All language subtitles for Magician.The.Astonishing.Life.and.Work.of.Orson.Welles.2014.dvdrip.XviD-CycLOPS-eng

**

- Rosebud...

**

- Orson Welles:
A magician is just an actor.

Just an actor playing
the part of a magician.

You know, one sunny morning
in Kenosha,

a chubby little one, you know.

(audience laughter)

- Simon Callow: Welles' family
background was complex.

His parents broke up
when he was about seven,

and his mother
and he moved to Chicago.

She was something of
a social reformer

and a bit of
a cultural figure, too.

- She used to take a long
piece of cord,

and she was
such a dignified lady

that if she would come
to the street corner

and say to a man,
"Will you hold this, please?"

And then go around to the other
side of the street corner

and find somebody and say,
"Would you hold this, please?"

And then leave the two men
holding the cord.

So that was her idea
of a fun thing to do.

Very tall and handsome,
and she was a great beauty.

My father lived in Peking
for quite a long time,

and I spent five or six years there,

or the greater part
of those years.

- His father was a businessman

who then went on
to become an alcoholic,

a gambler,
and a womanizer.

- He was just a playboy.

He inherited some money,
and he spent it.

- And in the meantime,
his mother had taken up

with this Hungarian doctor,
Maurice Bernstein,

a sort of...
very slippery character.

- Simon Callow:
Controlling, wheedling,

emotionally blackmailing
kind of a person.

- Mr. Bernstein?
- Yes, Mr. Kane.

- Mr. Carter, this is Mr. Bernstein.
- How do you do?

- Mr. Bernstein is
my general manager, Mr. Carter.

- Chris Welles Feder:
When his mother died,

he was forced to make him
his legal guardian.

- Simon Callow: He was,
from the earliest age, formed on,

identified as being
remarkable and charming.

His mother's position
was that a child had

to justify themselves
in the room.

You had to say
something interesting,

you had to do something
extraordinary,

otherwise, you were
exiled to the nursery.

Welles was not about to spend
any time in the nursery.

- Orson Welles: I played the violin,
and I played the piano,

and there's nothing more
hateful on earth.

I was one of those.

And my mother,

who was
a professional musician,

died when I was nine.

And I stopped playing
immediately.

As a kid, I was
moved around everywhere.

I have lots of homes,

but I would like
to have the one.

But I don't.

See, I suppose
it's Woodstock, Illinois,

if it's anywhere.

I went to school there
for four years,

and if I try
to think of the...

home, it's that.

- Feder: I think
the most exciting thing

that ever happened
in Skipper's life

was the arrival of Orson Welles
at his school

because he had never
seen such a prodigy.

- The kids,
of course, hated him.

- I must have been
intolerable as a child.

- He didn't want
to do anything.

He... he couldn't
play athletics,

he just was not athletic.

He was overweight,
even as a kid.

Skipper said,
"Okay, what we'll do

"is have him do
what he wants,

which is the theater."

- I played Mary,
the mother of Jesus,

at the age of 1 3.

Yes.
Very good in drag.

- Joanne Hill Styles:
He could talk about China,

I think he'd been
to China.

He could talk
about Shakespeare,

which... my father's
favorite author.

And he could talk
about the Bible.

At 11,
he could do all this.

It's like...

Mozart playing music
at four years old,

you can't believe
it happens,

but it does happen.

But he was
without a doubt

the only person
I know who had

absolutely no
empathetic skills.

I told him just what
I thought about him.

He looked at me.

"Joanne...

everybody has their
little idiosyncrasies."

This was a very
unusual boy.

- Man: This is truly where Orson
started his theatrical career.

He was putting on "Twelfth Night,"
he was putting on

a variety
of Shakespeare plays

when he was a child,
and he was Orson.

There's a warmth
that I think

much of the world
never experienced.

- Emcee: So it is a pleasure that
we here in the city of Woodstock

dedicate this stage
to an individual

who got it all started.

Even though he was
a humble person.

- (sighs)

- "He made
his American debut

"as a professional
theater director

"upon this stage,
now named in his honor...

the Orson Welles Stage."

(applause)

- Man: I feel his hand
on my shoulder.

- All: "Rosebud!"

(ship horn blows)

- Simon Callow: He did a sort of deal
with Dr. Bernstein

that he would go
to university,

but that they would
let him go to Ireland

on a painting holiday.

That was what
he pretended he wanted.

- Orson Welles:
I'd come to Ireland

and found myself
in Dublin

without what are
technically referred to

as financial resources.

Oh, I had a few shillings,

but I blew those
on a good dinner

and a ticket
to the theater.

The theater was the Gate.

I was 16 years old,
my career, as you might say,

was at the crossroads.

- I saw this brilliant,
not necessarily an actor,

but a brilliant
creature of 16

telling us he was 1 9

and telling us
he'd had lots of experience,

which was obvious to us
he'd had none at all.

- And just as...
for the fun of it,

I'd like to stay with them
and play a few leading roles.

They were nice enough
to pretend they were fooled,

and they were
desperate enough for actors.

They gave me a star part.
I began as a star.

(audience laughter)

And I've been working my way
down slowly ever since.

(audience laughter)

- Simon Callow: The parts got smaller
and smaller and smaller,

and eventually Welles,

after about nine months,
left and via London, perhaps,

we're not sure about that,
went back to America.

Went off again
on another trip,

and then he came back
to Chicago

and felt
very much at a loose end.

- Joanne Hill Styles: He came
to the theatre festival.

That's the last time
I knew him,

in the theatre festival.

One of the students,
he had a camera,

and it just
fascinated Orson.

I'm sure this guy was
not very knowledgeable,

and Orson would
tell him what he'd want.

First he'd say,
"We don't want it right here,

we want you to zoom up,"
so they'd go this silly way

up and down the stairs.

- Orson Welles:
It's not a film at all.

It was a little joke
one Sunday afternoon.

We'd all seen either
Bunuel or Cocteau

or somebody's
surrealist movie.

We said, "Let's make one."

And from 2:00 in the afternoon
till 5:00,

we shot some dumb stuff.

- Feder: My father was married
three times.

I was
his oldest daughter.

He had a daughter by
each of his three wives.

My half-sister Rebecca,

she was Rita Hayworth's
daughter,

and then Beatrice was
the youngest daughter

by Paola Mori, who was
an Italian countess.

He was not really
a family man, you know?

That's not where
his head was.

His head was
entirely in his work,

and I think having
wives and daughters

was actually
an encumbrance for him.

- Welles had picked up
a huge amount of knowledge

about stagecraft,

added to what
he already knew.

He plugged into

the absolute latest
developments in the theater,

and that meant, above all,
expressionism.

A very "now"

and aggressive
form of theater.

- He brought, in one word,
theatricality.

He united
the performance,

the script,
the music,

the lights,
the sound.

As audience,
you had an experience

you had with
no other director.

I was six months older
than Orson, and I met him

in his office
with John Houseman

who was Orson's partner
at that time.

John Houseman had
great elegance,

spoke beautifully.

He had the one grey flannel suit
at the time,

because nobody had
any money.

The Federal Theatre
was a theater

created by
the government,

putting people to work
throughout the country.

Orson and Houseman

used it
to their advantage

to create a theater.

- Lay on, Macduff!

- Announcer: The Negro Theatre unit
of the Federal Theatre Project

produced a highly successful
version

of Shakespeare's
immortal tragedy, "Macbeth. "

- Tyrant,
show thy face!

- What is thy name?

(laughing)

My name is Macbeth.

- Orson Welles: There were
so many curtain calls,

that finally
they left this curtain open,

and the audience came up
on the stage.

That was...
that was magical.

- Norman Lloyd: There was
thunderous reaction to it

in the audience.
Thunderous.

Except for one critic,

a very fine critic,
Percy Hammond.

There were two
voodoo companies,

and they were going,
"Bom, bom, bom, bom,

Percy Hammond,
bom, bom..."

Percy Hammond died
three days later.

- (laughing)
No, sorry, that was rude,

I beg your pardon.

