"The Magic World of Orson Welles", James Naremore
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; George Minafer thinks he can become a “yachtsman”; Macbeth believes he is a king; Mr. Arkadin imagines he can eradicate his past; Mr. Clay attempts to gain immortality. The ambitions of these men are at once awesome and laughable, much like those of the young Welles himself. None of them is really in control, and most of them are naïvely, ludicrously out of touch with reality, motivated by psychological urges they never fully understand. Therefore the Faustian proto-fascist in a Welles movie usually turns into a sort of perverse Don Quixote, a man in tragicomic rebellion against a world that conspires to inhibit his dream of autonomy and control.”
“[On a shot from The Magnificient Ambersons] When Welles cuts to a closer view of Eugene and Isabel, he underlines the sadness of their lives by posing their children in the distance, in a pool of light. The power of this shot derives from its complex significance. On the one hand it holds out hope that the past can be recaptured; if Eugene Morgan cannot reclaim his “one true love,” then at least there is the next generation, represented by the couple in the distance. But even while the image makes us believe that history repeats itself, it also makes us aware of change within repetition. The lighting gives Eugene and Isabel the look of ghosts haunting an old mansion, and we can see the years between them and their children.”
“[On the rejection scene of Chimes at Midnight] The speech is chilling, detached, and ruthless, but the exchange of looks between the two men, shown here, reveals an unspoken communication passing between them. Hal’s face, backed by the cold mists of his castle, is nearly a mask, but it has a pale intensity that conveys his anger and his painful recognition of what he is casting aside. Falstaff is on his knees, but he is photographed from a slightly low angle that makes him equal in stature to the king; controlling his grief, he stares back in silent rebuke. The boyish monarch has in fact always been an old man, while his gray-haired subject has been as transparent and naïve as a child. In the irony of their relationship, and in the tension between these two shots, is the essential meaning of what Welles has called a ‘somber comedy.’ As in Citizen Kane, friendship is revealed as policy, and childhood as a dream."
Link to the complete book in PDF:
Link to the complete book in PDF:
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