The next of the series — the Orson Welles treatment done to Hitch! There will be no more posts to this blog, so enjoy what there is and check out http://aploveshitch.tumblr.com!

The last film role of the legendary Orson Welles, as the evil transformer Unicron.

In my first post on this journey, I asked why should Orson Welles be the first filmmaker I write on — or something to that effect. There were a few reasons for this: He is recognized in many circles as the greatest filmmaker of all time; he made what is perhaps the greatest film of all time; he was as much a public personality as a Hollywood one; he was, in other ways and in others’ eyes, a complete failure as a filmmaker. I have realized that most, if not all of these things are absolutely true.

Welles could certainly be considered the greatest artist to ever make motion pictures, but he could also be considered the most unfortunate. Very few of his films were within his control, many of them were stolen from him and butchered by studios, for financial or artistic reasons. He was basically forced to leave Hollywood to flounder in Europe, yet he encountered many of the same problems. He consistently had trouble raising money and garnering enough support from the top to see through his vision. Many of his films, even among his greatest, still don’t exist in the way that Welles intended, and probably never will. Welles died with multiple films unfinished, including a film that is said to be fully shot, but unedited — The Other Side of the Wind, which co-starred filmmaker legends John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich. His other unfinished projects are adaptations of Moby Dick, Don Quixote and The Merchant of Venice, with Welles starring as the villain Shylock. Above all this, he never worked with star-power actors, like many other of the greatest filmmakers — Ford had Wayne, Hitchcock had Grant, Kurosawa had Mifune, Fellini had Mastroianni, Renoir had Gabin — Welles only had himself and a handful of solid character actors. With all of this, it is absolutely incredible the heights Welles reached and is still regarded as.

Imagine Welles with complete control over all his work — even with a similar share of the other great filmmakers I just mentioned. Would we have had another Citizen Kane? Or ten others? Some artists never can better their first work, but Welles was never given a chance. Director’s cuts aren’t always for the better, however. Would a three-hour version of The Magnificent Ambersons been better than the tight 80-minute version we have today? Is one Mr. Arkadin better than five? It’s hard to say, but it would be nice to know.

Over his career, Welles released twelve films as director, ten of them talked about on this blog. But he was more than just a filmmaker, and that’s part of the beauty of Orson Welles. He was an actor, a radio personality and an interesting public figure. He lived through bad marriages and bad diets, but Welles will first-and-foremost remembered for being a great storyteller, a fantastic visual eye and an true artist never afraid to take risks to make his art his way. During his time, Welles always had more haters than fans, but that has since changed. And we may have future filmmakers who are better and certainly more successful, but there will never be one who will have more raw talent and work harder in the face of doubt as Orson Welles.

Orson Welles’ final finished film, F for Fake, is unlike any of his work, in both substance and style. First, the film is a documentary (maybe pseudo-documentary is a better descriptor), which is territory that Welles had never delved into. It is also Welles’ best reflection of art and his own career that we have.

To say the film is “interesting” is an understatement. Really, it defies most of the established rules of documentary up to that point. Documentary filmmakers have also been known as “characters” in their films — we definitely must see their vision and hear their voice within the film — but Welles’ imprint on F for Fake is much more. Through narrative, near-fiction film elements, Welles becomes a character and subject in the film, providing the narration, reactions and path for the viewer. Like any documentary filmmaker, he establishes a certain world for us, but the world of F for Fake is a world of liars, frauds and fakers, and Welles makes his film with this in mind. Throughout the film, Welles meticulously edits footage from a previous film, made by Francois Reichenbach (who also is presented as a “character” in the film), original documentary and narrative film footage shot by Welles, repeated imagery, shots of filmmaking and the editing process, while blending in three or four separate stories, to create a magical, challenging treatise on fakery.

This specific intensity of editing has been one of the film’s most lasting impacts. In his review of the film, Patrick Bromley quiped, “The editing of F for Fake, which is, quite simply, masterful (and possibly the best thing about the movie), is in its own way groundbreaking — a brilliantly assembled succession of rapid-fire cuts a quickly-seen images that is unlike that which came before it and which clearly paved the way for the current attention-deficit approach to film and TV editing.” Using the found footage and newly filmed footage, Welles completely controls his own story, and although he promises that the story he is telling is true (important to do when dealing with themes of fakery), he certainly manipulates the footage to give his audience a presentation of the characters involved. By the end of the film, Welles has tricked us by making us believe a complete fabrication. He’s able to do this through his editing, but letting true events feel like a story, and a story feel like true events.

One of the more important sections of the film, albeit very brief, is when Welles talks about his own career, in terms of being a faker in a similar vein the other subjects of the film. He depicts being a young man in Ireland and getting his first acting job by telling a theater producer that he was a major star on Broadway. Welles’ first major public work, the transmission of War of the Worlds, is an obvious example of being fakery — passing off literature as a real event. Although there may not be any more obvious examples on this theme through the rest of his career, Welles calls himself a clandestine artist, and I’m sure there are more than a few studio execs and film critics throughout the years that have called Welles a fraud.

