Best Orson Welles film (as director)

And there's another one.

I really don't think it works that way, Pope Eric

Rest assured: I SB'd you both.

I'd like to re-poll this one. Also S&S '12 if Kane takes that one.

wau, ya woulda made a "great dictator"

(based on an idea by Orson Welles)

And you would've made a great court jester.

(based on a genre of film by untalented hacks)

the vessel in yer pestle

I really think I may have been wrong about Jerry Lewis.

Rent/dl/steal and watch "Black Magic", fellow film geeks. Have fun!

havent seen The Trial since i was a kid, but i thot it was amazing then

yeah the trial is good. saw it first while stoned out of my head and really dug it: the soviet bloc style tower blocks, the weird frisson with the chix, the running around latticed mazes casting crazy shadows, the play on the psycho persona with the nervous repressed nice young man free of crime this time if still moved to temper, the bizarre variation on the kafka ending

Dennis Perrin on growing old w/ Ambersons:

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2012/05/lost-in-amber.html

well and beautifully said.

Yeah, Macbeth definitely not on the same playing field as Chimes at Midnight.

But still much better than I expected from a movie shot in 3 weeks in salt mines.

and much better than Othello.

fond memories of his Macbeth. I guess I should get around to seeing the Magnificent Ambersons one of these days

Didn't realize DVD was now available as a standalone.

I remember Roddy McDowall being kinda terrible in Macbeth... Othello all the way among Shakespeares.

Yeah, Roddy isn't going to make a great king.

Will get back to you to call you totally insane, Morbs, when I finally get around to Othello.

tsk tsk, you have become what I was merely rumored to be....

That's a throne you will never vacate.

Not only does Macbeth boast one of Welles' few good performances, the one by Jeanette Nolan is almost as good.

no, I do what's necessary and leave. xp

oh, you go envision Cary Grant as Titus Andronicus!

"one of Welles' few good performances"

Hah, OK, so that's what it looks like when I do that.

I get my jollies envisioning Archie as Rosalind.

Hah, OK, so that's what it looks like when I do that.

insightful?

i maintain that OW never made any bad films, but 'macbeth' is better than 'othello'

I, too, haven't seen a "bad" Orson Welles movie yet.

The Stranger probably.

Bad performances he's got, er, tons of.

If performances like his are bad, I don't really give a care about good ones.

He's hopeless playing a straightforward love scene (e.g. Tomorrow is Forever).

Well, yeah, who wants to see that? (Tho I was surprised at how rowr he was -- by his standards -- early on in Macbeth.)

I rewatched Ambersons last night; I always forget that's Anne Baxter as Cotten's daughter. She was allegedly 18 or 19. That scene where she faints in the drugstore AFTER Welles swings the lens away from her... who did THAT, ever, in Hollywood?

Tim Holt's fine as Georgie, as written at least. Love the way he says "Umph, strawberry shortcake" in the kitchen with Aunt Fanny.

The George-Mom relationship really isn't that compelling for an Oedipal drama tho. A near-great amputee of a movie, still.

Cotten is magisterial in a quiet sad way that's always killed me.

and that's after he's introduced slapstickily, exhibiting male fashion habits of 1900, then taking a pratfall.

the Baxter-Cotten chat about Indians is one of my favorite throwaway surreal bits in movies.

well, it's pretty thematically relevant, tho I'm not sure if the chief who gets set adrift is Morgan or George...

(I wonder if it's in Booth Tarkington)

there's a bit in the Thomson bio where he observes that Welles make Tarkington as deep as Henry James whereas most screen adaptations of James look like...Tarkington.

btw I still own this on VHS recorded from the local PBS station twenty years ago

The most beautiful (and most nostalgic) shot in the film has to be the iris at the end of the snow ride:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJxgrxl5BRM

The George-Mom relationship really isn't that compelling for an Oedipal drama tho.

one of the most fucked-up things about what RKO did to 'ambersons' is that they didn't just cut stuff, they actually RESHOT a couple of scenes to make tim holt more 'sympathetic' and less of a dick. so it was probably more intense in the original cut.

sabotage and all, this feels like welles's...deepest and most resonant movie, somehow. so many little bits of it just stick with me.

Then he fades in on the wake of George's father. xp

Is there a list somewhere of the post-Welles changes that are in the film?

The Callow bio reviews them.

i probably woulda voted for amberson or chimes, but as pure entertainment, c.k. has never stopped being a hoot.

Yes--I couldn't remember exactly what it was, but I knew the iris shot got some of its power from the contrast with whatever directly followed.

Essentially saw The Lady from Shanghai for the first time the other night (part of the Godard series). I did see it once years ago, but it was one of those nights I was really tired and shouldn't have gone to a movie. I knew the finale very well--it used to be part of the opening montage for TVO's Saturday Night at the Movies, and I've also shown it in class.

Anyway, fantastic. I'd have to watch them back-to-back, but I think I'd take it over Touch of Evil. Probably just as strange, too, primarily thanks to Glenn Anders. His first appearance has to rank up there with Welles in The Third Man and Hopper in Blue Velvet for spectacular entrances. (Possibly a thread there.) At first I didn't think Hayworth was as beautiful as in Gilda, but once she started wearing those sailor suits, wow. And the big finale is show-offy genius. Can't disagree with my friend: you can imagine Welles working on the script, sitting there with the last scene written and trying to figure out a movie to attach to it. Loved Everett Sloane, too. Hayworth gets a little too talkative and philosophical in her death scene, but that'd be my only minor quibble.

Apparently it was cut by at least an hour too. At least as much of a pity as Ambersons' mutilation imho.

Digital restoration of Othello showing soon.