- Lloyd: We all left
the Federal Theatre

at a given point.

Houseman and Welles left
because they weren't allowed

to do "Cradle Will Rock."

They formed
the Mercury Theater.

- Newscaster: In a single year,
the first in the life

of the Mercury Theater,

Orson Welles
has come to be

the most famous name
of our time in American drama.

Time Magazine declares,
"The brightest moon

that has risen
over Broadway in years. "

- He was ruthless, tough,
disciplined.

- Ruth Ford: We just worked
all the time, we worked until

2:00 and 3:00
in the morning.

- Julie Taymor: I don't think there are
rules for any of that.

If that's what he needed,

if that's when
his inspiration came

and he thought
he would get

the best out of
his performers...

You know,
the crazy thing is

it might be fine for him,
but if they're dragged

out of bed
and are exhausted,

I'd... they're slaves then,
you know what I mean?

- Newscaster: Robert Benchley writes
in "The New Yorker, "

"The production at
the Mercury is,

"I should say,
just about perfect.

"Welles should feel
at home in the sky,

the only limit which
his ambitions recognize. "

- The play made
absolutely no sense

without the film.

- The film could not
be shown in the theater,

because there was no real
projection booth.

- He is an arrogant...
- I am Orson Welles!

And every single
one of you stands here

as an adjunct
to my vision.

You want a career
in the Mercury Theater

and in everything else
I plan to do?

Then remember
one simple rule.

I own the store.

- Newscaster: The Columbia Network
is proud to give

Orson Welles
the opportunity

to bring to the air
those same qualities

of vitality and imagination
that have made him

the most talked-of
theatrical director

in America today.

- Good evening,
this is Orson Welles,

inviting you to listen now

to one of the strangest
stories ever told.

I'd been contributing
from my radio salary.

I kept putting $1,000
or so every week,

and we got all our plays
on before anybody else

because I was doing
radio all day long.

You out there! Look down!

Behold!

- Sound is the...

first stirring
of the infant.

Sounds have
a romance.

Radio was a medium

which employed
that magic.

- Man: I don't like that literature
of yours going out

all over the country
with my town's postmark on it.

I don't like it to be
a return address

for all that
anti-Semitic garbage.

- He'd never rehearse.

He'd walk in,
and they'd say,

"Chinaman, 85 years old."

- Orson Welles character: I'm sorry,
sir, but my identity must be...

I used to go
by ambulance from one...

one radio station
to another because

I discovered there was
no law in New York

that you had to be sick
to travel in an ambulance.

- Man:
Shadow. Why are you here?

- I anticipated your
performance, Mr. Kent.

- Interviewer: How did
"The Shadow" originate?

- Was it a...
- Orson Welles: I don't know.

- A show before you
took over the part?

- No, no, I was the original
Lamont Cranston,

as far as I know,
but I wouldn't want to...

- But you didn't write that?
- Oh, no, my God,

I didn't even know
how they came out.

** (ballroom music)

(static)

- Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen,
we interrupt

our program of dance music

to bring you
a special bulletin from

the Intercontinental
Radio News.

At 20 minutes before
8.:00 Central time,

Professor Ferrell of
the Mount Jennings Observatory

Chicago, Illinois,
reports observing

several explosions
of incandescent gas

occurring at regular intervals
on the planet Mars.

- A lot of people just
accidentally tuned in

to "The War of the Worlds"
while...

the Jack Benny commercial
was on or something,

and it freaked them out.

It was the turning point
in Welles' career.

- Male character: Something
smacked the ground,

knocked me clear out of
my chair.

- Interviewer: Well, were you
frightened, Mr. Wilmuth?

- I reckon I was
kind of riled.

- Were you aware of
the terror that was going on

throughout the nation?
- Oh, no, oh, no,

of course not,
we did "Dracula,"

and it seemed to me,
during "Dracula,"

I had high hopes
that people would react

as they do in a movie
of that kind,

and I don't
know that they did.

- What scared them is
very interesting.

It was all done
as news reports.

Until that moment

when the guy is describing
this horrible monster...

"It's coming out,
oh, my God! Aah!"

- Man: Wait a minute,
something's happening.

Some shape is rising
out of the pit.

Aah!

- And it went dead.

(silence)

The people in the booth
were going...

And he just held it.

- Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen,
due to circumstances

beyond our control,
we are unable to continue

the broadcast from
Grover's Mill.

- Man: Citizens of the nation,

I shall not try
to conceal

the gravity
of the situation

that confronts
the country,

nor the concern
of your government

in protecting the lives
and property of its people.

- We will have to sit down
and think very carefully

about future broadcasts.

- Reporter: Have you made any specific
changes of any programs

that were already scheduled,
such as next week's,

for instance?
- No.

- Police were already in
the control room

during the broadcast,
not knowing who to arrest.

- Male voice: Flash, country overrun
by men from Mars!

Millions of Martians are
landing in our fields!

Strange creatures are dropping
from the stratosphere!

- M-m-m-m-m-men from Mars!

- Orson Welles character: Army bombing
plane, V-8-43, off Bayonne, New Jersey,

- Don't you think that
somebody here would have

been able to gauge
the reaction

which in fact has occurred
throughout the United States?

- Well, every radio program tries
to be more dramatic than life.

- Woman:
Oh, my gosh!

- Man on radio: There's another
group of spaceships...

of the alien ships, they're
coming out of the sky!

- Woody Allen character narrating:
Despite his bravado all evening,

Mr. Manulis panicked
and bolted out of the car.

He was so frightened
by the reports

of interplanetary invasion

that he ran off,
leaving Aunt Bea

to contend with
the slimy green monsters

he expected to drop from
the sky at any moment.

When Mr. Manulis called her
for a date the next week,

she told my mother
to tell him

she couldn't
see him anymore.

She had married
a Martian.

- Reporter, as bells ring:
I'm speaking from the roof

of the broadcasting building,
New York City...

the bells you hear

are ringing to warn
the people

to evacuate the city
as the Martians approach...

- This is Orson Welles,
ladies and gentlemen.

Out of character
to assure you

that "The War of the Worlds"
has no further significance

than as the holiday
offering it was intended to be.

- Reporter: ... crowds
like New Year's Eve in the city.

- Orson Welles: In fact, we weren't
as innocent as we meant to be

when we did
the Martian broadcast.

We were fed up
with the way

in which everything that
came over this new magic box,

the radio,
was being swallowed.

People, you know,
do suspect

what they read
in the newspapers

and what people tell them,
but when the radio came,

and I suppose now,
television,

anything that came through
that new machine was believed.

I didn't go to jail...

I went
to Hollywood.

**

- James Naremore:
He had established a celebrity

that made Hollywood have
an appetite for him.

He was an extremely
successful and ambitious

designer of conceptual
theater in New York.

He had been on
the cover of Time magazine.

He was an important
radio performer,

which had made him
a worldwide celebrity

and the studios saw

that they could make
a buck from this.

- Peter Bogdanovich:
RKO wanted him,

and he kept
turning it down,

and so every time
he turned it down,

the contract would
get better,

'cause he'd ask
for something

that they just
wouldn't give him,

and then they would
give it to him.

- Orson Welles: When you honestly
didn't want to go,

then... then the deals got
better and better.

In my case,
I didn't want money.

I wanted authority.

- Orson Welles: There was this guy
with a beard

who was going to do it
all by himself, you know?

I represented
the terrible future

of what was going to happen
to that town.

- James Naremore:
His initial project was

an adaptation
of "Heart of Darkness,"

which he had done
on the radio.

- Orson Welles character: ... a black
and incomprehensible frenzy.

- We were a bunch of 22-,
23-year-old kids, really,

and we had... (laughs)...

moved in and taken over
this studio,

and all these people were
looking around, wondering

who the hell we were
and what did we think

we were gonna be doing?

- We were not
in a very strong

financial situation
at the time.

And we thought
this acquisition of Mr. Welles

would have done it,
but it didn't.

- Man: He wanted to shoot
the whole movie,

more or less,
from the perspective

of Marlowe,
the central character.

