Wells harks back 20 years to the end of Citizen Kane. I don't think any word can explain a man's life. And we see vividly the consistency and unity of his view of the conflict between man's morality and his nature. The dark poetry of Orson Wells is a song of the damned, but it is one of humanity and compassion. Wells inherited the novel Badge of Evil, which Universal had already, purchased for production. He transformed the scenario and remodeled it to give it form,

and was given carte blanche on the direction. On completion, the picture was taken away from him, and a few scenes he hadn't directed, were added, and a few he had made were cut. The additions, four scenes between Vargas and his wife, particularly in the hotel lobby, but they only last about a minute of screen time. The cuts are more serious, a humorous scene between Quinlan and Vargas at the beginning, in which their characters are defined and they become enemies. A scene in which Menzies drives Susan Vargas to the hotel, and explains to her how Quinlan saved his life years ago by stopping a bullet for him, thus crippling himself, and necessitating the cane which explains Quinlan's lying.

That's the second bullet I've stopped for you, partner. Scene in which Tanya and Quinlan spin the night together, and he sees Vargas passing by the window but doesn't identify him with certitude, motivating his later line to Menzies. I thought you were Vargas. Dialogue between Menzies and Vargas. In which Vargas studies the recording machine used at the end and states his distaste for that part of his job.

As Wells said, they kept all the scenes of violence, but cut out the moral ones. Also, the credits were to have appeared at the end over the shot of Tanya disappearing into the dark, instead of the beginning, where they distract from the brilliant flow of the opening sequence. Technically, Touch of Evil is Well's most advanced film.

All the innovations and experiments of 20 years' work reach a climax in this picture. The opening shot, as the camera pulls back from a close-up of a homemade bomb to reveal a whole street, then tracks over and around, up and down, taking in the lead characters of the story. Vargas and his wife immediately establishes the mood and feeling of the film,

fluidly setting up the circumstances. This is one of his most successful and expressive shots. The murder of Grundy in the hotel room, with the rapid cutting intensified by the on-and-off blinking of the neon light, is a triumph of terror. The macabre scenes at the motel with the insane night watchman, whom Wells calls a Shakespearean lunatic. The sad decadence of the brothel with its tinkling pianola and its dreams of lost youth. The final sequence, up and over the huge construed, construction project, the filthy water under a murky, shadow-filled bridge. Wells himself as Quinlan, ugly, no longer young, a decaying mountain of flesh in a corrupt world he created.

Touch of evil is a masterpiece, a goya-like vision of an infected universe. Now completing a modern film version of Don Quixote, Wells at 46 is at the height of his creative powers. Asked of his future projects, he says, my only project is to find money to work. I need money to make movies. Film is the most expensive paintbox ever invented. If I were a writer or a painter, I'd only need a pen or a couple of tubes of paint. I've made only eight films in 20 years.

I will go wherever there is work. Asked about the cinema in general. I liked movies better before I started making them. Now I always hear the clapboard before every shot. All the magic is gone. I don't like the cinema, except. while I'm working, then it is necessary to know not to be timid with the camera, to do violence to it, to force it beyond its last boundaries, because it is a vile machine, what counts as the poetry?

Orson Wells, the showman and magician is so dazzling a craftsman that too often people do not see the depth for the effect, the philosophy for the trick, the discipline for the bravura, the artistry for the flamboyance. but he is a master stylist of the American screen, and though he is too little appreciated or understood in his own country, one of its most representative artists. End of Section 9. Touch of Evil

Section 10 of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich. This Libravox recording is in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker. The film projects of Orson Wells George Orson Wells was born May 6, 1915 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, son of Richard Head Wells, a sometime inventor and Beatrice Ives Wells, a concert pianist. Since the age of five, his career has zigzagged continuously, from the theater to radio, to the movies, to television, and back again. A complete chronology of his life and work is available in Cahe de Cinema, Volume 15,

number 87, September, 1958. Some of his unrealized film projects include 1939, Heart of Darkness. After the Joseph Conrad novel, to have been Orson Welles' first film, was turned down by Archeo-Radio Pictures. Said in Africa, Wells was to have played Kurtz, a man living in the heart of the jungle,

whose rescue is attempted by Marlowe, the book's narrator, and the character through whose eyes the entire film is seen, Marlowe was not to appear in the picture itself, much like the unseen reporter in said. citizen Kane. The war cut down many of Hollywood's overseas markets, and Archeo wanted to prune the over $1 million budget considerably. The contracted Austrian star Dieto Parlo had also been interned in France as an enemy alien. 1939, the Smiler with a Knife after the detective thriller by Cecil Day Lewis, Nicholas Blake. After Heart of Darkness had been turned down,

George Schaefer, president of RKO, suggested to Wells that he do the thriller instead. Wells agreed with the stipulation that Arkeo let him do Heart of Darkness afterwards. For that, he would write, direct, produce, and act, and Smiler with a Knife for nothing. The studio agreed, but new conflicts arose on matters of casting, in particular the leading female role, for which Carol Lombard and Rosal and Russell were approached, neither of whom wished to take a chance on the untried film director. The starting date of December 1939 passed, and this project, too, was shelved.

