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Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
"Easily the best book on Orson Welles." --The New Yorker
Orson Welles arrived in Hollywood as a boy genius, became a legend with a single perfect film, and then spent the next forty years floundering. But Welles floundered so variously, ingeniously, and extravagantly that he turned failure into "a sustaining tragedy"--his thing, his song. Now the prodigal genius of the American cinema finally has the biographer he deserves. For, as anyone who has read his novels and criticism knows, David Thomson is one of our most perceptive and splendidly opinionated writers on film.
In Rosebud, Thomson follows the wild arc of Welles's career, from The War of the Worlds broadcast to the triumph of Citizen Kane, the mixed triumph of The Magnificent Ambersons, and the strange and troubling movies that followed. Here, too, is the unfolding of the Welles persona--the grand gestures, the womanizing, the high living, the betrayals. Thomson captures it all with a critical acumen and stylistic dash that make this book not so much a study of Welles's life and work as a glorious companion piece to them.
"Insightful, controversial, and highly readable--Rosebud is biography at its best." --Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Easily the best book on Orson Welles." --The New Yorker
Orson Welles arrived in Hollywood as a boy genius, became a legend with a single perfect film, and then spent the next forty years floundering. But Welles floundered so variously, ingeniously, and extravagantly that he turned failure into "a sustaining tragedy"--his thing, his song. Now the prodigal genius of the American cinema finally has the biographer he deserves. For, as anyone who has read his novels and criticism knows, David Thomson is one of our most perceptive and splendidly opinionated writers on film.
In Rosebud, Thomson follows the wild arc of Welles's career, from The War of the Worlds broadcast to the triumph of Citizen Kane, the mixed triumph of The Magnificent Ambersons, and the strange and troubling movies that followed. Here, too, is the unfolding of the Welles persona--the grand gestures, the womanizing, the high living, the betrayals. Thomson captures it all with a critical acumen and stylistic dash that make this book not so much a study of Welles's life and work as a glorious companion piece to them.
"Insightful, controversial, and highly readable--Rosebud is biography at its best." --Cleveland Plain Dealer
480 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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About the author
David Thomson
66 books152 followersDavid Thomson, renowned as one of the great living authorities on the movies, is the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, now in its fifth edition. His books include a biography of Nicole Kidman and The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood. Thomson is also the author of the acclaimed "Have You Seen . . . ?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films. Born in London in 1941, he now lives in San Francisco.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
November 21, 2014
More biographies should be this well written, this interesting, this honest in its appraisal of its subject; David Thomson readily admits to having a great admiration for Welles but this is no attempt to laud the man in posterity, it is as much an attack on a flawed genius, a selfish glutton incapable of identifying with other people or understanding their feelings as it is a deeply affectionate portrait of a man capable of doing things other artists couldn't even conceive of. This juxtaposition works to great effect, you feel you can trust the gushing praise praise when it is put forward by an author who is as capable of constantly drawing attention to the comic horror of a man that could not stop eating or self destructing. Welles is a much more interesting subject for a biography with all of his obvious (to Thomson) faults and mistakes than the kind of dross churned out by publicity departments for modern directors or even the overly enthusiastic praise for somebody like Hitchcock that seems to get published on an annual basis. Thomson leaves nothing out, no corner unchecked in the great life of Orson Welles, to weave a story of how precocious youth became the wunderkind of American radio and cinema, burned every bridge he ever crossed - sometimes whilst still crossing - and ended up grossly overweight, largely unloved, with a catalogue of failures and unfinished work to look back on, he posits reasons for the behaviour, making educated guesses at the workings of his psyche and the whole time discusses his work in progress with an imaginary editor/publisher. Wonderfully absorbing storytelling, with a deeply compelling protagonist, surely an essential work for anyone willing to look at Welles as something other than an idol or hero constantly wronged by the world.