So we didn't get
a close-up of Welles

until pretty late
in the movie.

There were no big
movie stars until then,

and people wanted
to see Welles.

And it was a film
about blackness,

and RKO tried
to convince him

just to hire ordinary extras
in blackface in the background.

But he wouldn't go with that.

- Orson Welles: Not knowing
anything about it,

there was
no basis for fear.

In other words, if you're walking
along the edge of a cliff,

and you don't know
it's the edge of a cliff,

you have perfect
confidence.

- Orson Welles: The first day
that I directed a film

was the first day I had
ever been on a movie set.

- The Union forever!

- Be careful, Charles!

Pull your muffler around
your neck, Charles.

- Mrs. Kane, I think we shall have
to tell him now.

- Yes.

I'll sign those papers now,
Mr. Thatcher.

- You people seem to forget
that I'm the boy's father.

- It's going to be done exactly
the way I've told...

- Steven Spielberg:
It's about courage and audacity

and "I'm making this my way."

We're gonna see from one inch
to infinity in every shot.

We're gonna
see ceilings, and...

we're gonna tell
a very convoluted

mystery story
about a man's life.

It is just...

one of the great movies
ever made.

- I didn't know
what you couldn't do.

I didn't deliberately set out
to invent anything.

It just seemed
to me, "Why not?"

- Simon Callow:
He grasped the medium

with such brilliance,
enthusiasm,

he completely mastered it.

It's the first film
of somebody

who had never
even acted in a movie.

- I make no
campaign promises!

Because,
until a few weeks ago,

I had no hope of
being elected.

- Orson Welles:
It was intended...

consciously as a sort of
social document,

as an attack on
the acquisitive society,

but I didn't think that up

and then try to find a story
to match the idea.

- John Houseman: The picture was
about William Randolph Hearst

and two or three other
newspaper barons,

but the picture was
also about Orson.

- You're a 24-year-old
novice director.

This is
difficult material,

maybe impossible.

And old man Hearst is
gonna come down on us

with all he's got.

- Think of
the free publicity.

- Kane: "I'll provide the people
of this city

"with a daily paper that will
tell all the news honestly.

I will also provide..."

- That's the second sentence
you've started with "I."

- People are gonna know
who's responsible.

- John Houseman:
Basic script was

a Herman Mankiewicz
script.

A great deal
of that picture is,

in every respect,
is Orson's picture.

- Orson Welles: One day
in the office they said,

"There's a man called Toland
waiting to see you."

He was, of course,
the leading cameraman.

He said, "I want
to make your picture."

And I said, "Well,
that's wonderful.

Why? I don't know
anything about movies."

He says, "That's why
I want to do it."

**

Well, it was pretty much
like my...

My beginnings
in the theater.

I had the confidence
of ignorance.

(woman singing opera)

- William Friedkin:
It contains the very best

of cinematography,
editing, lighting,

performance,
screenwriting.

It's a quarry for filmmakers.

- It was obvious when you saw it,
it was a great picture,

but that doesn't
always mean

that it's gonna do
big money at the box office.

- Peter Bogdanovich: A lot of the
theater chains were afraid to book it

because they were afraid

their ads wouldn't run
in the Hearst papers.

- I sometimes forget
that you're all Jews.

Apparently, quite a number
of people forget,

if they ever knew.

See what you can do about
this "Citizen Kane" picture,

will you, Louie?

- Peter Bogdanovich: Orson said
he wanted to open it in tents

all across the country.

He'd say, "This is
the picture you... not...

they won't let you see."

But RKO wouldn't
hear about it.

- James Naremore: In the next
70-something years,

it became one of the most
admired films ever made.

- You can see a change
in films after "Kane."

I said, "Don't you think you
had a tremendous influence?"

He said not really.
He said they didn't...

They really weren't influenced
by anything important.

There were just a lot
of ceilings and shadows.

- Many people can agree,
it's just one of the great

American experiences
in the cinema.

- Welles as Kane:
Rosebud.

- Orson Welles:
I'm ashamed of Rosebud.

I think it's the...

A rather tawdry device.

It doesn't
stand up very well.

- Orson Welles: Well, I've regretted
early successes in many fields,

but I don't regret that
in "Kane"

because it was the only chance
I ever had of that kind.

I'm glad I had it
at any time in my life.

I was spoiled
in a very strange way.

I didn't know
what was ahead of me.

(laughing)

- Man narrating:
The magnificence of the Ambersons

began in 1 87 3.

Their splendor lasted
throughout all the years

that saw
their midland town

spread and darken into a city.

In that town, in those days,

all the women
who wore silk or velvet

knew all the other women
who wore silk or velvet,

and everybody knew
everybody else's

family horse
and carriage.

- One of the reasons he liked
"Amberson" so much

was 'cause
he wasn't in it.

- Too slow for us nowadays.

- Often, he was the...
you know, a name

that he used
for himself in a movie,

'cause he was
a name actor.

As he said to me once,
he said,

"I don't enjoy acting
as much as I should."

- Orson Welles: The real point
of "Ambersons,"

everything that is
any good in it

is that part of it

which was really just
a preparation

for the decay
of the Ambersons.

- Pride of the town.

- Hot and cold
running water?

- Woman:
Upstairs and down.

- Man: I want to look at that

automobile carriage
of yours, Gene.

- Franny, you'll catch cold!

- Man: We're gonna ride
in that thing tomorrow.

I want to see
if it's safe.

- Good night, Isabella.
- Good night, Eugene.

- You be ready at
ten minutes after 2:00.

- No, I won't.

- Yes, you will.

Ten minutes after 2:00.

- Yes, I will.

- Get a horse, get a horse!

Get a horse.

- Look out, Lucy!

- Oh!

- Woman: What's happened to them?

- Oh, George...

- Orson Welles: A good film, I think,
should not be an illustrated,

all-talking, all-moving
version of a printed work

but should be itself,
a thing of itself.

- George, you tried
to swing underneath me

and break the fall for me
when you went over.

I knew you were doing that.
It was nice of you.

It wasn't much of
a fall to speak of.

How about that kiss?

- (with others) * Can hear them sigh
and wish to die *

* And see 'em wink the other eye *

* At the man who broke
the bank at Monte Carlo **

(laughter)

- Orson Welles: About the time
Major Amberson dies,

the picture starts to
become another picture,

becomes their picture.

An actual plot was changed.

- Robert Wise: Well, I'm sorry
about that,

'cause I was involved
in all the cuts,

but it was one
of those circumstances

that couldn't
be helped.

He was in
South America

making a film
for the government

to help our war effort

in that good neighbor
policy we had.

The studio was very...
naturally, very upset.

They had a lot of money
in this film,

and they wanted
to get it out.

Consequently,
we did cut

about 25 or 30 minutes
of the original film,

and we had to make
two or three or four

new bridge scenes
to tie it together,

and there was
a new ending shot.

- How is Georgie?

- He's going to be all right.

Annie.

I wish you could have
seen Georgie's face...

- Orson Welles:
There's no scene in a hospital,

nothing like that
ever happened.

- I can only say that
all of us up here

did the very best job
we could with the problem.

- James Naremore: As one
important critic has said,

RKO had hired Welles

to make them
masterpieces,

and he delivered
a masterpiece,

and they didn't like it.

- Orson Welles: The key long scene
at the end,

which was
Aggie Moorehead

in a third-rate
lodging house,

that was the best scene
in the picture.

That was what
the picture was about.

It's gone.

I was sent
to South America

by Nelson Rockefeller
and Jock Whitney.

I was told that
it was my patriotic duty

to go and spend
a million dollars

shooting the Carnival
in Rio.

They put it to me
that it would be

a real contribution
to inter-American affairs,

and so...

Anything that I've done
in any medium,

if it's ever been
any good,

has been my way,
to quote the song.

I was in terrible
trouble then.

In the meantime,
RKO has now a new government,

and they asked
to see the rushes

of what I'm doing
in South America,

and they see a lot of people,
black people,

and they...

made a great
publicity point

of the fact that I had gone
to South America

and thrown
all this money away.

- RKO said, "Well, maybe
we'd better stop this."

- So I was fired from RKO.

And its slogan for
that year

printed on
every piece of paper

that went out
from RKO was

"Showmanship
Instead of Genius."

I really wouldn't want to try

to edge my way into
an elevator

that's for
geniuses only.

- Julie Taymor: Sometimes you get
frustrated that

people want to do things
to your projects,

in theater or film,
'cause I've had both,

and then
you have to fight,

and I'm sure Orson Welles
had a lot of struggles,

as we know,
and lost battles

and hopefully
won a few.

- He was a brilliant man,
he had a lot to offer,

he made
two wonderful pictures,

but he also...

went bad after
the second picture.

- Horrendous. I mean, there are some
who've committed suicide.

- An Italian waiter came
and said to me in Italian,

"Did you ever make a picture
after 'Citizen Kane'?"

I didn't get a job
as a director

for years afterwards.

So then I did
"Jane Eyre."

Aah!

(dog barking)

- Can I do anything?
- Stand out of the way.

- I'm sorry I frightened
your horse.

- Apologies won't
mend my ankle.

Down, Pilot!

- Orson Welles:
I was obsessed

in my hot youth

with the idea that
I would not be a star.

I was in a position
to promote myself as a star...

- Who's that?
...And I should've.

I should've gone back
to New York

and played Hamlet
and as long as it was going,

I didn't...
I had this idea that

I wanted to be known
as a director and that was it.

The next picture I did do
was "The Stranger,"

and I did that
to show people

that I didn't glow
in the dark,

that I could say
"action" and "cut"

just like
all the other fellas.

- (gasping)
- What is it, dear?

- When you grew up in
that era, you thought...

you saw movies for
the junk that they were,

nobody took them
seriously.

- You'll become
part of the crime.

- But I'm already
a part of it.

'Cause I'm a part of you.

- And I now that
people dislike it,

but I just love his love
of using the medium

for all of its tricks
and playing with them.

This is what
a studio movie could be.

- It was supposed to be
a hammy performance.

It wasn't
unconsciously so.

That's all I can say
about that.

- James Naremore:
They cut that one up, too.

Welles was an ideological
challenge to Hollywood.

He was simply not
a Hollywood filmmaker.

- Peter Bogdanovich:
None of his pictures

really received wide distribution

except for
"The Stranger,"

which was the only picture
of his that made any money.

- It's not an accident
that it comes in a can.

They welcomed the adventurer

in the 1 9th century much more
than they do today.

My kind of fella is
the real outsider.

Good evening, everybody,
this is Orson Welles,

the Mercury Wonder Show
broadcasting tonight from

the Air Service
Command Training Center

at Fresno, California.

Last week,
an American president

fell in the midst
of battle.

- Announcer:
Guess who's taking Jack's place

on the program tonight?
- Man: Who?

- Orson Welles,
that's who!

Orson Welles!

(audience laughter)

- Orson Welles: I did
"Around the World in 80 Days,"

and it was, I think,

the best thing I ever did
in the theater,

but it was
a financial disaster.

Before the opening
in Boston,

the costumes were sitting
in the railway station,

and there was
$55,000 to pay for them.

And I was trying to think
who in Hollywood could send me

$55,000...

in the next three hours.

I thought, "Harry Cohn."

Only one with
the courage to do it.

I called him up, I said,
"I've got the greatest story

you've ever read,"
and I turned

the paperback around

that the girl in the box office
was reading.

It was called
"The Man I Killed."

And I says, "It's called
'The Man I Killed, '

written by such and such,
a paperback, buy it!"

I said, "You get me
$55,000 to Boston."

"And I will make it for you
if you'll send me

$47,000 in two hours."

55,000 came.

- Welles always liked
to pretend that he had

absolutely no idea
that Harry Cohn

had asked him to make
a movie with Rita Hayworth.

He had no idea
what to do.

The stage door keeper
of the theater that he was

working in when he was doing
"Around the World"

happened to be reading a book
called "The Lady from Shanghai."

- It's called
something or other,

it wasn't
"Lady from Shanghai" then.

- Sometimes he told
the story one way,

and sometimes
he'd tell it another way.

- It's all nonsense.

- Maybe that comes from
one of those

foreign language interviews

where I pretend
I understand the question

and say yes, you know?

(reporter and Welles speaking Italian)

- Host: We are bringing together,
for the first time on the air,

one of Hollywood's best-known
married couples,

Rita Hayworth and
Orson Welles.

- Orson Welles:
I had divorced from Rita.

She came to me and said,
"I want to make your picture."

- Welles would say anything
at any time

if it sounded
good at the moment,

and he often admitted
to that himself.

- Orson Welles:
Harry sent for me and said,

"I want you to do that
with Rita, for her sake."

- * Then don't... *

- I was lucky enough
to be with her

longer than any of
the other men in her life.

She is a dear person,

and she was
a wonderful wife

and an extraordinary girl
in every way.

- Hayworth character: There've been
many women, haven't there...

- Welles character: Yes.

- Orson Welles: I think
the first sex biologically

is the female sex,

and there are
many creatures

in our world who
are women

and only become male
as long as is necessary

and then revert
to their original

and superior condition.

You know, I think we're
a kind of decoration.

I think the basic
and essential human

is the woman,

and all that we're doing

is trying to brighten up
the place

because we've got to try
and justify our existence.

Look how little we do

to keep
the race going.

I've had a marvelous
sex life.

- Dick Cavett: Is it too personal
to ask what age it started at?

- Well, if I tell you,
you won't believe it,

so I'd better not answer.

- He was notoriously
flirtatious with both sexes.

He used to love to
lie in a bath

and do interviews
with his associates,

which embarrassed
some of them

and perhaps delighted others,
I don't know.

I myself have
absolutely no evidence

that Welles ever had

any kind of sexual
relationship with a man,

but he was
very, very conscious

that it was something
that he could use.

- Orson Welles: It's the business
of the director,

is to carry on
a continual courtship

with the people he sticks
in front of the lens.

And when
you deal with stars,

you know, real stars,
you have to...

You have
to really make love.

- Orson Welles character:
Personally, I don't like

a girlfriend to have
a husband.

If she'll fool a husband,
I figure she'll fool me.

- Rita Hayworth character:
George.

- James Naremore: Even though
this is a more conventional thriller

with a movie star
at the heart of it,

the film is much more
surrealistic,

much more strange,
and all the more strange

because, when the studio
doctored it,

they put into it
these big close-ups

of Rita Hayworth,
and they add

to the surreal quality
of the film.

- Welles character: I thought
it was me that was crazy.

After what
I'd been through,

anything crazy at all
seemed natural, but now...

I was sane
on one subject, her.

I knew about her.

And I was the fall guy.

- Martin Scorsese: He was not afraid
of being self-conscious

with the camera.

He did it with such conviction
and with such brilliance

that you began to realize,
"Ah, I see, the camera moves."

- James Naremore: Bewildering,
astonishing things

are happening
all the time,

building up to the great
mirror maze at the end.

- I knew I'd find
you two together.

But you'd be foolish
to fire that gun.

With these mirrors,
it's difficult to tell.

You are aiming at me,
aren't you?

I'm aiming
at you, lover.

Of course, killing you
is killing myself.

(gunshots)

- Michael...

Come back here.

Michael.

Please!

- Simon Callow: This is one of
the great mysteries,

why this extraordinarily
smart guy was outwitted

by so much
less remarkable

and intelligent people
so often.

- Money.

(audience laughter)

(voice)
Macbeth!

Beware MacDuff!

Macduff!
Beware MacDuff!

- I don't know what I haven't
done about this play

except do it
as well as I'd like to.

It's a great feeling
to be dealing with

material which is
better than yourself.

Answer me!

- Witches: Double, double,
toil and trouble,

fire burn
and cauldron bubble.

- He had nothing.
The sets are bad.

But the way that
he then had to light them

and choreograph the camera
and the actors in those sets...

