This Month
| March 2008 |
| Sun |
Mon |
Tue |
Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
Sat |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1
|
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
12
|
13
|
14
|
15
|
|
16
|
17
|
18
|
19
|
20
|
21
|
22
|
|
23
|
24
|
25
|
26
|
27
|
28
|
29
|
|
30
|
31
|
|
Sunday, March 30
WELLES AND SHAKESPEARE: THREE COLLABORATIONS
by
Lloydville
on Sun 30 Mar 2008 08:47 PM PDT
[Photo by Carl Van Vechten]
The
poetry of a play by Shakespeare is characterized by an almost
supernatural density of imagery and invention, wordplay, wit and
insight. Though designed to fly by in two hours' traffic
upon a stage it simply cannot be absorbed fully on a single hearing or
reading, composed as it is of a torrent of miraculous phrases and passages that
repay continual study. The sheer abundance, the sheer generosity
of it is overwhelming.
Orson Welles completed three films based on Shakespeare plays -- Macbeth, Othello and Falstaff (Chimes At Midnight).
His interest, as it became clear over time, was not simply in mounting the plays within the cinematic
medium but pushing the medium to supply a cinematic equivalent to
Shakespeare's poetry. In Falstaff,
I would argue, he finally succeeded in this ambition. In the
process he completely rethought the approach to cinema he employed in
his early masterpieces Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.
Citizen Kane, though
dominated aesthetically by scenes shot in deep focus and playing in
long takes, in fact employs a grab-bag of cinematic techniques --
process shots involving backscreen projection, models and matte
paintings, double-exposures, faked newsreel footage. In The Magnificent Ambersons,
Welles experimented with even longer and more elaborately choreographed
single-take scenes, some of which were cut up by Robert Wise at the
behest of RKO when they took the film away from Welles -- but Welles
also included pictorial trick shots that violate the aesthetic of the
single-take scenes.
With The Stranger, Welles was
trying to work within the boundaries of a more conventional studio style,
but he eschewed trick shots almost entirely and included one long,
stunning single-take scene made with a crane on tracks in a forest. In The Lady From Shanghai
he tried his best to stick to location photography and to incorporate
long single-take scenes, but the film was so meddled with by Columbia
that we don't have a clear record of Welles's vision for the film as a whole.
All this was prelude to his first Shakespeare adaptation for film, Macbeth,
made cheaply and quickly for Republic Pictures. The 23-day
shooting schedule meant that Welles had to limit his technical
ambitions for the film. His increasing fascination with long
single-take scenes resulted in one extraordinary feat -- a
10-minute shot which records the entire episode leading up to and including the murder of Duncan
and the arrival of Macduff, who discovers the crime. It plays
out on several levels of the studio set, covered by pans, tracks and
crane moves.
There are two other less extraordinary single-take scenes of some
length. One records the episode in which Macduff learns of the
deaths of all his "pretty ones". This is taken from a fixed
camera position on a studio-exterior set without great spatial
interest. The four actors involved move about in ways that often
feel arbitrary in order to create different groupings of the characters
and heighten the complexity of the shot. The other shot records the
scene in which Macbeth, on the parapet of Dunsinane, learns of the
approach of Macduff and his armies and then moves inside to discuss
Lady Macbeth's mental health with her doctor. Again, the studio
sets here don't offer much spatial complexity and the choreography is not
especially dynamic.
Two shorter scenes involving dynamic camera moves are more
powerful. In one, the camera starts on a close-up of Macbeth, left
alone in the banqueting hall, and moves with him, pulling back, as he
races outdoors to the top of a rock and summons the weird
sisters. This is followed shortly by a high crane shot that swoops down
slowly onto the figure of Macbeth and ends in a close-up on his
upturned face.
The rest of the film employs a more conventional editing of shorter
shots. Some of these shots are visually arresting, involving
dynamic camera moves and angles, but many more are merely
utilitarian. There are a few interpolated shots taken on real
exteriors, a couple of shots employing matte paintings and, in the
final battle scene, a series of shots manipulated with optical
zooms. Taken as a whole, the visual strategy of the film is
chaotic.
When he came to make Othello
a
few years later, Welles said he planned to shoot it all on built sets
and in long takes -- making it, in effect, an extension of the approach
he took with the long single-take studio-bound scenes in Macbeth. He had been disappointed with the execution of the sets he designed for Macbeth, which do indeed look pretty cheesy most of the time -- but he had a superb designer for Othello, Alexander Trauner, who sketched out elaborate sets for the film, meant to
be built at the Victorine Studio in Nice. Welles was thrilled
with the sets Trauner envisioned and always spoke of them wistfully in
later years.
All of Welles' plans for Othello had to be abandoned, however, when the film's
original financing fell through. Welles could only afford to
shoot in real locations, few of which were suitable for the entirety
of a given scene. In addition, limitations on equipment and the size of the crew
meant that he could not shoot long takes, which, as he explained,
require the technical resources of a large studio production unit.
These problems altered Welles' whole aesthetic approach to the film,
since he would not only have to use short takes more or less exclusively but he
would also have to match shots taken in disparate locations within a
single scene.
His response was masterful. He concentrated the full power of his
visual imagination on the individual shots -- almost all of which, however brief, record
deep, dynamic spaces and boldly choreographed movement -- and used rhythmic, musical editing in an attempt to unify them
into a coherent artistic whole.
The result was impressive but not uniformly successful. Clearly Welles was improvising
from day to day, sometimes desperately -- the production was halted on numerous occasions when
funds ran out, necessitating changes of locale and the loss of actors
due to conflicting commitments. The "music" of the editing was
something Welles could not always control expressively -- often he was
just trying to keep the beat, to bridge extreme gaps in continuity.
But necessity had led him to new possibilities of invention. He would deploy them spectacularly in Falstaff.
In that film he would shoot to the music of the editing he
envisioned, without the technical vexations created by Othello's near-fatal financial emergencies. There would be no long, virtuoso single-take scenes
but each shot would be dense, beautifully choreographed, with its own
dynamic spatial complexity. These shots would be utterly
involving in themselves
-- and Welles would be able to preserve a sense of spatial continuity
from shot to shot to a degree that had not been possible on Othello -- but the images would flow by with a relentless momentum, regulated by the metric of the editing.
Welles would not linger on the rich poetry of his individual shots but
race through them -- as Shakespeare races through the rich poetry of his texts.
The great battle scene in the film offers the most extraordinary
vindication of Welles's approach. Though made up of scores of
short shots, each is like a film within a film -- bold, dynamic,
involving. You feel you could linger on every one of them
indefinitely.
When he was 19, Welles wrote this about Shakespeare -- "His
language is starlight and fireflies and the sun and the moon. He
wrote it with tears and blood and beer, and his words march like
heartbeats." It's not too much to say that in the images of Falstaff Welles found a cinematic equivalent to Shakespeare's poetry -- a true visual complement.
Which is to say that Welles took cinema as far, or nearly as far, as Shakespeare took the
English language -- and that's as far as anyone has ever taken it.
Wednesday, March 26
THE MISSING AMBERSONS
by
Lloydville
on Wed 26 Mar 2008 12:55 AM PDT
Here's some interesting and possibly hopeful news from Wellesnet,
the invaluable web site resource for all things Orson Welles. It
seems that Beatrice Welles, Orson Welles' daughter and one of his
heirs, made a legal claim against Turner Entertainment over the rights
to The Magnificent Ambersons and a couple of other films. Court documents tracked down by Wellesnet reveal that the claims with regard to Ambersons have been settled. This may explain why Ambersons
has not yet appeared on DVD in the U. S. and may be a sign that it will
be coming soon. Let's hope. This is one of the greatest
films not
yet available in the format in this country. Others are:
Greed
The Big Parade
The Merry Widow (silent version)
The Wedding March
City Girl
Falstaff (Chimes At Midnight)
Comanche Station
Thursday, March 20
HARRY ON KANE
by
Lloydville
on Thu 20 Mar 2008 10:48 AM PDT
Below are my nephew Harry's notes for an oral presentation on Citizen Kane for his 9th-grade history class:
February 26, 2008
Citizen Kane
Intro Facts:
-Directed by Orson Wells in 1941.
-He also starred in , co-wrote and co-produced it
- all at the age of 24
-Previously, had been in radio, creator of the famous War of the Worlds episode for Mercury Theater in N.Y.C.
-Citizen Kane= the first and last major studio film over which he would have total control.
-Considered universally to be one of the greatest films ever created
Some Elements that make this film revolutionary:
-use of depth of focus shots (=wide angle lenses to capture the details
of the foreground, middle ground and background without prioritizing)
-depth of focus important because it allows the viewer to actively
investigate the space, make conclusions, see relationships between
characters and their space in more complex ways, spectator is an active
participant in the scene
-use of ceilings and the “fourth wall” = more interesting camera angles, more creative lighting , more real
-camera is inquisitive, as if it is a character itself, instead of a stationary machine that records what’s in front of it
-non-linear storytelling
-narrative told in bits and pieces, out of chronological order
-some scenes are revisited more than once from different perspectives
-story of Kane’s life is revealed as a reporter interviews people who
were closest to Kane in attempt to learn meaning of Kane’s last dying
words
-leads to a richer, more complex portrait of a person
Conclusion:
-On initial release, film was hated by most major film studios.
-Negative was almost burned
-Wells was persecuted by newspaper tycoon William Randolf Hearst, who
saw unflattering parallels between himself and Charles Foster Kane.
-Wells was blacklisted in Hollywood
-Citizen Kane was never distributed to major commercial theaters
-Sad because this movie defines us - what drives power, materialism, and what we may have lost on the way
After Harry's presentation his teacher said, "We always hear that Citizen Kane is one of the greatest movies ever made -- now we know why."
My notes on the notes:
A superb summary -- excellent stylistic and thematic analysis. I
personally wouldn't call any of the stylistic elements of the film
"revolutionary", however, since they had all been used before -- just rarely
with such brilliance. It's true that most studio heads hated the
picture, because it offended Hearst and they were afraid of him, but
the Hollywood community recognized its brilliance -- it was nominated
for several Academy Awards and won in the category of Best
Screenplay. The negative was indeed almost burned -- Louis B.
Mayer offered to buy it from RKO and destroy it, as a favor to Hearst and to
protect the industry from his wrath. Welles wasn't exactly
blacklisted in Hollywood -- it just became hard for him to work as a
director there after his first two films, and a third which he
produced, tanked at the box office. Kane
was distributed erratically and never got a chance to prove itself
commercially but it did play at a few major theaters in major cities --
it had its Los Angeles premiere at the El Capitan, which is still
standing. The El Capitan wasn't the most prestigious house in
town but it was a respectable venue.
Conclusion:
Well done, Harold!
Friday, March 14
FALSTAFF
by
Lloydville
on Fri 14 Mar 2008 12:51 AM PDT
Orson Welles once said that if any one of his films would qualify him for entry into heaven it would probably be Falstaff (also known as Chimes At Midnight.) As credentials for salvation go, Falstaff
is probably as impeccable as any -- it's one of the greatest movies
ever made, so great that it almost seems to inhabit a new medium all its own.
Visually it's a torrent of dense, lyrical, consistently
exhilarating
images -- an explosion of plastic invention unequaled since the days
of silent cinema. But it's a talkie, and its words are not just
any words -- they're the words of Shakespeare. It's not too much
to say that Welles' images, with their musical rhythms of movement
within individual shots and from shot to shot, constitute a co-equal
element with Shakespeare's poetry. Image and word fly, dance,
crack, soar and sing together. There has never been anything
quite like it.
The soundtrack has technical flaws, however, which make it hard to
appreciate the full scope of Welles' achievement. The production
was beset with severe financial problems -- almost all the dialogue had
to be dubbed, and Welles had to supervise the re-recording at a
distance. The line readings are uniformly superb but the sync is
not always perfect and the "room tone" surrounding the dubbed voices is
inconsistent and often disorienting.
I don't know if the original sound elements still exist -- if they do,
modern digital technology could certainly be applied to correct the
flaws, though it would probably cost a small fortune.
As things stand, one needs to accept a slight disconnect between
image
and dialogue -- which is no more than saying that the Parthenon
has sustained a bit of damage through the years. One makes
allowances.
The film is not available on DVD in this country. There is a
barely acceptable all-region Brazilian edition in NTSC format which can be had online, but it's
not optimized for a widescreen monitor and the transfer of both sound
and picture is mediocre. Still, if you've seen the film on a big
screen, the Brazilian DVD can evoke the experience well enough.
I saw Falstaff at the Paris
Theater in New York in the summer of my 17th year. During the
battle scene my hair stood on end -- I think I probably trembled with
excitement. I know what cinema is, I thought to myself -- the
secret of it is here, in this film. It was more a gut feeling
than a practical or intellectual insight, but the moment has inspired
all my thinking about movies ever since. A hundred years from now
people will still be studying Falstaff in an effort to apprehend the craft and mystery of movies.
Monday, March 10
ORSON WELLES ON RADIO
by
Lloydville
on Mon 10 Mar 2008 12:05 AM PDT
There
is simply no end to the wonders of the web. One I recently
discovered is a web site which hosts many of the radio plays Orson
Welles created before Hollywood scooped him up. These are
brilliant and extremely entertaining productions in which Welles
experimented with the aural effects he later applied to his movie
soundtracks.
Though they have a patina of "artiness", and are often adaptations of
famous works of literature, the shows are aimed at a popular audience
-- they blend the ambitions of Welles' innovative stage productions
with the lessons he learned as an actor on commercial radio. The result is popular art of a very high order.
On the site you can download many of the featured shows in MP3 format and listen
to all of them in streaming audio. Check it out here:
The Mercury Theater On the Air
. . . and thank Kim Scarborough, who created the online archive, for a signal service to our culture.
|
|