June 29, 2011
Virtuoso Thomson's on a tour de force here, writing about one of his absolute favorite filmmakers, his cornerstone film, the life, the dreams, the lies, the energy, the magic...wonderfully realized.
And, as a nice formal innovation Thomson has a kind of shade, an interior voice, politely but insistently inquiring about the narrative a la Welles. It sort of articipates the readers' reaction, further interrogates the narrative ("I want to hear more about the women!" "When do we get to Kane?") as it itself is being unfurled. Fits nicely as interregnum, and enhances the constant Wellesian concern withn meta-comentary (ever seen "F For Fake"? The multi-mirrored "Lady With Shanghai"?) Hell, Borges himself referred to Kane as 'a labyrinth without a center'....
Only about 200 pages in and I want to make something bigger out of what Thomson's narrative eloquently and learnedly proposes...
Also I want to add that, in my experience at least, the Brits write the best biographies. Think about it. It's sort of a 'no man is a hero to his valet' kind of thing.
***
Finished it. It's georgeoulsy written, discriminating, erudite, tasteful, brilliantly, poetically realized throughout. It's exactly the way I like my literay biographies to be. Not trudging through bullshit names and dates (a la Body's tome on Godard, which slowly but surely sapped my fervent interest in JLG's work, with sheer density) but rendered like novels, narrativity, a little bit of poetry: Ellis' Jefferson and Edel's H James being perfect examples. I don't want to have to skimp on the information (a biographer has got to have deep erudition and exquisite taste in phrases to do a good job) or overdose on style (the Mingus biography was a perfect example of this) but a sort of equilibrium between it all. Thompson's a master- I'd read him on any subject.
December 11, 2008
David Thomson thinks he's some kind of superior being and criticizes in a pompous and condescendent manner everything Welles ever did. He's one of those people who think that Welles never achieved anything after Kane. He wonders if he was even really responsible for Kane? He states that Welles did not write any of the script (false), that Greg Toland was director of photography while Robert Wise was responsible for the editing. SO what did Welles do? He directed! Apparently, that's not enough to make Kane his movie, his masterpiece, among others. Well if movies were only based on photography, scripting and editing, then why would directors be needed?
Thomson insults Welles in every paragraph; he hammers him over and over, relentlessly. He focuses on the less successful aspects of his life and exaggerates them. He ridicules him, makes fun of his weight, says he's egotistical, a liar, a misogynist, an unfaithful friend, a machiavellic mischievous man who uses people, cheats on his wives, dates married women, eats like a pig and stuffs his face with anything he could find (he talks a lot about that), a pretend genius or would be genius who thinks he's the victim of evil Hollywood moguls. What other bad things could be said about Welles? Basically, any insult or evil thought you would ever have towards your worse enemy would not match up to the way Thomson writes about Welles.
Welles is not the only target of the author's wrath towards famous people. Any dead actor that was a friend or acquaintance of welles is also treated unkindly, as for the ones who are still alive, Thomson refrains himself from making a judgement. What a coward! Dead celebrities are such easy targets to criticism aren't they?
When Thompson runs out of evil things to say, he talks about his childhood and when he went to see The Third Man with his grand mother who for some reason has a claw instead of a hand. Oh poor little David, he could not hold his grandma's hand, only a claw! Tear. Who cares! Also, he has the annoying habit of interrupting every other chapter with imaginary conversations between the writer (?) and the publisher (?). It's never quite clear and really pointless. It's a way for him to put himself in value and shows how he can also criticize his own work. What a decent man!...
I was not expecting a hagiography, I know Welles was not godlike. Thomson explains at the end of the book that he does not mean to put Welles down, but only attempts to humanize him. Well there's a difference between humanizing someone and destroying the truth. Also, a biography should include anecdotes, facts, it should be detailed and accurate. Thompson writes some kind of very superficial, selective, inaccurate story, with imaginary dialogues about what people could have said to welles or thought of him. You can't assume things in a biography.
The author is too involved with his own thoughts instead of sticking to the facts in an objective manner. If you want to learn about Welles, read "Road to Xanadu' by Simon Callow, which focuses on Welles life up to Kane. Or "This is Orson Welles" which is a series of Welles interviews conducted by Peter Bogdanovich in which Welles tells the story of his life. Sure he had a tendency of lying about his past, but only because he was a story teller. Story Tellers always add a little to the truth. Thomson has no such skill.
Unfortunately I can't give 0 star to this book, or I would. It's really just food for the shredder.
Thomson insults Welles in every paragraph; he hammers him over and over, relentlessly. He focuses on the less successful aspects of his life and exaggerates them. He ridicules him, makes fun of his weight, says he's egotistical, a liar, a misogynist, an unfaithful friend, a machiavellic mischievous man who uses people, cheats on his wives, dates married women, eats like a pig and stuffs his face with anything he could find (he talks a lot about that), a pretend genius or would be genius who thinks he's the victim of evil Hollywood moguls. What other bad things could be said about Welles? Basically, any insult or evil thought you would ever have towards your worse enemy would not match up to the way Thomson writes about Welles.
Welles is not the only target of the author's wrath towards famous people. Any dead actor that was a friend or acquaintance of welles is also treated unkindly, as for the ones who are still alive, Thomson refrains himself from making a judgement. What a coward! Dead celebrities are such easy targets to criticism aren't they?
When Thompson runs out of evil things to say, he talks about his childhood and when he went to see The Third Man with his grand mother who for some reason has a claw instead of a hand. Oh poor little David, he could not hold his grandma's hand, only a claw! Tear. Who cares! Also, he has the annoying habit of interrupting every other chapter with imaginary conversations between the writer (?) and the publisher (?). It's never quite clear and really pointless. It's a way for him to put himself in value and shows how he can also criticize his own work. What a decent man!...
I was not expecting a hagiography, I know Welles was not godlike. Thomson explains at the end of the book that he does not mean to put Welles down, but only attempts to humanize him. Well there's a difference between humanizing someone and destroying the truth. Also, a biography should include anecdotes, facts, it should be detailed and accurate. Thompson writes some kind of very superficial, selective, inaccurate story, with imaginary dialogues about what people could have said to welles or thought of him. You can't assume things in a biography.
The author is too involved with his own thoughts instead of sticking to the facts in an objective manner. If you want to learn about Welles, read "Road to Xanadu' by Simon Callow, which focuses on Welles life up to Kane. Or "This is Orson Welles" which is a series of Welles interviews conducted by Peter Bogdanovich in which Welles tells the story of his life. Sure he had a tendency of lying about his past, but only because he was a story teller. Story Tellers always add a little to the truth. Thomson has no such skill.
Unfortunately I can't give 0 star to this book, or I would. It's really just food for the shredder.
February 21, 2021
Like any great artist, Orson Welles was a liar. His entire life was swathed in obfuscation, telling tales and myth making. But amongst the embellishments and the truth embroidering there were any truths. If he sometimes acted like a legend in his own lunchtime let's not forget that, very often, Orson Welles lunches were voluminously big.
Thomson seems so intent on avoiding hagiography that he almost veers the other way. His Welles is capricious, needy, wanton and cruel. But there's also the fact that he's undoubtedly a genius with a knack for charm that both enticed and infuriated people. Thomson sifts through the detritus of Wellesiana to try and come up with a coherent picture of the man and his rise and his fall from grace with the tales of reckless spending, a love life strewn with abandoned lovers and children and - of course - the genius of theatre, film and radio who ran roughshod through Hollywood.
Thomson is slightly tricksy here (conversations between the 'publisher' and him for example) but it suits the story of a man such as Welles. And it's undoubtedly personal - Thomson's years of teaching Citizen Kane mean some of those chapters become mini film schools while you can tell the bitter disappointment that Thomson feels for the later years, the times that he sees as wasted talent and squandered potential. But these personal divergences seem apropos and imbue the story with life.
Those who have excoriated Thomson for his style or his treatment of Welles miss the point. As Charles Foster Kane says "I don't think there's one word that can describe a man's life." And neither can a book, especially for a man as large (both physically and spiritually) as Welles. But as a another exploration of one of the 20th great artists, it's an invaluable work.
Thomson seems so intent on avoiding hagiography that he almost veers the other way. His Welles is capricious, needy, wanton and cruel. But there's also the fact that he's undoubtedly a genius with a knack for charm that both enticed and infuriated people. Thomson sifts through the detritus of Wellesiana to try and come up with a coherent picture of the man and his rise and his fall from grace with the tales of reckless spending, a love life strewn with abandoned lovers and children and - of course - the genius of theatre, film and radio who ran roughshod through Hollywood.
Thomson is slightly tricksy here (conversations between the 'publisher' and him for example) but it suits the story of a man such as Welles. And it's undoubtedly personal - Thomson's years of teaching Citizen Kane mean some of those chapters become mini film schools while you can tell the bitter disappointment that Thomson feels for the later years, the times that he sees as wasted talent and squandered potential. But these personal divergences seem apropos and imbue the story with life.
Those who have excoriated Thomson for his style or his treatment of Welles miss the point. As Charles Foster Kane says "I don't think there's one word that can describe a man's life." And neither can a book, especially for a man as large (both physically and spiritually) as Welles. But as a another exploration of one of the 20th great artists, it's an invaluable work.
August 24, 2021
Picked this large volume up at a mall where they had thousands of books free for the taking. I could have taken two readable books, but saddled myself with this anchor. I was over a hundred pages in so I skimmed the rest hoping for some decent pictures. I wouldn't even recommend this book for those looking for something to put them asleep.
December 4, 2018
A long read and an exhausting one. At least, I was extremely glad to get to the end. The author was scathing and brutally honest whilst also at times attempting to give Orson Welles the benefit of the doubt. His factual research into this man's complex and complicated life also led him to his own subjective viewpoint on the man's inner most thoughts and motives to explain and explore all his actions and behavioural traits. According to Thomson, Welles was first of all, a consummate liar, a bad actor, a buffoon, an angry bully, careless and irresponsible, incapable of real love, but most of all painting a picture of a genius whose megalomaniacal ego only occasionally got it right. Thomson does admit at one point to being very hard on Welles, but doesn't really offer up a satisfactory reason why. Personally, I think he was a troubled man but a brilliant actor, director, writer etc … however, that is just my opinion.
September 8, 2018
#88 of 120 books pledged to read during 2018
Really excellent biography of Orson Welles, mainly focused on his career and not as much on his personal life. I'm still looking forward to the three-volume biography by Simon Callow, which I suspect will be the definitive look at Welles. They await me in one of my bookcases! :)
Really excellent biography of Orson Welles, mainly focused on his career and not as much on his personal life. I'm still looking forward to the three-volume biography by Simon Callow, which I suspect will be the definitive look at Welles. They await me in one of my bookcases! :)
August 10, 2008
Less a biography than a character assassination, founded on unsubstantiated rumors, misleading assumptions, incorrect information, and outright LIES.
February 13, 2019
I'm really not familiar enough with Orson Welles' life story to know if he was really that boring or whether David Thomson is the worst writer in history, although I'm inclined to believe the latter. That was just horribly written and needlessly boring. Whoever was responsible for editing this thing should have been fired. The little dialogues at the beginning of each chapter were pointless and the author's distaste for his subject didn't help much either. Over all: Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful!
September 20, 2020
Great biography as much about the author and his relationship with OW as about the subject himself. Really 4.5 stars although the fourth (and final) part sputters out much like the subject. Made me want to see some of his less well known films which would suggest that the biographer has done a sound job.