It had
tremendous power.

- Which of you
have done this?

- Julie Taymor: Sometimes,
when you can do it all, you...

you know, it's like
too much ice cream,

too many flavors,
you can't even make a decision,

but how you fill
the limitation

shows the real artist
or not.

- Jonathan Rosenbaum:
None of his Shakespeare films

were ever really supported
by the critics.

They complained about
the Scottish accents.

(banging at the gate)

- Knock, knock.
Never at quiet.

The plague of these...

- Rosenbaum: He had to do
all these changes

in the soundtrack
and cut "Macbeth,"

but he was the one
who did the cutting.

- Orson Welles:
It was a big critical failure.

It was the biggest critical
failure I ever had.

- (screaming)

- What is that noise?

- Orson Welles:
I'm very happy in America,

but it happens that America
is not as happy with me

as I am with it.
- Muchas gracias, senor.

- Julie Taymor:
He was different.

He was really
doing something

so unique to his own
imagination,

and whether that means
his films were successful

is a whole
different matter.

They are successful.

- Like the fruit pickers,
I go where the work is.

I don't think of myself
as in exile at all.

In fact,
I've spent most of my life

not quite unpacked.

- Henry Jaglom: One of the things
that had driven him away

was the McCarthy-ite period.

He was very messed up
by what was going on

in America politically,

had been a real
progressive, you know,

and he was horrified.

- He was never a communist,
but the FBI was following him,

since "Citizen Kane,"

when Hearst was
a friend of Hoover.

- Orson Welles: I've been investigated
over and over again.

It's one of our favorite
indoor and outdoor sports.

(audience laughter)

(car horn honking)

(woman speaking German)

- Harry.

- Rosenbaum: The most successful
thing he was ever part of,

commercially, was offered
a percentage as part of the deal,

but he couldn't afford it
because he needed the money,

so he would have been
a wealthy man.

- Look down there.

Would you really feel
any pity if one of those dots

stopped moving forever?

If I offered you #20,000
for every dot that stopped,

would you really, old man,
tell me to keep my money,

or would you calculate

how many dots you could
afford to spare?

Free of income tax,
old man.

- Rosenbaum: What's also kind of
interesting and ironic

is that Harry Lime, for him,

was the most detestable
character he ever played,

but everybody else
loves Harry Lime.

- Woman:
I have never in my life

seen anything
in the same

category of hideousness,
but I adore him!

(both screaming)

- Don't be so gloomy.

After all,
it's not that awful.

You know what
the fella says.

In Italy, for 30 years
under the Borgias,

they had warfare, terror,
murder, and bloodshed,

but they produced
Michelangelo,

Leonardo da Vinci,
and the Renaissance.

In Switzerland,
they had brotherly love.

They had 500 years
of democracy and peace,

and what did
that produce?

The cuckoo clock.
So long, Holly.

- Orson Welles:
A great many of us have been

in Europe during
these last years.

It's been a kind of frontier
for us in films,

and it's a more anarchistic
and freer atmosphere.

- Elvis Mitchell: You know, a lot of
people, I think, conceptually,

like the idea of change,

but they don't want
things to change.

But Welles' impatience
was about that change,

and his interest in
the Scottsboro Boys case

and in early civil rights.

Speaking out,
which you could only do

if you were
an independent.

- Orson Welles:
My own loyalty is greater

to the idea of myself
as a member of the human family

than it is to a... as a member
of any profession.

I don't take art
as seriously as politics.

- Rosenbaum: One of the great things
about Welles as a filmmaker

is him capturing
the periods...

of whenever
he was making the film,

the paranoia of what
was going on in America.

It's really reflected
in "Othello."

- Orson Welles:
Black Othello, the outsider,

the mercenary, the foreigner,

must feel
a certain insecurity

when he contemplates
this curious conquest of his:

The senator's daughter
who fled from her palace

in the dead of night
to marry a black man.

- Man: It's partly a kind of an
atmosphere and a mood,

but it's like a horror film.

- (speaking French)

- Has he said anything?
- I know not what he...

- What, what?

- Lying.

- Lie with her?

- With her.
On her.

What you will.

- Orson Welles: Came to Mogador on
the west coast of Africa to shoot.

We got a telegram...
Scalera, with whom I had

a contract to make
the picture,

had gone bankrupt.

We had no costumes,
nothing.

That was the big scene
of the murder of Rodrigo.

And what can you shoot
without costumes?

That's a Turkish bath.

Nothing was designed,
everything had to be found.

We had to do it

with whatever money
I could raise

and stop until
I raised some more.

Now, that took almost
four years.

Now, there are still people
today who say,

"I don't want
to hire Welles as a director,"

it took him four years
to make 'Othello."'

- Peter Bogdanovich: "Othello"
was his own production.

However, there are
various versions of it.

There's his version,
and then there's a version

that Beatrice redid.

- Called some friends
who were in the business,

the movie business,
and so I said,

"Where do you think
one could find, you know,

a negative or whatever is
left of 'Othello'?"

And they ended up
finding it

in some lab
in New Jersey.

It really was in
perfect condition.

- They made, I think,
a few mistakes.

- In June of 1 955,

he finally got round
to nailing "Moby Dick."

Of course, he'd appeared
in John Huston's movie of it.

He staged what he called
"Moby Dick Rehearsed" here.

It only ran for
three-and-a-half weeks,

but I think
it's one of the landmarks

in British theater
of the 1 950s,

and it's certainly
a great landmark

in Welles' own life.

They'd filmed
a little bit of it.

The possibility is that
it was impounded

by the tax people here,

that it was lost,
that somebody stole it.

A very Wellesian episode
altogether.

- Hands off,
you two are of mankind!

Old Ahab stands alone

among the millions
of the peopled Earth,

nor gods nor men
his neighbors.

Cut, no good.

- Sir Peter Brook:
Television was the medium

for great freedom
and experiment.

We started working.

Both of us believed
that you don't hang on to any idea,

but the moment
that you'd had an idea,

and you begin to try it,

that leads to you think
of something else.

And then, as I was doing that,
turn around,

"Yes, Peter, but what if,
instead of that,

"we started
with him here,

and he leapt over
to that point?"

- Blow winds...

- Orson suddenly took off
with tremendous passion.

- Rage... blow...

You cataracts
and hurricanoes!

- One thing one can
be sure is that

there wasn't before him
an Orson,

and there'll never
be a second.

- I think I made, essentially,
a mistake in staying in movies,

because I... but it...

It's a mistake
I can't regret,

because it's like saying,

"I shouldn't have stayed
married to that woman,

but I did
because I love her."

- Julie Taymor:
In theater, you're in space,

and the lighting
can focus

where you want
the audience to look,

but, in general, the audience
can look anywhere they want.

The actual
complete manipulation

of the image is something
you can do in film.

- I can't change
this condition of love,

but I think I would be
better off without it.

- Orson Welles narrating:
On December 25th,

an aeroplane was sighted
off the coast of Barcelona.

It was flying empty.

This motion picture is
a fictionalized reconstruction

of the events leading up

to the appearance
of the empty plane.

...was talking to you,
what was it?

...it was just a name.
He was dying.

- Man:
What name was it?

- Arkadin.

- It's a story about a...
a high financier,

a man of
many countries

and three passports.

In the morning,
I think it's splendid,

in the evening,
I wonder.

- Woman: How much obligation
do you feel to a mass audience?

- I would love to have
a mass audience.

- I knew what I wanted.

That's the difference
between us.

- Did my poverty help
my creativity?

Uh, no.

Ladies and gentlemen,
please.

I must beg you

not to make
the slightest sound,

as the princess is in
a state of trance.

(audience laughter)

- Orson really,
it seems to me,

just wants to work.

But at the same time,
there is something in him

that drives him to alienate
the people with the money.

- Excuse me, sir?

- Yes?

- Well, I'm a young filmmaker
and a real big fan.

I... I just wanted
to meet you.

- My pleasure,
I'm Orson Welles.

- I'm...
Edward D. Wood, Jr.

