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"The Magic World of Orson Welles", James Naremore

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James Naremore is a film scholar and a retired professor of Communication and Culture, English, and Comparative Literature. In The Magic World of Orson Welles (which, according to Jonathan Rosenbaum, is “the best critical study of Welles available in any language”), Naremore makes an authoristic study of one of the most beloved filmmakers, through deep stylistic and thematic analysis of each one of his films that also include considerations of Welles’s liberal politics, biographical aspects and historical context. His radio work and theatre plays are also reviewed, and his unfinished films are also discussed. Excerpts : “His overreachers tend to be tyrants in spite of themselves, pathetically trying to determine their own fate even while they are doomed by their childhood and victimized by a society beyond their control. As Bessy has pointed out, the Wellesian tyrant, for all of his destructiveness, is a wielder of sham power: Kane tries to construct his own world at Xanadu;