Orson Welles: Interviews

Conversations With Filmmakers Series

by Mark W. Estrin (Editor)

This book brings together an exceptional array of interviews, profiles, and press conferences tracing the half century that Orson Welles (1915- 1985) was in the public eye. Originally published or broadcast between 1938 and 1989 in worldwide locations, these pieces confirm that Welles's career was multidimensional and thoroughly inter-woven with Welles's persona.

Several of them offer vivid testimony to his grasp on the public imagination in Welles's heyday, including accounts of his War of the Worlds broadcast. Some interviews appear in English for the first time. Two transcriptions of British television interviews have never before appeared in print. Interviewers include Kenneth Tynan, French critic André Bazin, and Gore Vidal.

The subjects center on the performing arts but also embrace philosophy, religion, history, and, especially, American society and politics. Welles confronts painful topics: the attempts to suppress Citizen Kane, RKO's mutilation of The Magnificent Ambersons, his loss of directorial authority, his regret at never having run for political office, and his financial struggles. "I would have sold my soul" to play Marlon Brando's role as Don Corleone in The Godfather, he tells a BBC interviewer.

Welles deflates the notion of the film director's omnipotence, insisting that it is only in the editing studio that he possesses "absolute control." With scholarly erudition, Welles revels in the plays of Shakespeare and discusses their adaptation to stage and screen. He assesses rival directors and eminent actors, offers penetrating analyses of Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, Chimes at Midnight, and The Third Man, and declares that he never made a film that lacked an ethical point-of-view. These conversations reveal the majestic mind and talent of Welles from a fresh perspective.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction

292 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 2002

Reviews

[Vera Viselli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Orson Welles è il regista del più bel film della storia del cinema (Citizen Kane, e abbandonate ogni sogno di gloria di avere Rosebud, perché la slitta l'ha comprata Spielberg), è l'attore che avrebbe venduto l'anima per interpretare Il Padrino ed è anche l'uomo che ha spaventato a morte l'America (alla faccia di Stephen King) la sera del 30 ottobre 1938 - giusto in tempo per Halloween. Gli agenti della stradale del New Jersey, quella sera, erano perplessi e confusi: il traffico stradale, a partire dalle 20.15, iniziò improvvisamente a impazzire, con un fuggi-fuggi di veicoli che sfrecciavano in ogni direzione possibile. Ogni tanto percepivano qualche parola, alquanto incoerente a dir la verità, circa una 'invasione' in corso o l'arrivo della 'fine del mondo'. Nelle stazioni di polizia arrivavano richieste di maschere antigas e di luoghi sicuri in cui potersi rifugiare; i preti furono sommersi da richieste telefoniche di confessione e negli ospedali arrivarono molte persone preda di collassi nervosi. A Concrete (Washington) i cittadini vissero un doppio terrore perché la centrale elettrica locale ebbe un guasto mentre Orson Welles parlava di un gas velenoso che stava per soffocare tutti.

Sì, perché era tutta colpa del caro Orson. Il milione e 750 mila di persone terrorizzate si era sintonizzato in momenti diversi sulla stazione radiofonica della CBS (perdendosi così gli annunci a inizio, metà e fine della trasmissione che chiarivano come la messa in onda fosse un racconto) dove Welles stava adattando La guerra dei mondi di Wells con un linguaggio nuovo, un mash up di stili da notiziario giornalistico e radiofonico che prevedeva nomi e indirizzi, che identificava ogni villaggio, fattoria e ruscello del territorio che i marziani stavano assaltando.

Non credo che Welles si aspettasse tutto questo panico generalizzato, con le persone che fuggivano con le auto cariche di cibo in scatola, ma tant'è. Come ha scritto Gore Vidal, Orson Welles era un attore nato, così come era un artista, uno scrittore e un mago.

Trovate davvero molto di lui in questo splendido libro che raccoglie le sue interviste.

[degelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Welles has made a deep impression on me but it has never been through his films (to be honest F for Fake is my favorite), more through his ideas as well as how he articulated and expressed himself throughout his 50+ years in show business. He was always ahead of his time and out of step with his contemporaries, with insights that have stayed with me for so long that I still share them because they haven't aged a day.

For example, when I found out an anti-racism speech was sampled on a Logic's No Pressure I wasn't surprised. The speech was over 70 years old and related to an incident where police violently attacked and blinded a decorated black WWII veteran. Considering what I've read, these kind of sentiments are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Welles' opinions on race, politics, feminism and the future. They are very 21st century.

A book of interviews like this is exactly what I'm looking for, although I fully understand this was part of Welles "dancing bear" act, especially in his later years. He perfected the art of the interview and always had something interesting to say, regardless of whether you agreed with him or not. He was complicated and in some ways exasperating, but he was never boring. Reading something like this is a treat and a respite from my daily life. (As an aside: it's also a professional contrast to Peter Biskind's My Lunches With Orson , which seems like Welles continuing to distort his image and provoke Henry Jaglom whenever he could. Why? Who knows. Only he can answer for that and he's long gone.)

It's clear that whenever Welles was on the record he was completely in control, and love him or hate him he sure had a lot to say. He is one of few people I would want to have a conversation with, but I also have the full understanding that most of it would be listening. And here's the thing: in spite of hearing him at his best as well as at his worst, I wouldn't mind.

[David Sterritt]

I’ve just read through Mark W. Estrin’s collection “Orson Welles: Interviews,” and as with other volumes in the Conversations with Filmmakers series (of which I’ve edited some myself) there’s a lot of overlap among the different pieces. That said, it’s interesting to see Welles’s changing spin on various matters as the years pass, and he certainly treated the interview as a kind of performance art, which makes the book all the more intriguing. Most surprising for me, in revisiting Gore Vidal’s 1989 piece from the New York Review of Books, which closes the volume, I now realize that it’s a pretty bad piece of journalism, full of misfired witticisms and wasted space. In all, though, the collection casts enough light on the towering filmmaker to be a worthwhile resource for cinephiles and other interested parties.

[I.D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wide variety of interviews from his whole life, this wouldn’t be a substitution for a good biography but instead a supplement. There are some wonderful conversations in here about Shakespeare, art, film, tragedy, writing, etc and if you don’t hear that booming voice in your mind reading it, you’re not paying attention. Excellent read.