ENDED

By the time he was 26, Orson Welles (1915-1985) had conquered the stage, radio, and the cinema, and was already a TIME cover boy — and he spent the rest of his life trying to top himself. As the complete auteur, he produced a body of work that made him one of the greatest of directors — to some, the greatest — with his lush, dynamic visuals; deep focus; long takes; sweeping camera movements; scintillating editing; unmatched directing of actors (including himself); and his dominant themes of the heavy hand of time, the passing of eras, and innocence lost. And, as an actor, whether relatively lean or (real) fat; broke or in the money; hamming endearingly in for-the-buck cameos, narrating a travelogue as though his script came on stone tablets, pitching wine in TV commercials, or plumbing the depths of character as Kane, Othello, or Harry Lime, he dominated every project he was ever involved in. “What can you say about a person?” wondered Marlene Dietrich in Touch of Evil. “He was some kind of a man.” SPECIAL THANKS TO DENNIS BARTOK AND GWEN DEGLISE, AMERICAN CINEMATHEQUE; STEFAN DROESSLER, MUNICH FILMMUSEUM; GARY AND JILLIAN GRAVER; LINDA EVANS-SMITH, MARILEE WOMACK, WILLIAM ROBENS AND RICHARD MAY, WARNER BROS.; PETER BECKER AND STEPHANIE FRIEDMAN, JANUS FILMS; BOB O’NEIL AND PAUL GINSBURG, UNIVERSAL; JOHN KIRK, IRENE RAMOS AND LATANYA TAYLOR, MGM; MICHAEL SCHLESINGER, SUSANNE JACOBSON AND GROVER CRISP, SONY PICTURES; PETER CIMINO, CASTLE HILL PRODUCTIONS; SCHAWN BELSTON, 20TH CENTURY FOX; ANNE GOODMAN, CRITERION PICTURES; DENNIS DOROS AND AMY HELLER, MILESTONE FILMS; TOM MOLEN, HARRY GARRISON AND JODI GWYDIR, PARAMOUNT; MIKE MASHON, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; TODD WIENER, UCLA FILM & TELEVISION ARCHIVE; RICHARD GORDON; SHARON LESTER, RAINBOW FILMS; JOHN AND PEGGY FLYNN, HOLLYWOOD CLASSICS; LARRY GREENBERG, SHOWTIME; CBS TELEVISION; ELIZABETH EDWARDS, DESILU TOO; CHIP TAYLOR; RIALTO PICTURES; RUSTY CASSELTON; AND OJA KODAR.

SERIES ENDED - For a listing of all films that played by date

THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS: 1:00, 5:30 & 9:30
CITIZEN KANE: 2:45 & 7:15

Click here for more information about THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS

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JANE EYRE

(1943, ROBERT STEVENSON) Joan Fontaine’s Jane graduates from the Orphanage from Hell to be governess to the ward of Welles’s brooding Rochester. If this adaptation of Charlotte Brönte’s protofeminist classic tends toward film noir, the influence is definitely Wellesian. “He strode on the set and proclaimed, ‘All right, everybody turn to page eight’ and we did it, though he wasn’t the director.” – Joan Fontaine.
MON 1:30, 5:30
TUE/WED 1:30, 5:30, 9:30

TOMORROW IS FOREVER

(1945, IRVING PICHEL) Listed among the dead of WWII, Welles, sporting a new face, returns anyway, only to find wife Claudette Colbert now remarried to George Brent. Easy choice? With 7-year-old Natalie Wood as Welles’s adopted daughter.
MON 3:30
TUE/WED 3:30, 7:30

CITIZEN KANE

(1941, ORSON WELLES) From its Gothic opening at looming Xanadu, through its conflicting accounts of a news magnate’s public rise and private fall, to its legendary final shot, this is the most electrifying debut in screen history — acting and directing — routinely voted by international critics the greatest film ever, and an acknowledged influence and inspiration to the most disparate cineastes. As brilliant and startling today as in 1941, it remained both Welles’s masterpiece and his nemesis. “More fun than any great movie I can think of.” – Pauline Kael.
THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS: 1:00, 5:30 & 9:30
CITIZEN KANE: 2:45 & 7:15

COMPULSION

(1959, RICHARD FLEISCHER) Fictionalized version of the Leopold- Loeb case, with Welles arriving late as the Clarence Darrow figure, his summing up for the defense of thrill-killers Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman an electrifying tour de force. Collective Cannes Best Actor Award to Stockwell, Dillman, and Welles. 1:20, 5:30, 9:40

THE LONG HOT SUMMER

(1958, MARTIN RITT) “You’re gonna like me,” smirks itinerant handyman and alleged barn-burner Paul Newman to Mississippi baron Welles, in this widescreen adaptation of William Faulkner stories, featuring Joanne Woodward as Welles’s daughter (the first Newman-Woodward screen pairing). With Angela Lansbury. 3:20, 7:30

TOUCH OF EVIL

(1998 RESTORATION)

(1958, ORSON WELLES) Mexican narc Charlton Heston, on a Yankee honeymoon with gringa bride Janet Leigh, finds himself pressed into service by memorably bloated police chief Welles when a car bomb vaporizes two Tijuana day-trippers. With a legendary opening crane shot that follows the actors for blocks; