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Cinema of Orson Welles - Peter Bogdanovich · Mastering the Heart and Mind

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  Speaker 1: Introduction of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. A LibriVox recording is in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information, were to volunteer, please
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  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Ben Tucker The Cinema
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  Speaker 1: of Orson Wells. Orson Wells is a giant with the
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  Speaker 1: face of a child, a tree filled with birds and shadows,
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  Speaker 1: a dog who has broken loose from his chains and
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  Speaker 1: gone to sleep on the flower bed. He is an
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  Speaker 1: active loafer, a wise madman, a solitude surrounded by humanity.
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  Speaker 1: John Cocteaux Orson's courage, like everything else about him, imagination, egotism, generosity, ruthlessness, forbearance, impatience, sensitivity, grossness,
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  Speaker 1: and vision is magnificently out of proportion. Michael macleamoi, One
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  Speaker 1: Orson Wells is enough. Two would undoubtedly bring about the
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  Speaker 1: end of civilization. Richard Wright Orson Wells is, without a doubt,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: one of the ten greatest filmmakers in the world. Francois Troufau.
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  Speaker 1: The theater and cinema are a glitter with names. Despite
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  Speaker 1: those who decry the worst manifestations of the star system.
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  Speaker 1: This has always been so, and always will be some
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  Speaker 1: A very few of these names shine steadfastly like fixed planets.
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  Speaker 1: Others shoot briefly across the night sky. There is one name, however,
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  Speaker 1: which burns as brightly as any, but seems to have
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  Speaker 1: no fixed place. Orson Wells is a wandering star of
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  Speaker 1: spasmodic incandescence. You never know what he will be doing next.
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  Speaker 1: Michael Redgrave. The American cinema is not the cinema of
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  Speaker 1: Hawks or Griffith. It is the cinema of Wells Wells.
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  Speaker 1: The new Caravaggio, Jean de Marcy. I want to use
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  Speaker 1: this motion picture camera as an instrument of poetry. Orson Wells.
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  Speaker 1: The cinema of Orson Wells. Like the movies of Renoir,
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  Speaker 1: Chaplain or john Ford, the films of Orson Wells are
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  Speaker 1: distinctively autographed by their maker. Film is a very personal thing.
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  Speaker 1: Wells has said much more than the theater, because the
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  Speaker 1: film is a dead thing, a ribbon of celluloid, like
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  Speaker 1: the paper on which one writes a poem. Theater is
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  Speaker 1: a collective experience. Cinema is the work of one single person,
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  Speaker 1: the director. Footnote unless otherwise specified, the quotations are taken
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  Speaker 1: from an interview with Orson Wells in Cahier Do Cinema,
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  Speaker 1: Volume fifteen eighty seven, September nineteen fifty eight, end of footnote.
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  Speaker 1: In twenty years, Wells has made just seven pictures that
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  Speaker 1: can fairly be called his own. But there is a
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  Speaker 1: personal unity in his work that can be found in
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  Speaker 1: only the very greatest poets of the cinema. I believe
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  Speaker 1: that any work is good only in the measure it
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  Speaker 1: expresses the man who created it. One may enter at
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  Speaker 1: any point in a Well's film and never doubt who
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  Speaker 1: its director is. Not only because of his darkly lyric imagery,
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  Speaker 1: his mysterious, brooding sense of the evil in the world,
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  Speaker 1: his remarkable technical ingenuity and originality, his witty probing dialogue,
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  Speaker 1: or indeed his own physical presence as an actor, but
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  Speaker 1: also because of the profound theme that runs through all
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  Speaker 1: his work, Man as a tragic victim of the paradox
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  Speaker 1: between his sense of morality and his own dark nature.
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  Speaker 1: All the leading Well's characters are damned, from Charles Foster
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  Speaker 1: Caine to Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil, all of
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  Speaker 1: them larger than life, morally detestable men, for whom somehow
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  Speaker 1: one has deep sympathy. As Wells put it, I don't
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  Speaker 1: detest them, I detest the way they act. That is
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  Speaker 1: my point of tension. All the characters I played are
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  Speaker 1: various forms of faust. I hate all forms of foul
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  Speaker 1: because I believe it's impossible for man to be great
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  Speaker 1: without admitting there is something greater than himself, either the
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  Speaker 1: law or God or art. But there must be something
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  Speaker 1: greater than man. I have sympathy for those characters humanly,
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  Speaker 1: but not morally. And because of this compassion, Wells refuses
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  Speaker 1: to judge his people. He shows them for what they are,
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  Speaker 1: but his jacks are never one eyed. He withholds judgment
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  Speaker 1: on the great bastards he portrays. One has no right
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  Speaker 1: to judge, except by a religion he has said, to
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  Speaker 1: decide if someone is good or bad as the law
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  Speaker 1: of the jungle. The dark poetry of Orson Wells is
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  Speaker 1: peopled with men who, in some form or another, have
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  Speaker 1: made themselves a world over which to reign, have placed
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  Speaker 1: themselves above the law of God or art. Cain, who tried,
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  Speaker 1: with his newspapers and money to win the love of
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  Speaker 1: the people, the Ambersons symbols of the false pride of
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  Speaker 1: a useless, decaying aristocracy. Banister, the lawyer in the Lady
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  Speaker 1: from Shanghai, who placed himself above the law, Macbeth with
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  Speaker 1: his vaulting ambition, Othello's green eyed monster, Arkaden, the adventurer
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  Speaker 1: who created a world unto himself and tried to destroy
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  Speaker 1: his past. Quinland, the cop who thought he could be
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  Speaker 1: the law and final judge. These are the doomed classic
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  Speaker 1: characters of a faustian world, the leading figures in the
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  Speaker 1: seven tragic poems of Orson Wells. For more than anything else,
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  Speaker 1: the cinema of Wells is a poetic one, painted with dazzling,
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  Speaker 1: florid bold strokes. Not to speak of his accomplishments in
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  Speaker 1: the theater or radio. Wells is perhaps the most striking
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  Speaker 1: movie maker of our time. His films sing, flow, and
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  Speaker 1: vibrate with the vision of a thrilling original talent and
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  Speaker 1: a consummate inspired artist. End of introduction Section one of
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  Speaker 1: the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich. The s
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recordings in the public Domain read by Ben Tucker.
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  Speaker 1: Citizen Kane nineteen forty one. Citizen Kane r KO Radio Pictures,
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  Speaker 1: a Mercury production directed and produced by Orson Wells. Original
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  Speaker 1: screenplay by Wells and Herman J. Mankowitz, Photography by Greg Toland,
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  Speaker 1: Art direction by Van Nest Polyglais and Perry Ferguson. Set
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  Speaker 1: direction by Daryl Silvera, edited by Robert Wise and Mark Robson,
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  Speaker 1: Music by Bernard Hermann, Special effects by Vernon L. Walker,
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  Speaker 1: Costumes by Edward Stevenson, Sound by Bailey Fessler and James G. Stewart.
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  Speaker 1: Released May of nineteen forty one, one hundred nineteen minutes
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  Speaker 1: cast Wells, Joseph Cotton, Dorothy Commingoor, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warwick,
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  Speaker 1: Ray Collins, Erskine, Sanford, Everett Sloane, George Caloris, William aland
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  Speaker 1: Paul Stewart, Fortunio Bonanova, Gus Schilling, Philip van zandt Georgia
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  Speaker 1: Bacchus Harryet, Shannon, Buddy Swan, and Sonny Bup. Citizen Kane
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  Speaker 1: is a criticism of American plutocracy in the power of
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  Speaker 1: the popular press, but it transcends these social considerations. It is,
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  Speaker 1: as Wells calls it, a portrait of a public man's
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  Speaker 1: private life. Citizen Kane is the story of a search
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  Speaker 1: by a man named Thompson, the editor of a news
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  Speaker 1: digest similar to the March of Time, for the meaning
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  Speaker 1: of Kin's dying words. He hopes they'll give the short
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  Speaker 1: the angle it needs. He decides that a man's dying
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  Speaker 1: words ought to explain his life. Maybe they do. He
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  Speaker 1: never discovers what caines mean, but the audience does. His
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  Speaker 1: researches take him to the five people who knew Cain well,
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  Speaker 1: people who liked him, or loved him or hated his guts.
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  Speaker 1: They tell five different stories, each biased, so that the
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  Speaker 1: truth about Kin, like the truth about any man, can
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  Speaker 1: only be calculated by the sum of everything that has
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  Speaker 1: been said about him. Cain footnote, Friday, Volume two, seven,
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  Speaker 1: February fourteenth, nineteen forty one. In footnote, we are told
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  Speaker 1: loved only his mother, only his newspaper, only his second wife,
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  Speaker 1: only himself. Maybe he loved all of these or none.
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  Speaker 1: It is for the audience to judge. Cain was selfish
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  Speaker 1: and selfless, an idealist, a scoundrel, a very big man,
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  Speaker 1: and a very little one. It depends on whose talking
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  Speaker 1: about him. He is never judged with the objectivity of
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  Speaker 1: an author, and the point of the picture is not
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  Speaker 1: so much the solution of the problem as its presentation.
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  Speaker 1: By Well's own description, one can see the morality humanity
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  Speaker 1: theme clearly developed throughout the movie itself, from the opening
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  Speaker 1: shot no Trespassing to the last line, I don't think
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  Speaker 1: any word explains a man's life. It is evident that
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  Speaker 1: Wells has no intention of passing judgment on Cain. Cain
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  Speaker 1: is detestable, but he is a human being. It has
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  Speaker 1: been argued that the final shot of the Sled is
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  Speaker 1: a sentimental oversimplification of Cain's life, but though it is
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  Speaker 1: one of the most successfully surprising and poignant final moments
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  Speaker 1: in cinema, it is clearer in the script that it
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  Speaker 1: was not Well's intention to make that shot the film's
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  Speaker 1: all encompassing solution. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get
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  Speaker 1: or something he lost, but it wouldn't have explained anything.
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  Speaker 1: I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle,
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  Speaker 1: a missing piece. Though the director supplies that missing piece,
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  Speaker 1: it serves only as a kind of moving reminder that,
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  Speaker 1: in spite of everything, Cain was a man with feeling,
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  Speaker 1: passionate and with courage technically, Citizen Kain is a treasure
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  Speaker 1: chest of the screen language. With his first film, Wells
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  Speaker 1: climaxed the sound cinema. He explored all the possibilities of
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  Speaker 1: movie making, sharpened old devices, gave no life to tired ones,
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  Speaker 1: and brought in some startling new ideas. He thus synthesized
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  Speaker 1: what had gone before, foreshadowed what was to come, and
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  Speaker 1: made everything seem original and fresh. Perhaps the most valuable
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  Speaker 1: innovation in the film was its inventive use of sound,
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  Speaker 1: which Wells brought to movies from his years of radio work.
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  Speaker 1: The overlapping dialog, now a Wells trade mark, gives the
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  Speaker 1: picture a remarkable flow and sense of reality, making most
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  Speaker 1: other films seem stage bound because of their cued delivery.
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  Speaker 1: First A talks, then B, then A then B. But
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  Speaker 1: in Life A and B are very often talking at
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  Speaker 1: the same time. In Wells makes abundant use of that fact.
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  Speaker 1: The sound in Cain, as in all his subsequent work,
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  Speaker 1: is also used for a vivid economy of gesture. When
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  Speaker 1: Cain is eight, Thatcher is seen saying Merry Christmas, and
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  Speaker 1: with that the scene cuts about eighteen years forward to
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  Speaker 1: Thatcher saying and a happy New year, with one sharp transition,
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  Speaker 1: we have jumped into the story of Cain's adult life. Later,
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  Speaker 1: we see Leland campaigning for Cain before a handful of people,
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  Speaker 1: announcing that Cain entered this campaign, and we cut to
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  Speaker 1: Caine speaking at the lecturn of a huge auditorium with
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  Speaker 1: one purpose. Only Again the point has been made directly, briefly, effectively,
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  Speaker 1: or of course, the famous breakfast table sequence between Cain
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  Speaker 1: and his first wife, where the nine year deterioration of
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  Speaker 1: a marriage is summed up through one continuing conversation over
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  Speaker 1: five flash pans. Among the other aspects of Citizen Kane,
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  Speaker 1: which struck the nineteen forty one public with the force
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  Speaker 1: of extreme novelty, the News on the March sequence is outstanding,
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  Speaker 1: a perfectly imitated news digest. It is also, aside from
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  Speaker 1: Wolcott Gibbs's profile of Henry Luce, the sharpest of all
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  Speaker 1: parodies of time style for forty years, appeared in Kine newsprint,
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  Speaker 1: no public issue on which Cain papers took no stand.
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  Speaker 1: In photography, the most important feature Wells brought to Cain
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  Speaker 1: and to all his later movies was the deep focus
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  Speaker 1: lens developed for him by photographer Gregg Toland, enabling him
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  Speaker 1: to keep the entire frame in equally sharp focus, and
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  Speaker 1: making for economy of editing the contract signing scene, for
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  Speaker 1: one example, in which within one frame we see the
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  Speaker 1: equivalent of a close up Bernstein, a medium shot Thatcher,
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  Speaker 1: and a long shot Caine, all equally sharp. This lens
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  Speaker 1: made it possible for Wells to compose his frames with
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  Speaker 1: maximum depth and allow him to use ciasciro in a
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  Speaker 1: new way. Beyond all these considerations and their effect on
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  Speaker 1: the subsequent directors, the script and its significance is all important.
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  Speaker 1: It broke, with exciting success, all the Hollywood cliches of
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  Speaker 1: movie construction and brought to the screen an adult, personal style.
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  Speaker 1: Citizen Kane is the only one of his films made
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  Speaker 1: and released exactly as Wells wanted, so it becomes easy
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  Speaker 1: to call it his best picture, but we shall see
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  Speaker 1: that he developed much further, both technically and intellectually. Kine
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: remains an extraordinary achievement, important not only for itself, but
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  Speaker 1: because it set the theme that haunts all the films
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: of Orson Wells into Section one Citizen Kane Section two
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovitch. This
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recordings in the public domain, read by Ben Tucker.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: The Magnificent Ambersons nineteen forty two. The Magnificent Amberson's r
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: KAO Radio Pictures a Mercury production directed and produced by
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  Speaker 1: Orson Wells. Screenplay by Wells, based on the novel by
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  Speaker 1: Booth Tarkington. Photography by Stanley Cortes, art direction by Mark
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Lee Kirk, edited by Robert Wise, music by Bernard Hermann,
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  Speaker 1: special effects by Vernon L. Walker. Costumes by Edward Stephenson,
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  Speaker 1: found by Bailey Fessler and James G. Stewart. Released August
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  Speaker 1: of nineteen forty two, eighty eight minutes. Cast Joseph Cotton,
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  Speaker 1: Delors Costello, Tim Hoolt, An Baxter, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins,
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  Speaker 1: Richard Bennett, Donald Delaway, Erskine. Sandford Wells does not appear
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  Speaker 1: in The Magnificent Ambersons. He narrates, but the representative character
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  Speaker 1: of his theme is George minafer archetype of a dying plutocracy,
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  Speaker 1: The Ambersons proud, rich, spoiled, reactionary. He dominates his weak
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  Speaker 1: mother's life and ruins it, along with the happiness of
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  Speaker 1: Lucy and Eugene. How he, and indeed his whole way
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  Speaker 1: of life, receives his comeuppance is the story of the film,
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  Speaker 1: though it is clear that progress is what Wells is affirming.
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  Speaker 1: He paints a nostalgic moving picture of life before the
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  Speaker 1: horseless carriage and brings to the screen of faithful recreation
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  Speaker 1: of Tarkingington's novel. George Minafer is a decidedly disagreeable and
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: unlikable boy, and yet it is impossible not to pity him,
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  Speaker 1: and as he kneels by his mother's bed at the
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  Speaker 1: end and asks softly, Mother, forgive me, God, forgive me,
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  Speaker 1: he is a poignant symbol of a dead society. With
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  Speaker 1: Amberson's Wells adopted a different style from that of Cain,
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  Speaker 1: more lyric and tender, with a technique as different as
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  Speaker 1: the subject. Purposely, he holds many of his scenes for
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  Speaker 1: an extended time, either with a stationary camera as in
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: the cake eating scene between George and Aunt Fanny, or
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  Speaker 1: with a long tracking shot George and Lucy in the carriage,
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  Speaker 1: so that the mood of the film is the sad,
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  Speaker 1: slowly developed atmosphere of the late eighteen hundreds. Wells displays
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: an exquisite understanding of the period and its style, as
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: in the beautiful opening shot with a fuzzy quality around
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  Speaker 1: the edges, framed with the archaic quaintness of tin types,
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  Speaker 1: and his narration evokes a deep nostalgia for a time
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  Speaker 1: gone forever. Since he was not allowed to do the
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: final cut of Amberson's, it looked as though somebody had
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: run a lawnmower through the celluloid footnote Peter Knuble The
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Fabulous Orson Wells, Hutchinson in Company, nineteen fifty six in footnote,
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  Speaker 1: and because a few of the scenes were neither written
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: nor directed by him, it becomes difficult to evaluate exactly
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: what Wells wanted the finished film to look like. It
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: is known, for example, that he had shot a lot
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: more footage of the growing, ever industrializing town that is
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: shown in the movie. Clearly it was to have been
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: used as a counterpoint to the Amberson's decline. Wells was
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: then nearing the end of his tenure at r KO,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: and Amberson's is a mutilated work. It is the more
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  Speaker 1: amazing that so much of Wells's conception survived the released print.
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  Speaker 1: End of Section two The Magnificent Amberson's Section three of
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich. This LibriVox
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Journey Into Fear nineteen forty two. Journey into Fear r
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: CHAO Radio Pictures a Mercury production directed by Norman Foster,
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  Speaker 1: produced by Orson Wells. Screenplay by Joseph Cotton and Wells.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Based on the novel by Eric Ambler. Photography by Karl Strauss,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: music by Roy Webb, edited by Mark Robson. Released February
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, seventy one minutes cast Wells, Joseph Cotton,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Dolores del Rio, Ruth Warwick, Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane, Jack Moss,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: and Richard Bennett. This is not a Wells film. It
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: features the Mercury players. Was scripted by Joseph Cotton, supposedly
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: with Wells assistance. When Wells is credited as producer, but
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: r KO assigned Norman Foster as director, he was considered safe.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Wells was not asked about Journey. Wells has said, for
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: the first five sequences, I was on the set and
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: decided angles. From then on, I often said where to
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: put the camera, described the framings made light tests. I
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: designed the film, but can't properly be called the director.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: It is just possible to approximate what Wells might have
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: done with the picture if he had been allowed to
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: direct it, or at least edited a kind of light
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: parody of Innocence Abroad, or a take off on the
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Casablanca type thriller so popular around that time. Anyway, as
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: he put it, I was in South America waiting for
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: the Rushes while some r KO Grimlins headed by a
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: brace of vice presidents in the studio. Janitor cut the
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: film end of section three Journey into Fear, Section four
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich. This
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Ben Tucker.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: The Stranger nineteen forty six. The Stranger, RKO Radio International,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: directed by Orson Wells, produced by Sam Spiegel, Screenplay by
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Anthony Wheeler and John Houston, from a story by Victor Truvis.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Photography by Russell Metti, Art, direction by Perry Ferguson, music
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: by Brnislau Caper. Released May nineteen forty six. Eighty five
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: minutes cast Wells, Loretta Young, Edward G. Robinson, Philip Merrivale,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Richard Long, and Billy House. Since Wells had no hand
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: whatever in the screenplay of this picture, he did write
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: a few scenes, but they were all cut. We cannot
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: include it among his personal works because he did directed.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: He does refer to it as one of his movies,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: but says The Stranger is the worst of my films.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: There is nothing of me in that picture. I did
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: it to prove that I could put out a movie
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: as well as any one else. It is absolutely of
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: no interest to me. I did not make it with cynicism. However,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: I did my best with it, decidedly a minor effort.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: The Stranger is an exciting little film with some striking
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: small town atmosphere, particularly the scenes in the drug store,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: but its only real interest is Well's own performance of
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: the Nazi. Again, he is able, through his own personality
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: and charm, to invest the character with considerable sympathy, despite
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: a script that wants to paint him totally black. However,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: this is probably just a matter of Well's magnetism as
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: an actor, and it is doubtful if he was consciously
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: trying to make him sympathetic. End of section four, The
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Stranger section five of the Cinema of Orson Wells by
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Peter Bogdanovitch. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Read by Bin Tucker. The Lady from Shanghai nineteen forty eight.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: The Lady from Shanghai, Columbia Pictures, directed and produced by
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Orson Wells. Screenplay by Wells, based on the novel by
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Sherwood King. Photography by Charles Lawton. Junior art direction by
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Stephen Goosen and Sturgis carn Set decoration by Wilburn Menefee
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and Hermann Schoenbrunn. Music by Hines Romheld, edited by Viola Lawrence,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Sound by Lodge Cunningham. Released June nineteen forty eight, eighty
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: seven minutes cast Wells, Rita Hayworth, Everett Sloane, Glen Anders,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Ted de Corcia, Erskine Sandford. The Lady from Shanghai returns
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: to the bravura style of Citizen Kane and is perhaps
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: even more dazzling and fluid. Much of the editing and
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: composition is more daring, and the court room seen, the
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: chase in the Chinese theater and the final gun fight
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: in the deserted Hall of Mirrors are sequences as good
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: as anything he has ever made. Thematically, Shanghai develops the
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: motif of Cain and Amberson's in its criticism of the
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: corruptive powers of plutocracy, and begins to probe into the
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: morality of the law, something he was to take even
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: further in Touch of Evil. Banister is an extremely successful
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I never lost a case, wealthy and powerful criminal lawyer,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: but he himself is a criminal, A spokesman for the law.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: He thinks he is above it, and this is his
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: tragic fault. His associate Grisbee, has been thoroughly perverted by
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: his position as a defender of criminals. We're going to
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: commit murder and not break laws. And indeed the malignant
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: cancer of the two lawyers has spread to Elsa, Banister's
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: pretty wife. The three of them envelop O'Hara, a basically
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: innocent bystander in their machinations, and though he lets himself
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: be carried along, he is in opposition or contrast to them.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: O'Hara is the poet and the victim, says Wells. He
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: represents the aristocratic, the cavalier point of view, and corresponds
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: to very ancient European ideas O'Hara speaks for the author
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: in his haunting, frightening poe like anecdote about the sea
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: of sharks driven mad by the taste of their own
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: blood as they eat first each other and then themselves.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Shanghai takes many sly thrusts at the immorality of law
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: and the judicial system, reinforcing Well's continuing anti judgment motif.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: The scene in the courtroom, for example, where one juror
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: has to be shushed into quiet from a laughing fit,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: where another has a sneezing spell interrupting the proceedings. Indeed,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: the witty circus tactics of banister taking the stand and
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: cross examining himself, all these are satiric comments on common
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: morality in a witty parody of the American obsession with
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: right and wrong. And there is that subtle juxtaposition of
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: images when the film cuts from the judge at a
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: chessboard to an overhead shot of the deserted court room
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: waiting for the jury's return. If the fact of dragging
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: a murderer in front of a jury is an important
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: and just task in itself, it loses all importance everything
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: like peace and happiness. If one has to arrive at
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: it at the expense of man's dignity. The Lady from
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Shanghai is a morality play without preachment. It can be
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: taken as a bizarred venture, yarn a brother, a thriller,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: a profound drama of decay, or all three. Banister is
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: a crippled spider limping through his infected world, but his
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: love for his wife is genuine and deep, and at
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: the end he truly kills the thing he loves. And
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Elsa Banister, beautiful and fatal, conveys the quality of unconsciously
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: perverted innocence. She has never quite aware of her own evil.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: The forthright imaginative development of The Lady from Shanghai is
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: unendingly inventive. The day long picnic, the scenes on the boat,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: the love scene in the aquarium, the scenes in the
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: court room, the Chinese theater, and the Hall of Mirrors.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Wells's camera work in editing show an abandon and freedom,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: a slashing, driving energy decidedly advanced from Citizen Kane. Though
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: the film was re edited by the studio, it still
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: retains its force and impact. The scrip is elliptic, witty
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: and evocative, and the images cling to the imagination. The
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Lady from Shanghai remains Wells's wildest, most restless picture and
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: one of his most elusively significant. Behind the magic showmanship
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: is the voice of a poet decrying the sin and
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: corruption of a confused world, and O'Hara the victim, the innocent,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: has been irrevocably touched by the abyss into which he fell.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'll live so long I'll forget her. Maybe I'll
