Orson Welles is of course one of the most known and respected directors in the history of cinema. Most people know him for his 1941 film, Citizen Kane. His production, starring himself, is considered to be one of the best movies in history; despite it not being that excellent and Orson himself later declaring that the ending was like a final scene from a B-rate book.
When looking at his life and career, one can argue that the drama of Orson Welles’ life was an uncommon one. Most young people who want to direct find themselves in a lot of difficulty to create their first film. And so, what happens in many cases is that ta young director will put extremely much information in his first film as an attempt to get out there as much as possible for the fear that he may not be able to make any other film. For Orson, it can be said that it was the other way around. He started out by creating big movies and towards the last part of his career acted like a film school graduate who is obsessed with squeezing out in the world as much as possible. But Orson was also a rather smart man. Maybe he knew very well what he was doing and, as an extremely grandiose act of magic, he confused all of us by dazzling us with an overbearing experience. Regardless of what the case was, it can be clearly said that Orson was someone of a mosaic person: his mind was sensitive and complex and understood the world in a very impressive manner.
In the last part of his life, Orson was seen by many as a burnt-out genius, as someone who had created a lot of amazing productions but who was now unable to release any new work. However, the truth of the matter is that while Orson was not in the spotlight for any new movies or television shows, he was very often at work, involved in many projects which were not released – most of them remaining unfinished. The lost films of Orson Welles however are a great body of work: watching the available footages, one can see that the director was more than just a movie maker; he was a magician of the everyday and someone whose interests were larger than his ability to cope with them. Orson saw details and stories and understood that the quotidian is a complex phenomenon, in which stores and perspectives intertwine and that the camera and storytelling are means which allow you to live or understand various people and lives and, by extension, the universe.
Whether in the first, second or third person, telling stories is both a way of communicating with others and of interacting with the world.
In 1975, soon after releasing F for Fake, which was the last film he completed, he was offered a Lifetime Achievement Award. At the ceremony, in his short speech he explained that he can accept the award only “in the name of all mavericks”. This way, it can be said that he understood that, while he may have been someone who had had much public acclaimed, he was always at the front of the curve and that doing things that were ordinary or boring was of no interest to him. Interestingly enough, upon looking at his career, one can always see the fact that Orson had the rare ability to create art that is both accessible (by present and future audiences) and to use the medium in a way that is unique, without taking away rules by which it worked. For example, when he created the Orson Welles’ Sketchbook series, a short British show in which he drew while telling 15-minute stories, he invented what we today would call a vlog. He basically understood the intimacy of television and saw the future possibilities that the medium could offer, decades before there was even talk of the internet.
When he passed on ten years later, he had established a reputation as someone who did not finish his films. The Other Side of the Wind was almost ready, but, for legal reasons, it was still blocked from public view. The stories surrounding Orson and the way he was conducting his work made many believe that even his fame was a hoax, while others saw him simply as a fallen king. In many ways, one can clearly say that the mysteries and controversies were something Orson enjoyed – despite the fact that we have no way of knowing that. But, given that we are aware of his deep passion for magic, hoaxes and fakes, it can be said that the idea of audiences not knowing something for sure was a passion of his.
During the late 80s, after Orson’s passing, Oja Kodar, his muse and lover, following a period of not getting close to any of Orson’s things because she was not “emotionally ready”, decided to rehabilitate his name and to release and talk about the work he had done, but which the public had not seen. Orson had left her with an impressive archive of footage and montages, which could finally shed light on the rumors and scraps many people were talking about.
The films that Orson did complete and release were mostly pictures that were heavily altered by producers and studios; thus, they were not completely reflective of his vision. However, the films that were now viewable showcased the way in which Orson himself saw things and how we wanted his movies to look. In the given financial circumstances, of course.
The themes explored by Orson in his unfinished projects were so varied and intriguing that they can keep people on the edge of their seats. “If Koda was carrying on with Picasso in the south of France, how did Hughes, who was at the time busy growing his toe nails in Vancouver, make it to those secret meetings on the Mexican pyramid?” Only such a quote from a film gives us a glimpse into the complex and, in all honesty, complicated mind of Orson Welles. But in the end, this is who Welles was: a magician who used smoke and mirrors to bamboozle people. Should we look at him from this perspective, Kaja’s defenses would not actually be necessary.