What you working on?

- Well, the financing
just fell through

for the third time
on "Don Quixote."

I hate when that happens.

- Man: He had just done a picture
for Universal as an actor.

They asked him to play
the heavy in this thing.

He needed the money,
so he said okay.

- I said,
"Who's gonna direct it?"

And he says, "Well, we haven't
picked a director yet.

We have Orson Welles
to do the heavy, though."

This was on
the long-distance phone,

and after
a static-filled pause,

I said, "Why don't you
have him direct it?

He's a pretty good
director, you know."

And the reaction at first

was a prolonged silence
as though

I had suggested that
my mother direct the film.

- Ed...

- Yes?

- Visions are worth
fighting for.

Why spend your life making
someone else's dreams?

- I said, "I'll direct it,

"but if I also
get to write it.

Every word of it,
an entirely new script."

They said yes.

- You won't have
any trouble with me.

- You bet your sweet life
I won't.

- Charlton Heston: "Touch of Evil"
is, of course, really

the story of the decline
and fall of Captain Quinlan,

Orson's part.

- Orson Welles: He's everything
we... we hate.

But he isn't what we hate,
it's his method,

and it's that ambiguity

which gives tension
to a story.

They loved the rushes.

Then they saw
a rough cut of it,

they were so horrified
that they...

wouldn't let me
in the studio.

I gave a dinner party

not long after
I started the picture

for all my old producer friends
and big star friends,

the old
Hollywood brigade.

I was a little late,

so they were all there
having their drinks on.

I came in,
in order to arrive in time

in my makeup
and costume.

And they all said,
"How are you, Orson?

You're looking great."

It was too dark for them,
too strange.

- Welles had been
fired off the film,

kicked off the lot.

He wrote
this 58-page memo

about what should
happen to the movie,

um, and pretty much,

Universal at the time
took the memo and tossed it.

(ticking)

(woman laughing)

It's not like with
"Magnificent Ambersons,"

as if we found
the missing last reel,

but the film became
more itself.

Orson,
above everything else,

was a master filmmaker
and knew exactly

how to make a film,

as it turned out,
from beyond the grave.

In Welles' memo,

he said two things
about the opening shot.

He didn't want
titles over it,

and he wanted
a montage

of different
music tracks.

(opening theme merges
with rock-and-roll playing in street)

At that time, this was
seen as a B-movie.

It was very rare
that somebody

would not have titles

at the beginning
of a film in a B-movie.

So there they are,
walking through the town,

and oop,
there's that music,

and there's a car,
and, right now...

boonk! ...that car
could've blown up.

Whereas... but if there are
titles over that,

you just know
it's not gonna blow up.

So by removing
the titles

and having this
sort of freeform music,

it puts a suspense
under this scene

that didn't
really exist before.

He'd spent those years
in radio doing

exactly this kind of stuff.

We did this in "American Graffiti,"

which was
the same kind of thing.

- George Lucas: What we called
"worldization" of the sound,

which is to make it
sound like it was

in the environment
in "American Graffiti,"

and having it pass by in cars
and that sort of thing,

which Welles had already
thought of in "Touch of Evil."

I think both
Walter and I were

very charmed by that...
that whole concept.

He's definitely way ahead
of all the rest of us.

- Well, Hank was a great
detective all right.

- And a lousy cop.

- Is that all you have
to say for him?

- He was some kind of a man.

What does it matter
what you say about people?

- Quinlan: Goodbye, Tana.

- Adios.

- Adios.

Wow, huh?

You know, Welles didn't even
want to do this movie,

but you know, sometimes
you do your best work

when you got a gun
to your head.

- Orson Welles: I do think working
for posterity is vulgar.

(man speaking French)

Because posterity is
just as big a whore

as the present.

- Filmmakers of today can do what
they do because Orson did it.

Every art form that I know

has somebody who
blazed new trails,

and their influence
starts being felt

about a generation later.

- Plato told us that
we should know ourselves,

and the object
of every artist,

good, bad or indifferent,

is a lifelong inquiry
into that subject,

and his work is
testimony to that effort,

but I'm in no position
to sum myself up.

- It's a peculiar thing.
When you have an artist

who works
so outside the box,

not everybody gets it
at the time.

- Do you know that I always
liked Hollywood very much?

It just wasn't reciprocated.

(audience laughter)

- Costa-Gavras:
He freed the directors

from the kind of static ways

they used to have
about the way you light,

about the way
you put your camera,

the way you have
the setting and so forth,

and it's very clear
in "The Trial," the Kafka.

He didn't do really Kafka.

He did
Orson Welles' Kafka.

**

- Orson Welles: I was living in a hotel
on Tuileries,

pacing up and down in my bedroom,

Iooking out the window.

And I'm not such a fool

as not to take
the moon very seriously,

and I saw the moon,
very large,

what we in America call
a harvest moon, enormous.

And then, miraculously,
two of them.

And on each moon,
there were numbers,

and I realized they were
the clock faces

of the Gare d'Orsay.

And I remembered that
the Gare d'Orsay was empty.

And at 5:30 in the morning,
I went downstairs,

got in a cab,
crossed the Seine,

and entered this empty
railway station

where I discovered
the world of Kafka.

- Orson Welles narrating: It has been
said that the logic of this story

is the logic of a dream.

- Come with me, Mr. K.

- Anthony Perkins:
Orson's view of Josef K.

was that, far from being
the innocent victim

of bureaucracy that
Kafka had written that...

but, in Orson's version,

and I can hear him saying,

I can hear
his thundering voice,

"He's guilty as hell."

- Costa-Gavras: He would like
to tell a story

to make a metaphor about
his vision of the world,

speaking about
how we can feel guilty

without being guilty.

- You came to see me
about this case, that's good.

- Orson Welles:
I saw it as a European story,

full of old European
bric-a-brac,

with IBM machines
lurking in the background.

- Costa-Gavras: You think
it's a major movie,

whatever the critics
said about it.

- There really wasn't
indie filmmaking

in the '40s, '50s,

you know, when Welles
was doing it.

He wasn't happy doing it.

He had no choice.

- Orson Welles: There's
a new moment in filmmaking.

It's not that we're better,
the filmmakers,

but that
the distribution system

has broken down a little,

and the public is
more open, more ready

for difficult subjects.

Imagine what
it means for me

to have had the chance
to make it.

Indeed, to have had
the chance to work.

- He was an unbeatable man.

You couldn't, you know, if...

Something didn't work,

he said, "Okay,
let's move forward,"

and he would do
another thing

and one other thing.

There was no way
of stopping him.

I said once to him,
"My God, you looked

wonderful in 'Jane Eyre."'

That's the first time
I saw him.

And he said, "Yeah,

but you should have seen
the corset I had."

We are on
the Dalmatian Coast,

on the Adriatic.

Down there is
a small place

called Primosten where
we shot "Dead Reckoning,"

later entitled "The Deep,"

with Lawrence Harvey,
Jeanne Moreau,

Orson Welles, myself.

Jeanne Moreau.

I was pretty girl
when I was young.

No woman ever looked
at me like this.

He said, "Jeanne,
I don't want to...

"I don't want to be rude,
but you're not the age

of playing
a young bride."

Look, I don't care
what these people are

going to think of me.

I'm not in
the movie business,

I'm 72 years old,
I want to have a farm,

I dream of chickens,
literally,

and have a donkey
and a dog and so on,

so I'm going to tell anything
that comes into my mind.

I was in the elevator,
and Polanski stepped in,

and he said to me,
"You know,

"I was thinking
of using Orson,

"but I hear that

"he's late on the set,
that he's difficult.

I'm not very sure."

I said,
"If you are not sure,

don't engage him."

He would have been
the happiest man in the world

if Geraldine,
whatever her name is,

came and said, "Orson,

this is your son,"
you know?

I hear that the guy is
very good-looking

on top of everything,
it would be wonderful.

They were showing
"Magnificent Ambersons"

in the middle
of the night.