September 1, 2017
Everything we ever wanted to know about the genius, in fact a bit more. I liked the autobiographical part best, where he decides how he had discovered Citizen Kane as a kid.
So, Welles used to hire an ambulance to go to places at the time.
So, Welles used to hire an ambulance to go to places at the time.
May 4, 2021
A warts and all account of the life of Orson Welles. It paint's an image of a tragic hero, though much of his problems were caused by his arrogance and lack of discipline. It shows a lot of respect for him, but not afraid to be critical when appropriate.
November 26, 2019
I found little that was not in the other Welles books except for some factual errors and some silly doses of Freudian interpretation. Fie.
October 15, 2021
Orson Welles was a fascinating and flawed figure: a bona fide artistic genius and a voracious narcissist, a renaissance man and a posh bullshitter, a man whose legacy is defined (for reasons both in and outside his control) equally by legendary success and humiliating failure. Considering the feverish cult of personality that Welles and his titanic ego still command from well beyond the grave, I was interested in a skeptical, clear-eyed account of the man to challenge the usual fawning narratives and make some attempt to get inside his head.
Thomson presumably aims for this, but overshoots to an embarrassing degree. He writes with the venom of a spurned fanatic, obsessing over minute personal failings while engaging in armchair psychoanalysis to portray Welles as (in Thomson’s own words!) “a monster”. Throughout, Thomson deploys withering, petty potshots not only against Welles’ obvious volatile behavior, but every little thing from his rumored bisexuality to his obvious weight problems. In his quest to knock the big man down a peg, Thomson also embraces the outdated narrative that Welles never made a film of artistic significance after KANE, despite film scholarship having vindicated nearly every one of his subsequent films as containing significant formal innovations decades ahead of their time.
Most offputting are Thomson’s bizarre, masturbatory segments in which he constructs an imaginary dialogue between himself and... the hypothetical reader? Himself? It really isn’t clear, but it’s incredibly awkward to read.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m game for cutting a tremendously flawed figure so uncritically celebrated by his fans as Welles down to size. But Thomson’s effort comes off vindictive and ultimately disappointing.
Thomson presumably aims for this, but overshoots to an embarrassing degree. He writes with the venom of a spurned fanatic, obsessing over minute personal failings while engaging in armchair psychoanalysis to portray Welles as (in Thomson’s own words!) “a monster”. Throughout, Thomson deploys withering, petty potshots not only against Welles’ obvious volatile behavior, but every little thing from his rumored bisexuality to his obvious weight problems. In his quest to knock the big man down a peg, Thomson also embraces the outdated narrative that Welles never made a film of artistic significance after KANE, despite film scholarship having vindicated nearly every one of his subsequent films as containing significant formal innovations decades ahead of their time.
Most offputting are Thomson’s bizarre, masturbatory segments in which he constructs an imaginary dialogue between himself and... the hypothetical reader? Himself? It really isn’t clear, but it’s incredibly awkward to read.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m game for cutting a tremendously flawed figure so uncritically celebrated by his fans as Welles down to size. But Thomson’s effort comes off vindictive and ultimately disappointing.
October 28, 2014
(5.0/5.0) Monumental, the biography by which I will judge all others. Thomson is painfully adept at conveying the life and work of Orson Welles,
this beautiful, monstrous, tragic fraud, so selfish he had to create his own archetype. The man made only 3 and 3/4 great films (F for Fake, The Magnificent Ambersons, Citizen Kane, and Touch of Evil-- ranked in that order), but he somehow managed to become unsurpassable, to "plumb the depths of film even if it is a shallow medium," and "steal perfection." Thomson stresses the necessity of the Welles oeuvre remaining incomplete, unresolved: "there are creations, works and wonders that are more significant in their nonexistence, their disappearance and their shadow than in being there." And he's right! All those cans of unfinished film-- hundreds of them amassed over a lifetime of distraction and legerdemain, hotel hopping, elaborate escapes from the IRS, and diners (oh the diners!)-- found a mythology that a more complete Welles canon never could. More than a biography, Rosebud is an indelible character study with an ensemble cast-- we're given a magician, a huckster, a myopic dilettante, both a martyr and a whore, and all the consistently elegant and funny Thomson can do is try to convince us that all these qualities can somehow coalesce into a single man.
