Orson Welles : six films analyzed, scene by scene

277 Pages·2006·2.68 MB·English

by  Rasmussen

Orson Welles

Orson Welles
Six Films Analyzed,
Scene by Scene
R R
ANDY ASMUSSEN
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Rasmussen, Randy Loren, ¡953–
Orson Welles : six films analyzed, scene by scene / Randy
Rasmussen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7864-2603-4
softcover : 50# alkaline paper
¡. Welles, Orson, ¡9¡5–¡985—Criticism and interpretation.
I. Title.
PN1998.3.W45R37 2006
791.4302'33092—dc22 2006012348
British Library cataloguing data are available
©2006 Randy Rasmussen. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover photograph: Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane
in the ¡94¡ film Citizen Kane(RKO/Photofest)
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 6¡¡, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Preface vii
Introduction: Fun House Mirrors 1
1. Citizen Kane: Man through a Prism 5
2. The Magnificent Ambersons: A House Divided 61
3. The Lady from Shanghai: Lethal Habits 104
4. Touch of Evil: No Man’s Land 136
5. The Trial: Waking into Nightmare 179
6. Chimes at Midnight: Rough Winds 217
Selected Bibliography 265
Index 267
v
Acknowledgments
My thanks to Tony Houdek, Brian Baier, Richard Suggs, and Karen
Cloud for technical assistance in my never-ending battles with HAL
9000. And to Michael Anderegg for sharing his expertise and resources
on Orson Welles.
vi
Preface
The ways in which to write about Orson Welles and his films are as varied as the tal-
ents of the man himself. In addition to the usual biographies, interviews, and critical stud-
ies, there are the more specifically focused approaches. Michael Anderegg wrote about
Welles’s multimedia adaptations of the plays of William Shakespeare in Orson Welles, Shake-
speare, and Popular Culture. Robert Carringer’s The Magnificent Ambersons: A Reconstruc-
tion attempts to fill the gaping holes in a great film ripped apart by studio bosses who took
it away from Welles. Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios, by Clin-
ton Heylin, chronicles that battle and many others the writer, director and actor fought to
make his kind of movies. Peter Conrad’s Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life purports to
draw analogies between the stories he told on screen and the myths he created and encour-
aged o› screen about his own life.
My approach to the subject of Welles’s movies is strictly viewer based—a view from
the cheap seats, similar to Jed Leland’s perspective of Susan Alexander Kane’s opera debut
in Citizen Kane. As in my previous book about the movies of Stanley Kubrick, I try to
delineate the dramatic rhythms of specific movies as they unfold on screen and from the
soundtrack. While doing so I draw frequent analogies to other movies, and sometimes
quote from the impressions of other commentators, but always within the scene-by-scene
progression dictated by the film under discussion.
Welles was a very self-conscious storyteller who often invited his audience to ques-
tion the methods and veracity of what they see and hear. He was that rare magician who
both pulled the wool over our eyes, for our delight, and unravelled the wool before our eyes,
encouraging us to ponder the nature of the magic itself. Many of the characters in Welles’s
movies are also magicians of a sort, creating impressions intended to manipulate otherchar-
acters, or even themselves, into moving in one direction or another. But unlike Welles, few
of them voluntarily expose their tricks to the scrutiny of their victims.
By involving us so intimately in the foundations as well as the surfaces of what we see
and hear in his stories, Welles struck an exhilarating, sometimes precarious balance between
subjective and objective points of view. At the very least, his approach to making movies
should inspire those of us who presume to analyze his work to acknowledge that we too,
however modestly, are engaged in manipulating perceptions, and that our personal incli-
vii
viii Preface
nations and capacities and motivations inevitably shape our e›orts. As in Welles’s adapta-
tion of The Trial, it is important to keep in mind the projector as well as the image being
projected.
Like those of Kubrick, the movies of Orson Welles unfold in symphonic fashion, with
each new scene building and reflecting back in some manner, ironically or otherwise, on
its predecessors. By approaching them in a detailed, linear, scene-by-scene manner, I can
hopefully trace their dramatic development. As to why I chose to write about the work of
Orson Welles, the answer is simple. Fascination and pleasure. Writing at length and in
detail about movies to which I am not fundamentally attracted would be merely a chore,
unless of course the movies were incidental to the promotion of something else.
My research too was simple: hour upon hour of watching Welles’s films on videotape