I see the light,

I go to the living room,

and, just before
I open the door,

I see his reflection
in the mirror,

and I see him crying.

And I don't
open the door.

What's the use to cry?
I do cry enough for Orson.

I cry...
Too often.

But I also smile,

because I'm so happy
that I have known him.

- Orson Welles: I think man
is a crazy animal.

(audience applause)

I think we are also...

I think we're also
marvelous people,

divine in our potentialities.

(applause)

You see, there you are.

You can say anything
with passion and get a hand.

(audience laughter)

If you're going to try
to finance movies and live,

you have to earn
your money somehow.

Is there any man with
a decent regard for human life

and the slightest bit of heart

who doesn't understand it?

I would have sold my soul
to play the Godfather,

but I never get
those parts offered to me.

20 million years ago,

an ape-like creature
inhabited the Earth.

I'm a king actor,
maybe a bad one.

They weren't
necessarily the best actor,

they were the actor
who played the king.

- Aah!
- Aah!

- Mike Nichols knows
how to deal with actors.

Orson would
turn to Mike,

as, I guess, he did
to every director

and say things like,

"You're really gonna
do that shot

when you know
you're not gonna need it?"

- Knucklehead fool!

You empty-headed yokel!

- Richard Benjamin: You say,
"My God, I'm in a scene

"with Orson Welles,
there's an actual

"piece of film in my life

that has
Orson Welles in it."

- I don't want the men
to pay any attention to me,

just carry on
as usual.

- Don't pay
any attention to Dad,

just carry on as usual.

- Will you clam up?

- Orson Welles character:
Money, money, money.

I never concern myself
with this madness.

- Elvis Mitchell: There's this complete
sort of self-knowledge

and almost the arrogance
of an athlete, like,

the ownership of
his body on camera

before he got to be, you know,
the size of a Buick.

- My salads are...
a bit complicated.

- But he would just
slice through.

- Dinner, ho, dinner!

Would you take
this away, please,

and... and bring me

the steak au poivre,
thanks a lot.

- When I watched
Orson Welles eat,

it was like...

somebody making love
to the food.

He really
loved to eat,

and you could see,
his eyes lit up.

When he put
that forkful in,

and his whole face was
like a sunshine.

- You think he'd
remember the lunch.

There was
a marvelous mousse.

Got any donuts
or sweet rolls?

- And he could
describe every dish,

the way it tasted.

- Welles: Schwartzwalder torte...

Kugel...

(continues in German)

Cafe creme torte.

- Obviously, when you looked at him
and said, you know,

this is not a guy
who is on a diet.

- Welles: (continues in German)

...und Sachertorte.

How sweet it was.

- Even when he lost some idea
of himself physically...

- Overweight, me?

- The words still had
the same kind of precision

that his body once had.

- More...

Are you going to help me?

Have I your support,
or have I not?

- No, Your Grace.

I'm not going to help you.

- Then good night,
Master More.

- Simon Callow: You have to wait
quite a long time

before Welles makes
his masterpiece,

which in my view and the view
of many other people

is Falstaff,
the "Chimes at Midnight,"

which is, to me,
one of the great,

great achievements of filmmaking
in the 20th century.

- Falstaff!
Good night.

- Now comes in the sweetest
morsel of the night.

And we must dance.

- Joseph McBride: I saw it three times
in a row in one night

because I thought
I might never see it again,

so you had intellectuals
from the University of Chicago

and you had winos
off the street,

and they all loved the film.

- This chair shall be the state

and this cushion... my crown.

(laughter)

- Simon Callow: Welles had, by now,
mastered the art

of making independent films,

and making them in the way
that he wanted to make them

in this kind of
improvised way.

Although he had a script,
of course, for it,

but he didn't stick
very closely to the script.

Unless, of course,
it was Shakespeare's words.

- What is honor? Air.

A trim reckoning!
Who hath it?

He that died o' Wednesday.
Doth he feel it? No.

'Tis insensible then?
Yea, to the dead.

But will it not live
with the living?

No. Why?

Detraction will not suffer it.

Therefore, I'll none of it.

(loud crash)

(screaming, yelling)

- Orson Welles: Violence always
has been part of our story.

It is, you know,
I've seen it

in my own lifetime
long before this period,

and we certainly
read about it in history.

That's the way we won the
country and stole it away

from the Indians
and all the rest of it.

(screaming, yelling)

- Welles: If I wanted to, uh,
to get into heaven

on the basis of one movie,

that's the one
I would offer up,

because it is, to me,
the least flawed.

Let me put it that way.

- I banish thee,
on pain of death,

as I have done the rest
for my misleaders,

not to come near our person
by 10 mile.

- Simon Callow:
"Chimes at Midnight" is true,

through and through and through,

and is profound
and is moving

and contains an absolute essence
of Shakespeare

and an absolute essence
of Orson Welles.

- Falstaff?

- Falstaff is dead.

- Simon Callow:
It's human to the core.

- Jesus, the days
that we have seen.

- Stefan Drossler:
The Munich Film Museum

is part of the municipal museum.

We are very much caring

to keep the legacy
of Orson Welles.

All the material Orson had

was shipped to Munich.

- Sometimes I try to imagine

Orson having different bedrooms
in different motels and hotels,

and the doors to this room,
bedroom is locked,

and under the bed
are hidden,

you know,
boxes and boxes of film.

Who knows?

- Stefan Drossler: Some believe
these films look more amateurish

because they are not really
Hollywood productions.

Many others
see him as a hero

of the independent filmmaker.

The problem is only that, uh,

few of these films were
really finished,

that he still was working
and working and working on them.

- Pellegrina's dead.

Even the servants think so.

I had no chance
to say good-bye.

Will you do that for me?

- Everybody who is
an intellectual artist

starts on many things

and sometimes
doesn't complete them.

- Since it's my own little picture
and I put my own money on it,

I don't know why
they don't bug authors

and say, "When are
you gonna finish 'Nelly, '

that novel you started
10 years ago?"

- If the wolf is
not really at the door,

it's a big temptation to say,
"Well, this isn't...

this isn't my best,
I'm gonna put it away."

- Orson Welles narrating:
A newly-wedded couple

are here on their small yacht

cruising up
the west coast of Africa

on their way
to the Mediterranean.

Out in these waters,

they might expect
to be very much alone,

but there's someone else
out there.

- He said once, I'm not going to
call Don Quixote "Don Quixote."

I'm going to call it "When Are You
Going to Finish Don Quixote?"

- Stanley Kubrick had projects
that he never completed.

The difference is, Welles
actually got footage in the can,

as opposed to a number
of projects by people

in much better financial position
or industry position,

never even getting them
off the ground.

- Man: Are you happy
when it's all done and cut

and goes out to be printed
and into the movie houses?

- No.

No, because you always hope
you can make it better.

- James Naremore:
I don't think it's a...

at all any failure
to want to finish

or be a fear of finishing
or whatever.

That sounds like some kind of
bizarre sexual malady.

- Eric Sherman: I don't know
why he didn't finish it,

and I never asked him.

But we have an unbelievable
body of work,

including the greatest
film on Shakespeare:

"Falstaff," "Chimes at Midnight,"

the short color film
"lmmortal Story,"

one of the most
brilliantly shot films ever.

Film after film
was phenomenal.

- Henry Jaglom: The studios had
lost interest in him,

and he could put together his
projects in a more European way,

financially, getting bits
of money from here and there.

So it was comfortable for him to
be in Europe during that time.

- Orson Welles: The way I figure is
that you've only got so much luck,

and it doesn't matter
when it happens,

and I was incredibly lucky.

- Salud.

(crowd cheering, music playing)

- So the central figure
in this story

is the fellow with,
you know,

who can hardly
see through

the bush of the hair
on his chest.

(laughter)

- Reporters:
Mr. Welles! Mr. Welles, please!

(man speaking French)

Thank you!

- Oh, I'm going to go on
being faithful to my girl.

I love her.

(woman speaking French)

In school,
you should be making movies.

(man translating into French)

Not letting the professor
tell you about

Eisenstein
and D.W. Griffith.