1941, the way to Santiago. A Mexican locale was the background for this project, written by Wells, and planned as his second film to be made free after Citizen Kane. Greg Tolland was to be the photographer, and Dolores Del Rio was to star. Based on the novel by Calder Marshall, the film was never made, although some locations were scouted by Tolland. 1941, the Pickwick Papers A projected adaptation by Wells of the novel by Charles Dickens

to star WC Fields as Pickwick, not greeted with much enthusiasm by RKO. 1942, it's all true. Extensive footage for this project was completed in Brazil, and the projected film consisted of three short stories. The first, filmed in color, was the history of the Samba, set in Rio de Janeiro, during the year. yearly carnival. The second called, my friend Benito, written by Robert Flaherty, dealt with bullfighting

in Mexico. The third, titled, Zhang Adiros, was filmed in Brazil and told of four fishermen who become national heroes. Wells and his crew spent four months traveling in Mexico, the Argentine, Brazil. 30,000 feet of film were shot. During Wells' absence from Hollywood, Archeo President Schaefer was removed, and it was decided to recall Wells and scrap the Mexican project. Half a million dollars was spent on the film which was edited into a rough cut, but RKO was adamant and the picture was left to the vaults. The footage, reportedly, has often appeared as stock shots on various television shows. 1943, War and Peace.

Alexander Corder announced that Wells was to direct his own adaptation of Tolstoy's novel to be produced by Corta himself. 1944, The Landreux Story. Based on the life of the Natanzer, notorious French murderer. Wells originally talked to Charlie Chaplin about making the picture in collaboration with him. Chaplin agreed, but soon afterward decided he wanted to try the film on his own and paid Wells $25,000 for the story idea, which he later developed into Monsieur Verdot. 1945 to 48. A series of projects to be produced with Alexander Corte, including Crime and

Punishment, Salome, Serenot de Bergerac, around the world in 80 days. 1949, Ulysses. Wells spent a good deal of time with Ernest Borman on the script of the Homer epic. The project foundered back and forth for quite a while until Carlo Ponti and D. D. Laurentis announced plans to film the story with Kirk Douglas. Wells sent them his screenplay, but they declined to use it, after which Wells announced immediate plans to proceed with the project himself. He was paid handsomely to desist. Other film projects to which Wells has devoted his time include Moby Dick, King Lear, Richard III, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure and Julius Caesar in modern dress. The film roles of Orson Wells The following is the list of Orson Welles performances and feature motion pictures not directed by himself.

1953, Jane Eyre. As Edward Rochester. 1944, Follow the Boys well-sawed Marlene Dietrich in half as he had done in the Mercury Wonder Show. 1945, Tomorrow is Forever, as John MacDonald. 1947, Black Magic as Cagliostro. 1948, the Prince of Foxes as Cesar Borgia. The Third Man, played and wrote the character of Harry Lyme,

only role he ever acted without makeup. 1950, the Black Rose, as General Biden. 1953, Trent's last case, as Sixby Menderson, and the Royal Affairs of Versailles, as Benjamin Franklin, and the man the beast in the virtue as the beast. 1954, Napoleon, as Hudson Lowe, and three cases of murder as Lord Mount Drago. 1955, Trouble in the Glen, as Senin Seador Imenges. 1956, Moby Dick, as Father Mappell. Ninety-seven, Man in the Shadow, as Virgil Rinkler.

And The Long Hot Summer as Varner. Ninety-eight, the Roots of Heaven, as Cy Sedgwick. Ninety-59, compulsion, as Jonathan Wilk. 1960, crack in the mirror, as Hagelin and La Morsier. 1961, Ferry to Hong Kong is Captain Hart, David and Goliath as King Saul, Austerlitz as Fulton, and Lafayette as Benjamin Franklin. Note, all dates signify release dates rather than year of production. End of Section 10. End of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich.