The Magnificent Orson Welles

March 7, 2008 - April 13, 2008

Citizen Kane, March 7

What can we say about Orson Welles? Citizen Kane has topped innumerable lists of the best films of all time; “every filmmaker since 1941 is, to some degree, in debt to Orson Welles,” Peter Bogdanovich asserted, and many others would agree. Yet critics continue to debate the narrative and meaning of Welles’s career.

Welles (1915–1985) summed it up sardonically in F for Fake: “I began at the top and have been working my way down ever since.” Having been featured on the cover of Time at age twenty-three as the “Wonder Boy” of American theater, the twenty-five-year-old Welles was already a celebrity when he co-wrote, directed, and starred in Kane, a film that established his virtuosic techniques and thematic preoccupations. His second film, The Magnificent Ambersons, was cut by RKO in his absence; from then on, he would rarely have full artistic control over his productions, eventually entering a largely self-imposed exile from Hollywood. His story has often been told as one of quixotic quests and tragically betrayed talent, of “a man,” like Kane, “who got everything he wanted and then lost it.” But this neglects the considerable achievements of his later work as well as the complexities of his persona: this man of enormous artistic ambition was also a puncturer of pretense, a lover of magician’s razzle-dazzle, of pulpy ruses and fake noses.

“A genius in Hollywood’s dictionary is someone who is either unavailable or dead,” Welles said. Twenty-two years after his death, we could call him a genius. Or we could just say, along with Marlene Dietrich in Touch of Evil, “He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?”

Juliet Clark
Editor

Friday, March 7, 2008
7:00 p.m. Citizen Kane
At the top of many critics’ lists of the best films of all time, Welles’s audacious debut still dazzles.

Saturday, March 8, 2008
5:00 p.m. The Magnificent Ambersons
Welles’s exquisitely detailed portrayal of a family’s passage into modernity “remains the director’s most moving film.”—Time Out.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008
8:15 p.m. Journey into Fear
This eccentric, enjoyable spy thriller stars Joseph Cotten as the innocent abroad and on the run.

Thursday, March 13, 2008
6:30 p.m. The Stranger
G-man Edward G. Robinson stalks Nazi war criminal Welles in a small-town noir.

Thursday, March 13, 2008
8:30 p.m. The Lady from Shanghai
Welles and Rita Hayworth in a deadly hall of mirrors. “Complex, courageous, and utterly compelling.”—Time Out.

Sunday, March 23, 2008
2:00 p.m. Macbeth
Welles restores Shakespeare’s tragedy to its roots in Scots legend with an experimental fusion of the Bard and the B picture.

Sunday, March 23, 2008
4:30 p.m. Othello
Welles gives eloquent expression to the twisted relations between Iago and the Moor.

Thursday, March 27, 2008
6:30 p.m. Confidential Report
An American grifter traces a mysterious financier’s past across a noirish Europe. “One of Welles’s most inventive and resonant films.”—Village Voice.

Friday, March 28, 2008
7:00 p.m. The Third Man
Joseph Cotten pursues Welles through postwar Vienna in Graham Greene and Carol Reed’s cynical masterpiece. “Seeing it on the big screen is like watching it for the first time.”—N.Y. Times.

Friday, March 28, 2008
9:10 p.m. Touch of Evil
Mexican narc Charlton Heston grapples with gangsters and Welles’s monumentally corrupt cop in “the apotheosis of pulp.”—New Yorker.

Sunday, March 30, 2008
2:00 p.m. Chimes at Midnight
Welles embodies Shakespeare’s Falstaff in “a dark masterpiece, shot through with slapstick and sorrow.”—Time Out.

Friday, April 4, 2008
7:00 p.m. The Trial
Anthony Perkins endures bureaucratic torments in Welles’s take on Kafka, “a film of infernal brilliance.”—Time.

Saturday, April 5, 2008
8:50 p.m. F for Fake
In Welles’s playful documentary, “accepted notions of authenticity, fakery, experthood, aesthetic value, and narrative are not only debunked but redefined.”—Village Voice.

Friday, April 11, 2008
9:00 p.m. The Immortal Story
Welles’s melancholy, measured adaptation of Isak Dinesen’s fable about the power of stories. With Jeanne Moreau.

Sunday, April 13, 2008
2:00 p.m. It’s All True
Lecture by Joseph McBride. A fascinating history of the unfinished film that brought down Welles’s career.

Series curated by Susan Oxtoby. PFA wishes to thank the following individuals and institutions for their assistance with this series: Marilee Womack, Warner Bros.; Chris Chouinard, MGM; Suzanne LeRoy, Sony Pictures Releasing; Barry Allen and Emily Horne, Paramount Pictures; Brian Belovarac, Janus Films; Eric Di Bernardo, Rialto Pictures; Amy Heller and Dennis Doros, Milestone Films; Paul Ginsburg, Universal Pictures; Michael Mashon, Library of Congress; Todd Wiener, UCLA Film & Television Archive; Haden Guest, Harvard Film Archive; Stefan Drössler, Munich Filmmuseum; Sue Jones, British Film Institute; Joseph McBride, San Francisco State University; Joe Kaufman; and Peter Conheim. Archival and restored prints and musical accompaniment for silent films are presented with support from the Packard Humanities Institute.