and DVD, wearing out the rewind buttons on several machines. Making notes. Writing.
Revising. Returning to a particular scene to make sure I remembered the details or the
sequence of events correctly. Reading articles and books to compare my impressions with
those of other commentators who, though perhaps more qualified than myself to o›er an
opinion, often di›ered passionately from equally qualified colleagues.
My choice to write about Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from
Shanghai, Touch of Evil, The Trial, and Chimes at Midnightrather than Welles’s other films
involved several factors. First, the matter of limited space. Macbeth, F for Fake, and The
Immortal Story all now exist in more or less the form Welles intended, and are all worthy
of inclusion in any study. There just wasn’t enough space to include them without com-
promising my approach to the others. Othello is a great film recently restored and released
on DVD. But much of the soundtrack was enhanced and altered too, including a newly
recorded version of the original music score, and I was in no position to compare this
released version with its predecessors. The Stranger su›ered greatly from studio interfer-
ence, and in some respects was the most compromised by Welles himself as he tried to tai-
lor his work to conventional Hollywood expectations. The Magnificent Ambersons and The
Lady from Shanghai, and to a much lesser extent Touch of Evil, also su›ered from the
unwanted interference of others. But Welles’s potent ambitions for those works shine
through so fiercely in spite of that interference that I had to include them.
Given the time, money, and opportunity, Orson Welles might have gone on tinkering
with and revising his old movies until the end of his life, as he did in fact with the never
finished, perhaps never intended to be finished, Don Quixote. Magic acts are always in need
of a little fine tuning. Taking my cue from Orson Welles himself, I o›er this incomplete
but passionate interpretation of his movies. Ten years ago my scattered notes on these same
movies probably read very di›erently than my current observations. Ten years from now,
if I’m still around, they’ll have probably changed again, though not, I hope, beyond recog-
nition. That’s the nature of the game, as Jed Leland, Mr. Bernstein, and Susan Alexander
discover in my favorite movie.
Introduction: Fun House Mirrors
More years ago than I care to admit, a college buddy and I attended a campus show-
ing of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Afterwards we argued about the movie
through half the night—those being the days when a good night’s sleep seemed less imper-
ative than it does now. We parted company on less than cordial terms. If anyone had asked
us to describe the movie, we would no doubt have supplied two very di›erent commen-
taries. And over time each of those commentaries would likely have undergone revision,
because at any given moment each of us brings a unique set of experiences, inclinations,
and sensibilities to any perception.
Telling and retelling stories is a common practice among characters in the films of
Orson Welles: from five individuals and one newsreel telling the story of Charlie Kane in
Citizen Kaneto Falsta› and Prince Hal playacting a reunion between Hal and King Henry
IV before it even occurs in Chimes at Midnight. Various colleagues of and commentators
on Welles have supplied di›ering accounts of how his movies were made. Of who did what,
when, and why. And then there are the critics, who in the course of explicating a Welles
film describe in their own words the action from a scene or two.
To describe an event after the fact, or to imagine it before it occurs, is to interpret it.
Details can be added or subtracted. Mood can be altered by changing descriptive terminol-
ogy and emphasis. We are all storytellers, whether recollecting events from our own past
or telling someone else what we read in a book or saw or heard at a school reunion, at work,
at home, or at the scene of a car accident. The persuasiveness and veracity of such accounts
varies from person to person. But no single account provides a complete picture. And even
if one storyteller could paint a complete picture, who among his audience could absorb,
comprehend and retain it all?
It is not surprising that a man who could show many di›erent faces to so many
acquaintances over the course of a lifetime would be so adept at dramatizing the vagaries
of human nature, behavior, thought, and feeling. There is hardly any impression in a Welles
movie that doesn’t serve as a mask for something else often contrary to it. Not because his
characters are frauds, but because each of them is eminently human, with multiple, con-
tradictory, and changing needs, impulses, and perspectives. In Orson Welles: One Man Band
Welles contends “there is a villain in each of us, a murderer in each of us, a fascist in each
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