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: die trying. End of section five The Lady from Shanghai
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Section six of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovitch.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recordings in the public Domain, read by Ben
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Tucker Macbeth nineteen forty eight. Macbeth Republic Pictures, a Mercury
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: production directed and produced by Orson Wells from the play
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: by William Shakespeare. Photography by John C. Russell, Art direction
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: by Fred Ritter, set direction by John McCarthy Junior and
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: James Redd. Costumes by Wells and Ritter for the men,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Adeli Palmer for the women. Music by Jacques Ibert, edited
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: by Louis Lindsay. Released October nineteen forty eight, one hundred
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: seven minutes cast Wells, Jeanette Nolan, Dan Hurleihey, Roddy mc
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: dowell at Barrier, Alan Napier, Erskine Sandford, John Diekes, Christopher Wells,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Loreene Tuttle. Macbeth was made in twenty three days, including
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: one day of retakes. As Wells tells the story, people
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: who know anything at all about the business of making
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: a film will realize that this is more than fast.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I never thought I was making a great film, or
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: even an imitation great film. I thought I was making
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: what might be a good film. And what if the
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: twenty three days shooting schedule came off might encourage other
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: filmmakers to tackle difficult subjects at greater speed. I am
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: not ashamed of the limitations of the picture. Macbeth, for
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: better or Worse, is a kind of violently sketched charcoal
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: drawing of a great play. Footnote Orson Wells the Third
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Audience cit and Sound Volume twenty three, number three, January
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: March nineteen fifty four. In footnote, Shakespeare has had a
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: tremendous influence on the work of Orson Wells, not only
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: in the largeness of his poetry and vision, but also
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: in his philosophical ideas. The great quality of Shakespeare is
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: that he had neither moral nor political partisanship. Shakespeare never
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: wrote real tragedy. He wrote melodrama that had the stature
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: of tragedy, and all his interesting characters are bastards. In
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: that opinion, Wells reveals his own code. The moral aspect
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: is the only one of importance. I am more interested
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: in character than in virtue. I call it artistic morality
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: above bourgeois morality. Macbeth is detestable until he becomes king.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: After that he becomes a great man. In his Macbeth,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: which he accurately describes as a rough sketch, we can
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: see the beginnings of his filmic conceptions of Shakespeare, which
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: he was to perfect an othello, that is, of interpreting
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: the barred for the screen, rather than the other way around,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: as other movie versions of Shakespeare have done. He takes
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Shakes Spear's theme, story, and poetry and freely adapts them
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: into motion picture terms. That way, he uses the play
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: as a starting point in developing his own visual design.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: He re arranges the speeches so they flow more naturally
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: on the screen, and elaborates on Shakespeare's stage bound directions.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Lady Macbeth's death is described in the text as a
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: cry of women within, but on the screen there is
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: no reason not to let her hurl herself from one
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: of the heavy, brooding cliffs that surround the action of
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: the piece. There is a claustrophobic quality to the world
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: of Wells Macbeth that is perfect in intention. The crimes
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: of that dank world are exposed, yet entombed. Macbeth is
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: a cursed man, but he is a great character. That
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: is Shakespeare and that is Wells. Since the film was
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: shot in twenty three days, perfection was neither intended, nor
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: can it be expected. Therefore, the performances are uneven in execution.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Jeanette Nolan is too pale a figure as Lady Macbeth,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: and many of the supporting parts are not entirely realized.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Wells himself gives a free wheeling, inspired reading of the
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: title role, a performance that, like the film, is a
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: violently sketched charcoal drawing of the character. The photography and
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere are almost completely successful. The weird opening with
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: the witches, the grimly terrifying invasion at the end, the shadowy,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: foreboding mood of the entire film, as well as the
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: initial conception of making the people of Macbeth barbarians, and
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: the movie remains of interest not only for itself, but
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: because of the way it foreshadows Wells technique of filmed Shakespeare,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: which he was to bring to fruition with his next film.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: End of section six Macbeth, Chapter seven of the Cinema
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovitch. This LibriVox recording is
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. Read by Bin Tucker. Othello nineteen
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: fifty two. Othello United Artists, a Mercury production directed and
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: produced by Orson Wells from the play by William Shakespeare.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Photography by Anchies Britzi, g Raldo George Fanto, Obadon Troanna,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Roberto Fuci. Music by Francesco Labanino and Alberto Barberie. Edited
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: by Gene Sacha, Renzo Lucidi, John Sheppridge, art direction by
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Alexander Troner, Costumes by Maria de Matis. Released in the
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: United States June nineteen fifty five. Ninety two minutes cast Wells,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Suzanne Clutier, Michael mcleamore, Robert Coote, Hilton Edwards Fay Compton,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Nicholas Bruce, Doris Dowling, Geen Davis, Michael Lawrence. Discussing his film,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Wells said, Othello, whether successful or not, is about as
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: close to sh Shakespeare's play as was Verdi's opera. I
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: think Verdi and Boito were perfectly entitled to change Shakespeare
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: in adapting him to another art form, and assuming that
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: the cinema is an art form, I took the line
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: that you can adapt a classic freely and vigorously for
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: the cinema. Wells, speaking the credit titles of the film
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: they do not appear on screen, is careful to say
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: this is a motion picture based on the tragedy of
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Othello by William Shakespeare. The play itself, therefore, is only
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: a starting point in Wells is creating a visual variation
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: on its theme. His Othello is pure cinema, in contrast
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: to the stage bound Shakespearean adaptations of Olivier Mankowitz or Kucker,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: changing the verbal into visual magic. He does, not, for example,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: use the line I kissed thee air I killed thee
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: because he films the murder of Desdemona with that line
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: in mind, placing a thin veil over her face so
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: that she looks like a helpless, terrified child. He passedly
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: smothers her with his kisses. The image remains in the eye,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: just as the line sticks to the ear Made over
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: a period of four years and almost completely financed by
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Wells himself, he was forever flying off to act in
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: other director's films, so as to invest his earnings in Othello.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: The picture is in many ways a greater work than
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Citizen Kane. The camera is freer, more daring, the image
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: is more striking and poetic, the editing bolder and more incisive.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: How economically, for example, he sets up at the outset
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: the entire mood and struggle of the story, the bodies
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: of Othello and Desdemona being carried to their grave in
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: a series of evocative dissolves, than the rough encasement of
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Iago into an iron cage high above the crowds, edited
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: in Staccato's style, effectively summarizing what is to happen against
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: the breathtaking beauty of Venice, evoked in a series of
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: lyric dissolves. As the credits to the film are narrated,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: then with the first line of dialog, the conflict that
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: haunts the story is set forward. I told thee often,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: and I tell THEE again, I hate the Moor, And
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: immediately the story moves forward without a wasted motion, to
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: its inevitable tragic end. Wells has said Othello is not detestable,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the jealousy is, and here again one can see his
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: refusal to pass judgment on people. Even Iago is not
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: so totally black a villain as he is usually played,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: we feel a strange kind of pity for him and
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: an understanding. At the end, when Othello says, demand of
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: that dimmi devil, why he hath thus ensnared my soul?