Orson Welles as Falstaff — includes interview footage and a section of Chimes at Midnight

Although Falstaff never had his own play, he was certainly one of the most (if not the most) important of Shakespeare’s many great characters. One of the few characters to span across several plays, he has more lines of dialogue than any other character. Welles’ forgotten masterpiece, Chimes at Midnight, follows the bawdy man and his relationship with young Prince Harry. Unlike most any Shakespearean films, this isn’t based on any particular play, but a play written by Welles, called Five Kings, an adaptation of five of Shakespeare’s plays — namely Henry IV part I & II, Richard II, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor. I can’t speak to how true it is to the plays, as I am not too familiar with them, but it seems as Welles takes plenty of liberty with the texts. Unlike Welles’ play (which was a failure), Chimes at Midnight was quickly regarded as one of his best films. But, due to copyrights, the film still isn’t available in the U.S., making it very difficult to see up to this day.

As for Orson, this is perhaps his finest film performance. This is in part to the character on paper, as Falstaff is one of the more entertaining and fully-fleshed characters in all of Shakespeare’s work. And at this moment of Welles’ life (and size), there is perhaps no classical character that works as well. As Roger Ebert puts it, “If ever there were a character Orson Welles was born to play, it was Shakespeare’s big, bold and bawdy rogue, Falstaff.” I think one of the reasons why the character and performance work so well for Welles is that it finally gives him a role that he could just have fun with. Most of Welles’ roles in his directed films are either villains or incredibly serious, giving Welles full reign to bug out his eyes and be completely morose. And although that works fine for him, that typical role does get old and the performances begin to feel very staged. Falstaff gives Welles the range of having some high dramatic moments, but also allows him to laugh, revel and be lively. Welles was nominated for a BAFTA award for acting and the film was a finalist for the Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Even if the film isn’t exactly taken from Shakespearean text, the film remains exactly Shakespearean in all regards. Like most of his plays or film adaptations, the dialogue can be difficult to follow, but the character motivations and the overall story comes through. Many of the performances are stiff and dry (as comes with the territory), but following Falstaff gives it enough comic flair. The film may be more enjoyable for anyone who is familiar with the texts, but it is certainly worth a look and worth the journey to find it.

It’s only 67 pages and an enjoyable read.

The Trial is perhaps Welles’ stylistically simplistic film to this point, but it is certainly his most psychologically incomprehensible. His camera is a little less wild and the editing is far more tame than we’ve seen from him before. The set design is still complex, but the spaces are more open, sparse and the landscapes are more bleak. This, of course, fully matches the psychology and predicaments of the main character, under trial for unknown and perhaps sinister reasons.

I think it’s fairly obvious that the film’s story is a parable for the House of Un-American Activities Communist witch hunts that took place throughout Hollywood in the 1950s. During that time, many of Hollywood’s great filmmakers, writers and performers were brought under scrutiny as accused Communists or Communist sympathizers, often brought under this light by suspicious or jealousy co-workers. Orson Welles was subpoenaed in 1951 and was subsequently outspoken about the processions. Being an unpopular figure of the studios, Welles was a fairly easy target. Although HUAC didn’t seem to have any obvious negative influence on his career, by The Trial’s release in 1962, Welles had already made his last film in the Hollywood studios. Although it is never fully explained, three of Josef’s co-workers appear at his apartment, implying that they have turned him in for some crime. Much like the HUAC trials, a simple accusation, however misguided, could often be enough to destroy a career or life in this world.

Although the film feels long and can become excessively bleak at times, it is starkly different to anything Welles had previously done in style and tone. Part dream and part labyrinth, the film follows Josef K. (played very well by Anthony Perkins — most known as Norman Bates) from room-to-room and character-to-character as he tries to figure out why he has been placed under arrest and to get to the bottom of the mysterious trial he is apart of. Toward the end of the film, the characters and audience start to consider whether Josef is completely insane, and that would give light to the way the story is told. The film seems to exist in no place in no time — it could as easily take place in the 1950s as it does the 2050s. Through Josef’s “journey” he goes from room to room, once in his apartment and suddenly at the courthouse or his place of work. It is as completely possible to understand where Josef is physically as it is mentally.

As the post’s title suggests, the styles and story of the film have references or are quite similar to many different types of films and popular cultures. The film is taken from a famous novel by master-writer Franz Kafka, and it definitely shows its influence. The easiest contemporary similarity is the Twilight Zone, especially in the beginning of the film, when we are given this character’s situation of being arrested for particularly no reason and without explanation. The narrative structure of the film reminds me a lot of Alice in Wonderland, as the main character lives in this strange world with a number of visits to mysterious characters along the way. The film’s style calls to many future and past filmmakers — Fellini’s dream-like 8 1/2 and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil are two different examples. Despite all these different references (and perhaps because of them) the film lives within its own peculiar world. And although the film and its characters may be completely crazy, it does good to express this world imaginatively and with the appropriate insanity to match.