(man translating into French)

- 'Cause up to that time,
it was the seamless film,

in a way, um,
the hidden camera.

The obtr... the camera that you
couldn't tell was there.

So Welles was the one
to really break open,

open up the Pandora's box.

In a funny way, I guess, picking
up where silent films left off.

- Every single...

not just every scene,

but every shot has an idea.

There's a concept

and an idea being
executed at every second.

- Welles stands kind of
above everybody's work.

I think every filmmaker
has some relation with Welles,

if nothing else, you know,
he created the air we breathe

in that regard, you know?

He's sort of the patron saint
of indie filmmakers.

- Elvis Mitchell:
So much of what he did

came with quotation marks around it.

Postmodern.

And I think about just
the beginning of "F for Fake."

It's just all about saying,
"This is what you're seeing

"and this is what I'm doing,
and this is what you're seeing,

but this is what I'm doing."

That sort of
mirror-on-a-mirror effect.

- Orson Welles: It was a pretty great
experience to start making

yet another movie
with a storyline

rotten with coincidence.

For instance, that the author
of "Fake," a book about a faker,

was himself a faker
and the author of a fake

to end all fakes.

During the next hour,
everything you'll hear from us

is really true
and based on solid facts.

- Walter Murch: Not only are we
aware of the edits as they go by,

but he's showing the editing
process at the same time.

It's like watching
a talented juggler do his job.

- This is a film
about trickery.

Fraud.

About lies.

Tell it by the fireside

or in a marketplace
or in a movie.

- Walter Murch: Editing is cinema
in a certain sense.

Because everything
is broken into bits,

you can have a great deal
of invention.

- Orson Welles:
I did promise that for one hour,

I'd tell you only the truth.

That hour,
ladies and gentlemen, is over.

For the past 1 7 minutes,
I've been lying my head off.

- Elvis Mitchell: That kind of
self-awareness is great for art.

He's part of that movement
that includes Picasso

and Duke Ellington,
all those artists

who were aware in a way that
artists had not been before.

- Orson Welles:
Our works are spared,

some of them
for a few decades,

or a millennium or two.

The treasures.
And the fakes.

Our songs.

Our songs
will all be silenced.

But what of it?

Go on singing.

- Wow, how are you?

Orson Welles,
ladies and gentlemen.

(cheering and applause)

- Thank you.

Thank you very much.

- I...
- Thank you.

Thank you all very much.

- I don't believe this,
this is...

- Who is that?
- That's the, uh,

That's our director,
Mr. Welles.

- That... is a director?
- Yeah.

(laughter)

- Heh heh.
What?

I'm on my mark.

(laughter)

Yes, always.

Move your camera.

(zany music)

(cheering and applause)

- He came back in the late '60s.

Films were beginning to be made
in a different kind of a way.

- The money guys didn't trust him,

and they had good reason
not to trust him.

It doesn't matter
how great the material is.

Ultimately, it has to...

It has to pay off
for somebody.

- We will sell no wine
before its time.

- Orson Welles: We know a little place
in the American far west

where Charlie Briggs chops up
the finest prairie-fed beef and takes...

This is a lot of shit,
you know this?

Come on, fellas,
you're losing your heads.

- Henry Jaglom:
They all wanted to meet him,

they all wanted
to have lunch with him,

they all celebrated him.

And then somehow, you know,

this man is not gonna
be predictable.

Here's a scene
from one film

that Orson is just finishing,

called "The Other Side of the Wind."

I must say,
it's a fascinating scene.

It's about a celebration

in honor of a famous movie
director who is not Orson.

- Paul Mazursky:
I get a phone call.

"Orson wants you
to do his picture."

I said, "Orson Welles?
I don't know Orson Welles.

"He doesn't know me.

"I mean, I know
'Citizen Kane' is the...

"probably the best picture
ever made, but why is...

Are you fucking around with me?"

(knocking on table)

I knocked at the door,

and I figure some lackey
is gonna open the door.

The door opens and it's...

"Oh ho ho!
Oh ho ho ho ho!"

(laughter)

"Oh ho ho!
Ah ha ha ha ha.

"Paul Mazursky, come on in!

I'm making a film called
'The Other Side of the Wind."'

- Orson Welles: We're going to shoot it
without a script.

- Man: Without a script?

- We're gonna make the picture
as though it were a documentary.

The actors are
going to be improvising.

- He started in 1 970 and he worked
on it through his passing in '85.

I never saw Orson sleep.

- It was a stop-and-start
situation.

It seemed to me that every time
Orson got a little bit of money,

he would bring the cast back
and start shooting again.

- I'm still confused about

the area of the magician,
as director.

- This is crap!
This is intellectual bullshit!

- Orson Welles:
When I tell you that my partner

is the brother-in-law
of the late Shah of Iran,

you will understand
why we're having

a little legal difficulty.

- He owes me $25.

- Frank Marshall:
I sort of felt that we would just

keep making the movie
until he died.

(cheering and applause)

- Let us raise
our cups, then,

standing as some of us do
on opposite ends of the river,

and drink together, to what
really matters to us all...

to our crazy
and beloved profession.

To the movies, to good movies,
to every possible kind.

- Peter Bogdanovich: There is
this terrible consolation of being

40 years ahead of your time.

I wish I'd be
on time sometimes.

The night he won the Oscar,
the special Oscar,

and he had asked John Huston
to pick it up for him.

- "Genius" is a word that
must be used very sparingly,

especially in this world
of films.

- He said,
"I'm... I'm not gonna go."

I said, "Why not?"
and he said,

"They're not gonna
get that out of me."

- On my way back to Ireland,

I'll stop in Spain
and give him this.

- We were sitting
at the Beverly Hills Hotel,

watching the Oscars,
and Orson says,

"Yeah, come on
right over, John!"

(applause)

- Merv Griffin: You celebrated
a big birthday, didn't you?

- Orson Welles: I didn't celebrate it,
I just had it.

(laughter)

I used to pretend
it was my birthday

when I took a girl
out to dinner,

and then I'd have the waiter
bring a cake in

and sing "Happy Birthday,"

and I'd use that as an excuse
to extend the evening.

- Aha...
- (laughter)

- I have a sentimental
inclination toward hope.

I believe in bravery.

Worship it.

- Jeanne Moreau:
To me, Orson

is so much like a destitute king.

On this earth,

there's no kingdom
that is good enough

for Orson Welles.

- Merv Griffin: But you feel
wonderful, don't you?

- Oh, sure!

(laughter)

- As it must to all men,
death came to Orson Welles.

That, a paraphrase borrowed from
his own film, "Citizen Kane."

- Newscaster: Orson Welles told me
about a lunch he had recently

with director-producer
Steven Spielberg,

who had just purchased
the famous "Rosebud" sled

from "Citizen Kane"
for $45,000.

- But I said, "We burnt the sled,
Steven." (laughing)

That's why we enjoy life,
is that we know it's got to end.

- Newscaster:
Orson Welles was 70.

**

- Chris Welles Feder:
After my father died,

I got a call from my half-sister
Beatrice.

She and her mother Paola

were arranging a funeral
in Los Angeles,

and I was really devastated by
the place where it was held,

which was like
a horrible motel room.

Nothing had been done, I felt,
to truly honor my father.

- Oja Kodar:
He didn't want to be cremated.

He said, "I took so much
from this earth,

I should give it back,
at least, something."

And, um, they didn't do it.

- I would like to do something
which would leave...

at least...

the art form concerned
or the profession

better for
my having done it...

...to use this medium for
something except entertaining.

I'd like to have been more
useful in the world,

and I hope I can be.
It's, uh...

You finally get to a point
where, uh...

art for art's sake
doesn't seem a good enough flag

to be marching under
sometimes.

- Interviewer:
What's a better flag?

- Well, you've got to believe in
something bigger than yourself.

- Interviewer:
Oh, we've run out of film.

(laughter)

- You had me...
- I must tell you...

- I had me riveted!

(laughter)

I loved every...
Don't cut a word out of that!

**

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