this beautiful, monstrous, tragic fraud, so selfish he had to create his own archetype. The man made only 3 and 3/4 great films (F for Fake, The Magnificent Ambersons, Citizen Kane, and Touch of Evil-- ranked in that order), but he somehow managed to become unsurpassable, to "plumb the depths of film even if it is a shallow medium," and "steal perfection." Thomson stresses the necessity of the Welles oeuvre remaining incomplete, unresolved: "there are creations, works and wonders that are more significant in their nonexistence, their disappearance and their shadow than in being there." And he's right! All those cans of unfinished film-- hundreds of them amassed over a lifetime of distraction and legerdemain, hotel hopping, elaborate escapes from the IRS, and diners (oh the diners!)-- found a mythology that a more complete Welles canon never could. More than a biography, Rosebud is an indelible character study with an ensemble cast-- we're given a magician, a huckster, a myopic dilettante, both a martyr and a whore, and all the consistently elegant and funny Thomson can do is try to convince us that all these qualities can somehow coalesce into a single man.
July 6, 2012
I'm just starting it. It's a wild bio! But a good fit for the subject, who was, in the best sense of the word, unruly. Also brilliant, preening, manipulative, victimized, self-inventing, self-destructing, polymathic, hypersensitive, doomed. In case you didn't realize it already, by the first few pages it dawns that Citizen Kane was always about the boy genius, Orson himself, and all his cherished fantasies and worst fears about himself.
... nearly done with it now. My thoughts above stand. Thomson's summing up of Welles' CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT could serve as a fitting epitaph for its director and star: "...monstrous, arbitrary, like a child's tantrum, so immature and yet so passionate, mistaken and yet radiant....There are extremes at which selfishness is so vast and deformed, it is beside the point to moralize over it."
... nearly done with it now. My thoughts above stand. Thomson's summing up of Welles' CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT could serve as a fitting epitaph for its director and star: "...monstrous, arbitrary, like a child's tantrum, so immature and yet so passionate, mistaken and yet radiant....There are extremes at which selfishness is so vast and deformed, it is beside the point to moralize over it."
April 15, 2014
I found that I had to plough through the vast pretension in the writing style to get to the heart of this excellent biography of a truly astonishing film maker. Thomson portrays Welles as part genius/part walking disaster area and the forces of talent and intense narcissism that fuelled his work are investigated and analysed here with real skill.
Perhaps Thomson felt that a postmodern metafictive dialogue between himself and his editor would have some resonance for the work and it is the sort of thing Welles would do. However, found it irritating and detracting from an otherwise compelling read.
Basically, if you skip the italic flights of fantasy, wherein Thomson holds himself in similar regard to the talent he is assessing, then you will get much from this honest, detailed and even-handed treatment of the myth that is Orson Welles.
Perhaps Thomson felt that a postmodern metafictive dialogue between himself and his editor would have some resonance for the work and it is the sort of thing Welles would do. However, found it irritating and detracting from an otherwise compelling read.
Basically, if you skip the italic flights of fantasy, wherein Thomson holds himself in similar regard to the talent he is assessing, then you will get much from this honest, detailed and even-handed treatment of the myth that is Orson Welles.
August 14, 2015
Mid 3. Thomson has provided his version of a warts-and-all biography of the acclaimed director of what most critics maintain is the greatest film ever made. Yet, in asserting that from this apogee of success and artistic achievement, the remainder of Wells' career can be discarded to the cultural dustbin is to fail to appreciate other features of his work and to provide far too unfavourable a judgement on Wells as performer and as an individual of vision and ambition. Thus, despite the inclusion of many fascinating details of his subject's meteoric rise and ignominious provate life, the author's biography suffers slightly due to its overtly negative assessment of the director's merits and legacy.
March 7, 2013
Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles is an intriguiging biography mainly because its subject, Orson Welles, led an interesting, colorful productive life. Thomson does an adequate job with the material, but also uses weird devices such as writing short dialogues with himself at various points. He also tends to enjoy pilloring Welles for his excesses. He appreciates Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, but has a less charitable view of Welles' many independent, European films (many of which are also regarded as masterpieces by other critics). Still, Thomson works in enough detail to keep it interesting.
November 13, 2014
The least accurate book on Orson Welles, widely discredited among film scholars and basically anyone who knew the guy.
The prose is pretentious and the "facts" are dramatic (though essentially all fiction) I guess that's why it has remained popular. But don't expect any remotely accurate information - as can easily be ascertained by books that actually did research, such as the Simon Callow biographies, the critical works of Naremore, McBride, and Rosenbaum, and, perhaps most luminous - the comprehensive Orson Welles at Work.
A good read if you are interested in what Orson Welles was like in the alternate universe of Thomson's mind.
The prose is pretentious and the "facts" are dramatic (though essentially all fiction) I guess that's why it has remained popular. But don't expect any remotely accurate information - as can easily be ascertained by books that actually did research, such as the Simon Callow biographies, the critical works of Naremore, McBride, and Rosenbaum, and, perhaps most luminous - the comprehensive Orson Welles at Work.
A good read if you are interested in what Orson Welles was like in the alternate universe of Thomson's mind.
November 6, 2012
Thomson's prose isn't to everyone's taste I'm sure. A little light on detail at times, and full of the author's own speculation on Welles rather than a straight factual biography. That said, I did find myself falling into admiration for Welles as a director once again and by the end of the book was pulling out my Welles DVDs for a watch/rewatch.
Thomson sees Welles as a man who peaked his creativity too soon, who was obsessed with his own mythology and never quite lived up to his early potential. Perhaps a bit like the book itself.
Thomson sees Welles as a man who peaked his creativity too soon, who was obsessed with his own mythology and never quite lived up to his early potential. Perhaps a bit like the book itself.
December 9, 2009
Orson Welles has intrigued me for a good portion of my life. Having read this "biography," I might say the same on behalf of David Thomson. This volume, much as I enjoyed it, should be sprinkled with a generous amount of salt; Thomson assumes some Welles motives and motivations that might be considered speculative. However, Thomson makes his personal intrusion abundantly clear, and his analyses are entirely feasible -- and could be points of departure for some enchanting conversations.
January 18, 2010
Despite Thomson's distaste for nearly everything post-Kane, this book is still a fascinating look at Welles' life both on and off-screen. I happen to strongly disagree with the author's negative appraisals of many films (especially "Lady from Shanghai", "Mr. Arkadin" and "The Stranger", all films I enjoy immensely), however I still enjoyed his discussion of them because his views are insightful, if strangely harsh.
January 2, 2012
Intriguing biography of one of the 20th century's great artistic innovators who nonetheless squandered his talent with narcissistic self-destruction. If nothing else, the book will unlock "Citizen Kane" in the way only David Thomson can.
April 26, 2008
A fascinating biography of a complex and tragic figure; the prose really pulls you in.
February 10, 2008
While you start this biography already knowing that Welles was a larger than life character,
October 16, 2008
More of a blow job than a biography.
May 17, 2012
One of the few books I have started and did not finish. Just too much detail. I don't care to know what Orson ate for breakfast on each day he was filming a movie.
February 9, 2013
Great book for cinema buffs.
September 9, 2014
Enjoyed this. Filled in the gaps about Welles's life. Very interesting. Would have given it a better review if the author hadn't had an obvious agenda and attitude about his subject.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews