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Citizen Kane defined screen giant
By Mary Shaffer "Citizen Kane." Everything anyone writes or says about Orson Welles begins with his epic American film about the hollowness of power and wealth. What should a 25-year-old like Welles do with the remaining 44 years of his life after making a movie many people 52 years later still consider the best film ever made? What could a 22-year-old do after his innovative Mercury Theater's 1938 Halloween radio broadcast convinced thousands of East Coast residents that "The War of the Worlds" was really happening? He went to Hollywood, lured by a chance to direct a film version of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." It never happened. Welles made "Kane" instead. Appropriately, his undisputed masterpiece will play tonight, leading off a 10-week retrospective at The Palm Theater. It's a rare chance to see truly spectacular older film on the wide screen it was made for. And the series is a chance to see some of the best work of a cinematic giant who revolutionized filmmaking without living up to his potential or promise. The series includes nine of the 13 completed films Welles wrote and directed and the most famous character he created acting in someone else' film: the mysterious American black-marketeer Harry Lime haunting post-World War II Vienna in "The Third Man." In addition to writing his own screenplays, Welles often wrote dialogue for his characters, like the amoral Lime in the dark, atmospheric adaptation of Graham Greene's novel. Lime's most famous line summarizes Welles' personal vision: "In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!" Welles is fascinated by innocence and corruption. His central characters are powerful, often idealistic people destroyed by personal excesses and tragic flaws. Kane is transformed from poor farm boy to rich crusader for the common man to an unloved old man dying alone with only regrets about his lost innocence for company. Welles' second film, "The Magnificent Ambersons," chronicles an aristocratic family's inevitable fall from grace at the dawn of the 20th Century because they won't change with the times or take a chance on love when opportunities arise. In "Touch of Evil," one of the best films Welles made late in his career, the then very overweight writer-director plays a once honest lawman, whose current corpulence mirrors his inner decay. He'll do anything to catch a suspect, as if arresting anyone will help him atone for the guilt he feels for not catching his wife's killer years earlier. Paranoia, doomed love affairs, and unfulfilled potential recur in most of Welles' films, including his adaptations of Franz Kafka's "The Trial" and Shakespeare's "Macbeth," "Othello" (1952) and "Chimes at Midnight/Falstaff" (1966). The same tragic vision stalked Welles' personal life. The ambitious, undisciplined, egotistical filmmaker fought with the studios, angered friends, and seemed to enjoy making enemies. RKO Studios cut the last 45 minutes of "Ambersons" and removed Welles from "Journey of Fear," put off by his excessive demands for creative control and the commercial failure of his films. Like today, Hollywood then cared more about money than genius. Welles' continued to make films independently, working in Europe and taking decades to raise money and finish films. Despite his spotty successes, Welles changed the face of filmaking and inspired such filmmakers as Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese and Kenneth Branagh. Welles' made enormous contributions to the art of filmmaking, introducing startling tricks that are now commonplace. Before Welles, no one ever used low-angled shots that revealed ceilings, making characters like Kane seem huge and dominant yet trapped. He pioneered a technique to keep foreground and background in focus at the same time, connecting actions and characters separated by vast open spaces. Welles' radio experience inspired new ways to use sound in films. He was the first to deliberately overlap dialogue and to use sound as a transition, allowing characters in "Ambersons" and "Kane" to start a sentence in one era and end it in another. He invented the long take, a single sequence that runs on for several minutes, using one camera and no editing or cutting. Welles uses it to best effect in the four-minute car bombing that opens "Touch of Evil." The same technique appears in Scorsese's "GoodFellas" (1990) and Altman's "The Player" (1992). Some scenes from Welles' films are so famous that people know them even if they haven't seen the movie, like the climactic Hall of Mirrors shootout in "The Lady from Shanghai." This grim tale of betrayal, blackmail, double crosses and wealthy sharks in a feeding frenzy has an added distinction. Welles plays opposite Rita Hayworth, his real-life wife who left him before filming began and filed for divorce when it ended. A failed marriage wasn't the only low point in a career marked by one supreme triumph and several exceptionally brilliant near-misses. Born into an artistic and wealthy family, Welles' life paralled his central characters. He had a certain kind of greatness, but squandered too many opportunities. Herman Mankiewicz, who fought with Welles for screenwriting credit on "Kane," probably summarized the enfant terrible best: "There, but for the grace of God, goes God."
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The Welles retrospective is the third Rediscovering World Cinema series co-sponsored by The Palm and Cal Poly Arts. The films will play at 7 p.m. each Thursday. Additional screenings of some of Welles' work are planned. Call 541-5161 for showtimes. Mary Shaffer works at Cal Poly. Jerry Bunin is a Telegram-Tribune reporter. Orson Welles Film Series Schedule
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