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Iago replies, demand me nothing? What you know? You know,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: And there is a swift exchange of looks between the
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: two which make it clear that Othello has seen Iago
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: in the deepest since and cannot despise him, and neither
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: can we. Because of the time, patience, and courage it
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: took him to make the film, Othello is clearly one
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: of Wells's most personal works. Beyond that, it is his
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: most deeply poetic and richly visual one. And finally, what
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: we see in his movie is a bloody, brooding, dark evil, passionate, tender, harsh, poetic,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: and profoundly tragic story of some great, larger than life people,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: and that's who Shakespeare was writing about. End of section seven,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Othello Section eight of the Cinema of Orson Wells by
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Peter Bogdanovich. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Read by Ben Tucker. Confidential Report, nineteen fifty five Mister
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Arkaden Confidential Report, Warner Brothers. Directed by Orson Wells, produced
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: by Lewis Dollovan. Original screenplay by Wells, photography by Jean Borgees,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: music by Paum Mizrocky, decor and costumes designed by Wells.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Edited by Lorenzo Lucidi. Released in Great Britain September nineteen
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: fifty five. Ninety nine minutes cast Wells, Paola Moury, Robert Arden,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Michael Redgrave, Patricia Medina, a Keen Temarov, Mischa Auer, Katina Paksinou,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Peter van Eyck, Suzanne Flon. This film, Wells said has
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: been butchered more than any of his works, and it
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: looks it. Originally told through a complex flashback technique developed
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: and expanded from Citizen Kane. The distributors have tried to
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: put it into chronological order, which is somewhat like starting
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Kane with his birth and ending with his death. This
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: so violates Wells's dramatic conception that one must be extremely
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: well acquainted with his style to approximate what the picture
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: looked like when he finished it. Confidential Report, the British
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: released title concerns an almost mythical, fantastically wealthy financier, Arkaden,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: who hires Guy van Stratten, a cheap young American smuggler,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: to prepare a confidential file on his Arkaden's activities before
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty seven, claiming to have forgotten his past. He
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: fears it was shady and wants it concealed from his daughter, Rayna,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: whom he loves with possessive passion. Van Stratton proceeds to
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: gather information from various people, a tailor and Zurich, a
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: flea trainer in Copenhagen, a fence masquerading as an antiquary
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: in Amsterdam, a Polish baroness, and discovers that Arkaden began
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: his career as a member of a white slave gang
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: run by the baroness. No sooner has Van Stratton found
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: the necessary information than Arkaden's emissaries begin to kill off
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: the people who could implicate their boss. Van Stratton soon
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: realizes he too is on the list and flies to
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: tell Arkaden's beloved daughter the truth about her father. Failing
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: to stop him, Arkaden commits suicide, but Rena leaves Van
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Stratten when she learns that he caused her father's death.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Toward the middle of the film, Arcaden tells a fable
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: about a scorpion who wants to get across a lake
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: and asks a passing frog to give him a lift.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: The frog refuses, thinking the scorpion may bite him, but
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: the scorpion reassures him, saying that if he were to
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: bite him, they would both die, for the scorpion would
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: surely drown. So the frog agrees and they start across
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: the lake. In the middle of their journey, however, the
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: scorpion does give the frog a fatal sting as they
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: are going under. The frog asks the scorpion why he
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: had done it, since now he too was to die,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: and the scorpion answers, I know, but I can't help it.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: It's in my character. Wells has developed this theme clearly
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: from Shanghai through Arkaden into Touch of Evil, and, as
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: he himself describes it, the point of The story is
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: to show that a man who declares himself in the
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: face of the world I am as I am, take
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: it or leave it, that this man has a sort
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: of tragic dignity. It is a question of dignity, a
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: verve of courage, but doesn't justify him. The story serves
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: a dramatic purpose, but is not meant to justify Arcaden
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: or to assassinate him. Arcaden uses barbarian intelligence for profit.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: He is a barbarian in conquest of European civilization. But
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: only the morality of Arcaden is detestable. It is impossible
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: to detest anyone who is passionate. Arcaden is a parasite
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: who feeds off the corruption of the universe. He never
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: seeks to justify himself. He is a Russian adventurer. Arcaden
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: created himself in a corrupted world. He doesn't try to
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: better that world. He is a prisoner of it. This
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: was the first Well's script since Citizen came to be
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: based on his own story. It continues and elaborates the
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: depiction of an evil and disintegrating world begun in The
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Lady from Shanghai, except that by now even the Frog
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: O'Hara before is corrupt. The photography in what remains of
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Wells's original editing market is perhaps Well's most ambitious film
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: to date. End of Section eight. Confidential Report. Section nine
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: of the Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovich. The
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recordings in the public Domain read by Bin Tucker.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Touch of Evil nineteen fifty eight. Touch of Evil Universal International,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: directed by Orson Wells, produced by Albert Zogsmith. Screenplay by
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: Wells based on the novel Badge of Evil by Witt Masterson.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Photography by Russell Mehdi Art, direction by Alexander Gullitzen and
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Robert Clatworthy. Music by Henry Mancini, edited by Virgil W.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Vogel and Aaron Snell. Released February nineteen fifty eight. Ninety
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: five minutes cast Wells, Charlton Heston, Janet Lee, Joseph Killia,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: Akeem Temorroff, Joanna Moore, Ray Collins, Dennis Weaver, Marlene Dietrich,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Jajacques Bore, unbilled Mercedes Macambridge and Joseph Cotton and the
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Lady from Shang High. Wells dramatized the corruption of a
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: crooked lawyer in Touch of Evil. He extends that world
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: to portray a crooked policeman. Hank Quinlan is the incarnation
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: of everything I fight against politically and morally. Wells has said,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Touch of Evil is not critical of plutocracy, but of
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: the state, because the state is more powerful than money.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: I firmly believe that in the modern world we have
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: to choose between the morality of the law and the
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: morality of basic justice. That is to say, between lynching
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: someone and letting him go free. I prefer to let
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: a murderer go free, then to let the police arrest
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: him by mistake. As morally detestable as Quinlan is, a
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: police may be everything, but a judge, it is impossible
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: to hate him. Quinlan is sympathetic because of his humanity,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: not because of his ideas. Because he is a man
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: of heart, one can't help feeling sympathy for him. The
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: struggle in Touch of Evil, then, is between Quinn and Vargas,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: who is civilized and of a higher culture. He also
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: understands what it means to be good. Vargas argues intelligently
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: against Quinlan and gives us part of Well's conception when
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: he says the law protects the guilty as well as
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: the innocent. It's only easy to be a policeman in
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: a police state. That's the point, don't you see who's
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: the boss, the cop or the law. But Quinlan is
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: not judge in the final sense. Years ago he was
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: a man of integrity and passion, but his wife was strangled,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: and although he knew the killer, could not prove it.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: He declared a personal war on crime, A pitiable figure
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: who thereafter really believes he is aiding justice, that all
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: those people he strapped in the electric chair were guilty, guilty, guilty.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Quinlan never realizes he has no right to be judge
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: and jury. Well's epitaph in the last lines, Schwartz, he
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: was a great detective, Tanya, and a lousy cop, Schwartz.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Is it all you have to say for him? Tanya?
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: He was some kind of man. What does it matter
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: what you say about people? And with this Wells harks
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: back twenty years to the end of Citizen Kane. I
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: don't think any word can explain a man's life, and
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: we see vividly the consistency and unity of his view
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: of the conflict between man's morality and his nature. The
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: dark poetry of orson Wells is a song of the damned,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: but it is one of humanity and compassion. Wells inherited
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: the novel Badge of Evil, which Universal had already purchased
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: for production. He transformed the scenario and remodeled it to
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: give it form, and was given carte blanche on the direction.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: On completion, the picture was taken away from him, and
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: a few scenes he hadn't directed were added, and a
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: few he had made were cut. The additions four scenes
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: between Vargas and his wife, particularly in the hotel lobby,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: but they only last about a minute of screen time.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: The cuts are more serious, A humorous scene between Quinlan
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: and Vargas at the beginning, in which their characters are
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: defined and they become enemies. A scene in which Menzies
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: drives Susan Vargas to the hotel and explains to her
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: how Quinlan saved his life years ago by stopping a
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: bullet for him, thus crippling himself and necessitating the cane,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: which explains Quinlan's lying, that's the second bullet I've stopped
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: for you, partner scene in which Tanya and Quinland spend
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: the night together and he sees Vargas passing by the window,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: but doesn't identify him with certitude, motivating his later line
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: to Minsies, I thought you were Vargas dialog between Minsie's
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: and Vargas, in which Vargas studies the recording machine used
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: at the end and states his distaste for that part
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: of his job. As Wells said they kept all the
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: scenes of violence, but cut out the moral ones. Also,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: the credits were to have appeared at the end over
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: the shot of Tanya disappearing into the dark, instead of
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: the beginning, where they distract from the brilliant flow of
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: the opening sequence. Technically, Touch of Evil as Well's most
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: advanced film. All the innovations and experiments of twenty years
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: work reach a climax in this picture. The opening shot
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: as the camera pulls back from a close up of
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: a home made bomb to reveal a whole street, then
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: tracks over and around, up and down, taking in the
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: lead characters of the story. Vargas and his wife, immediately
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: establishes the mood and feeling of the film, fluidly setting
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: up the circumstances. This is one of his most successful
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: and expressive shots. The murder of Grundy in the hotel
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: room with The rapid cutting, intensified by the on and
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: off blinking of the neon light is a triumph of terror.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: The macob scenes at the motel with the insane night watchman,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: whom Wells calls a Shakespearian lunatic. The sad decadence of
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: thee with its tinkling pianola and its dreams of lost youth.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: The final sequence up and over, the huge construction project,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: the filthy water under a murky, shadow filled bridge. Wells
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: himself as Quinlan, ugly, no longer young, a decaying mountain
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: of flesh, and a corrupt world he created. Touch of
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Evil is a masterpiece, a Gooya like vision of an
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: infected universe. Now completing a modern film version of Don Quixote, Wells,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: at forty six, is at the height of his creative powers.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: Asked of his future projects, he says, my only project
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: is to find money to work. I need money to
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: make movies. Film is the most expensive paint box ever invented.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: If I were a writer or a painter, I'd only
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: need a pin or a couple of tubes of paint.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: I've made only eight films and twenty years. I will
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: go wherever there is work. Asked about the cinema in general.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: I liked movies better before I started making them. Now
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: I always hear the clapboard before every shot, all the
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: magic is gone. I don't like this cinema except while
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: I'm working. Then it is necessary to know not to
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: be timid with the camera, to do violence to it,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: to force it beyond its last boundaries, because it is
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: a vile machine. What counts as the poetry. Orson Wells,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: the showman and Magician, is so dazzling a craftsman that
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: too often people do not see the depth for the effect,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: the philosophy for the trick, the discipline for the bravura,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: the artistry for the flamboyance. But he is a master
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: stylist of the American screen, and though he is too
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: little appreciated or understood in his own country, one of
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: its most representative artists. End of section nine, Touch of Evil,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Section ten of The Cinema of Orson Wells by Peter Bogdanovitch.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: Ben Tucker, The film Projects of Orson Wells. George Orson
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: Wells was born May sixth, nineteen fifteen and Kenosha, Wisconsin,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: son of Richard had Wells, a sometime inventor in Beatrice
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Ives Wells, a concert pianist since the age of five.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: His career has zigzagged continuously from the theater to radio,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: to the movies, to television and back again. A complete
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: chronology of his life and work is available in Khie
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: du Cinema, Volume fifteen, number eighty seven, September nineteen fifty eight.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Some of his unrealized film projects include nineteen thirty nine
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Heart of Darkness, after the Joseph Conrad novel to have
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: been orson, Wells first film was turned down by Archaeo
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Radio Pictures said in Africa. Wells was to have played Kurtz,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: a man living in the heart of the jungle whose
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: rescue is attempted by Marlowe, the book's narrator and the
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: character through whose eyes the entire film is seen. Marlowe
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: was not to appear in the picture itself, much like
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: The Unseen Reporter and Citizen Kane. The war cut down
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: many of Hollywood's overseas markets, and Archaeo wanted to prune
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: the over one million dollar budget considerably. The contracted Austrian
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: star Dita Parlow had also been interned in France as
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: an enemy alien. Nineteen thirty nine The Smiler with a
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: Knife after the detective thriller by Cecil Day Lewis Nicholas Blake.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: After Heart of Darkness had been turned down, George Schaeffer,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: president of r KAO, suggested to Wells that he do
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: the thriller instead. Wells agreed, with the stipulation that ARCHAEO
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: let him do Heart of Darkness afterwards. For that he
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: would write, direct, produce and act and Smiler with a
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Knife for nothing. The studio agreed, but new conflicts arose
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: on matters of casting, in particular the leading female role,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: for which Carol Lombard and Rosalind Russell were approached, neither
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: of whom wished to take a chance on the untried
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: film director. The starting date of December nineteen thirty nine
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: passed and this project too was shelved. Nineteen forty one.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: The Way to Santiago, a Mexican locale was the background
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: for this project, written by Wells and planned as his
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: second film to be made free after Citizen Kane. Greg
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: Tolland was to be the photographer and Dolores del Riau
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: was to star based on the novel by Calder Marshall.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: The film was never made, although some locations were scouted
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: by Toland nineteen forty one. The Pickwick Papers, a projected
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: adaptation by Wells of the novel by Charles Dickens to
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: star W. C. Fields as Pickwick, not greeted with much
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: enthusiasm by r KAO nineteen forty two. It's All True.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Extensive footage for this project was completed in Brazil, and
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: the projected film consisted of three short stories. The first,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: filmed in color, was the History of the Samba, set
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: in Rio de Janeiro during the yearly carnival. The second,
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: call My Friend Benito, written by Robert Flaherty, dealt with
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: bull fighting in Mexico. The third, titled Jangadeiro's, was filmed
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: in Brazil and told of four fishermen who become national heroes.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: Wells and his crew spent four months traveling in Mexico,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: the Argentine Brazil. Thirty thousand feet of film were shot
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: during Wells's absence from Hollywood. RKO President Schaefer was removed
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: and it was decided to recall Wells and scrap the
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Mexican project. Half a million dollars was spent on the film,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: which was edited into a rough cut, but r Kao
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: was adamant and the picture was left to the vaults.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: The footage reportedly has often appeared as stock shots on
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: various television shows. Nineteen forty three, War and Peace, Alexander
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Korda announced that Wells was to direct his own adaptation
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: of Tolstoy's novel, to be produced by Corda himself nineteen
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: forty four, The Landreu story, based on the life of
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: the notorious French murderer. Wells originally talked to Charli Chaps
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: about making the picture in collaboration with him. Chaplin agreed,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: but soon afterward decided he wanted to try the film
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: on his own, and paid Wells twenty five thousand dollars
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: for the story idea, which he later developed into Monsieur
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Verdeux nineteen forty five to forty eight, a series of
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: projects to be produced with Alexander Korda, including Crime in
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Punishment Salome Serenaud de Bergerac Around the World in Eighty
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: Days nineteen forty nine. Ulysses Wells spent a good deal
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: of time with Ernest Bornemann on the script of the
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: Homer epic. The project foundered back and forth for quite
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: a while until Carlo Ponti and Dino de Laurentis announced
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: plans to film the story with Kirk Douglas. Wells sent
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: them his screenplay, but they declined to use it, after
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: which Wells announced immediate plans to proceed with the project himself.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: He was paid handsomely to desist. Other film projects to
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: which Wells has devoted his time include Moby Dick, king Lear,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: Richard the Third, The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: and Julius Caesar in Modern Dress. The film roles of
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Orson Wells. The following is the list of Orson Wells's
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: performances and feature motion pictures not directed by himself nineteen
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: fifty three, Jane Eyre as Edward Rochester nineteen forty four,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: Follow the Boys, well sawed Marlene Dietrich in half, as
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: he had done in The Mercury Wonder Show nineteen forty five.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Tomorrow Is Forever as John MacDonald nineteen forty seven, Black
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Magic as Cagliostro nineteen forty eight, The Prince of Foxes
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: as Cesar Borgia the Third Man played and wrote the
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: character of Harry Lyme, only role he ever acted without
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: make up nineteen fifty The Black Rose as General Byen
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, Trent's Last Case as six B. Manderson,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: and The Royal Affairs of Versailles as Benjamin Franklin, and
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: The Man the Beast in Virtue as the Beast nineteen
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: fifty four, Napoleon as Hudson Lowe and Three Cases of
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: Murder as Lord mount Drago nineteen fifty five, Trouble in
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: the Glen as Sannin sayidor Imingz nineteen fifty six, Moby
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: Dick as Father Mapple nineteen fifty seven, Man in the
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Shadow as Virgil Wrenkler, and The Long Hot Summer as
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Varner nineteen fifty eight, The Roots of Heaven as Si
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: Sedgwick nineteen fifty nine, Compulsion as Jonathan Wilke nineteen sixty,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: Crack in the Mirror as Hagelin and Lamosier nineteen sixty one.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: Ferry to Hong Kong as Captain Hart David and Goliath
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: as King Saul Austerlitz as Fulton, and Lafayette as Benjamin Franklin.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: Note all dates signify release dates rather than year of production,
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: end of section ten, end of the Cinema of Orson
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: Wells by Peter Bogdanovich,