Tag: Orson Welles

The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

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The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

The Other Side of the Wind (2018). 122 minutes. Directed by Orson Welles. Starring John Huston (as J. J. “Jake” Hannaford), Peter Bogdanovich (as Brooks Otterlake), Susan Strasberg (as Juliette Rich), Norman Foster (as Billy Boyle), Oja Kodar (as the Actress), Bob Random (as John Dale), Joseph McBride (as Marvin Pister), Lilli Palmer (as Zarah Valeska), Edmond O’Brien (as Pat Mullins), Mercedes McCambridge (as Maggie Noonan), Cameron Mitchell (as Matt “Zimmie” Zimmer), Dan Tobin (as Dr. Bradley Pease Burroughs), Cathy Lucas (as Mavis Henscher), and Tonio Selwart (as the Baron). Featuring Henry Jaglom, Paul Mazursky, Claude Chabrol, Curtis Harrington, and Dennis Hopper as themselves. Cinematography by Gary Graver. Edited by Bob Murawski and Orson Welles. Produced by Frank Marshall and Filip Jan Rymsza.

This November, 48 years after its first day of shooting, Orson Welles’s film The Other Side of the Wind was finally released to the general public on Netflix. The film was not Welles’s last (he left … Read the rest

The Other Side of the Wind (2018): First Day of Shooting (Audio)

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Orson Welles

This 31-minute audio recording was made by film critic, screenwriter, and actor Joseph McBride on August 23, 1970—the first day of shooting on The Other Side of the Wind, Orson Welles’s film about the last day in the life of fictional director J. J. “Jake” Hannaford (played by John Huston). The recording features McBride (as Marvin Pister) rehearsing a scene with Peter Bogdanovich (as Charles Higgam) at Welles’s house in Beverly Hills, with Welles directing. Bogdanovich would later be recast as Brooks Otterlake.

Many thanks to McBride for making the recording available to Kozak’s Classic Cinema.… Read the rest

Journey into Fear (1943)

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Journey into Fear (1943)

Journey into Fear (1943). 68 minutes. Directed by Norman Foster. Starring Joseph Cotten (as Howard Graham), Dolores del Río (as Josette Martel), Ruth Warrick (as Stephanie Graham), Agnes Moorehead (as Mrs. Matthews), Jack Durant (as Gogo), Everett Sloane (as Kopeikin), Eustace Wyatt (as Professor Haller/Muller), Frank Readick (as Matthews), Edgar Barrier (as Kuvetli), Jack Moss (as Banat), Stefan Schnabel (as purser), Richard Bennett (as captain), and Orson Welles (as Colonel Haki). Screenplay by Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles.

Journey into Fear features Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre stock players in a story about a hapless American who gets caught up in a European espionage plot during World War Two. The rushed production required the actors to work in many uncredited capacities, and the movie was certainly not the artistic focus of Welles’s time at RKO in the early 1940s—a period that included Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and the ambitious and unfinished It’s All True. But Journey Into … Read the rest

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

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"The Lady From Shanghai" featured image. Detail from the original Italian movie poster.

The Lady from Shanghai (1947). 88 minutes. Directed by Orson Welles.  Starring Orson Welles (as Michael O’Hara), Rita Hayworth (as Elsa Bannister), Everett Sloane (as Arthur Bannister), and Glenn Anders (as George Grisby).

The Lady from Shanghai is a sophisticated film noir about the difference between reality and illusion, but one could also say that it is a movie about creepy people doing creepy things in creepy places.  For the first-time viewer, it may seem most like a film that is struggling to be coherent in spite of its leaving the audience with many unanswered questions, such as: what does the husband know and when?  What are we to make of the wife’s mysterious past in Shanghai, her smoldering glances, and her inexplicable moodiness?  Did she marry her husband to protect a secret?  Is she in danger?  With dialogue such as “Everything’s bad.  You can’t fight it” and “It’s a bright, guilty world,” we might wonder where the characters’ bleak … Read the rest

The Third Man (1949)

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"The Third Man" Featured Image

The Third Man (1949).  93 minutes.  Directed by Carol Reed. Starring Joseph Cotten (as Holly Martins), Alida Valli (as Anna Schmidt), Orson Welles (as Harry Lime), and Trevor Howard (as Major Calloway).

The Third Man is sometimes compared to Citizen Kane.  Both films prominently feature Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten, both concern male friendship and betrayal, and both examine the inherent difficulties of knowing great men, men who loom large either in the eyes of society (Citizen Kane) or in the eyes of their childhood chums (The Third Man).  Both also have final shots of enormous and legendary significance.  But despite these similarities, the courses of the two films run through very different territory, and so I shall have to leave off comparing the two so that I might focus on what makes The Third Man so unique, so powerful, and so devastatingly moving.  I am hardly alone in this assessment: Roger Ebert observed in … Read the rest