For him though, as the man behind the curtain, life was most likely structured and he used these structures to create his illusionist acts. In another film, we hear Orson say “Ladies and gentlemen, suppose I come right out with it and admit to you now that my old Martian hoax on the radio was… well not exactly a hoax.” Don’t you just want to know what happened? “That there were secret sponsors of that broadcast who were in fact some rather influential beings from outer space. You smile. I think they’re smiling, Gary and I’d just like to remind them that it is since that broadcast that there have been in this country alone authenticated sightings. You still think it’s a joke? Good. That’s the way we want you to feel about it. For now…” This kind of really strong and captivating statements in Orson’s movies make it seem that his entire latter career was itself in fact a hoax, which ensured that the discourse he created over the course of the first half of his life would remain open and at the same time, unveiled in mystery. Through his unfinished films, Orson created not just layers of secrets, boxes of mystery and most likely a lot of fake leads (we all know how much he loved fakes), but he also gave birth to a whole universe of backstories.
The fact that Orson saw human existence as a multiverse can also be drawn from his drawings. He would often doodle and would throw his things away, but Oja would save and keep his works. His drawings were sometimes like still movies. He would draw someone, then the way someone else looks at that person and so on – this way, the director would create a range of stories based on the same moment, each representing a perspective of a different character. He would also draw the sets for his movies and paid attention to every detail he could.
According to Oja, in his private life, Orson was quite different than his public persona. He was quiet and humble and actually rejected the megalomaniac image people ascribed to him. At the same time though, he did enjoy using and playing with it on screen. The general idea of identity was one with which he often played in his essays, as exemplified by the hilarious Lord Plumfield versus Welles, in which he played not only with the concept of identity, but also with the idea of looking behind the curtain and the actions a truth-seeker can afterwards take. He had done so masterfully before in the sketch show called Broaden Your Mind from 1968 and ’69. If the world was a stage for Shakespeare, the world was Orson Welles’ film set.
Indeed, as Oja recalled in an interview, Orson was scrapbooking, or better said, scrapfilming all the time. They were traveling around the world with filming and editing equipment and with a lot of other gear Orson found useful. “Seeing our luggage, people must have thought we were completely crazy”, she said when thinking back on the travel days.
On one occasion, a window frame he saw served as the point of inspiration for a humorous scene in which he played Winston Churchill. The reporter asks off camera in a serious questioning voice: “What are the desirable qualifications for a young man who wishes to become a politician?” Churchill replies: “The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, next year… and to have the ability to explain afterwards why it didn’t happen.”
The socio-cultural aspect of the story was what captured many people’s attention for years. Everyone was discussing why Welles was not able to finish his movies. In many cases, friends would act in his films, as he did not have large budgets and locations had to be changed due to financial reasons. When The Other Side of the Wind was not released, many people felt that their views on Orson were correct. Interestingly enough, the film was finished by a team of film makers after more than forty years since the project was started by Orson and was released in 2018 in selected theaters and on Netflix. Orson had a rich social life and knew many people and was surrounded by many young actors and directors as well. When he wanted to shoot a few scenes for The Other Side of the Wind, he could not afford a real film set, so he, Oja and a few young people sneaked into the set on a day when nobody was working there. Orson was hidden in a van.
He also worked on adaptations of the books of his favorite author, Tania Blixen, and even did a pilot for a TV talk show. He claimed he enjoyed television very much, because you couldn’t make a talk show for a movie screen and because television was all about people, which was his favorite subject. There were many bad times in Orson’s life, but he managed to weather them. Having Oja by his side was probably also useful.
Welles was also profoundly passionate about acting. His rich theater background did not really reflect in his work, but, as Oja recalls, in her living room was where she saw some of the most impressive theater. Apparently, Orson made a great Romeo… and a great Juliet.
Because he was such a one-man-band, Orson also decided to make an autobiographical film. Unfortunately, this was not completed as well, and it would have been extremely interesting to see how we wanted to present his life to the public. Maybe the theme of the movie was enough for us, as the film was about a one-man-band.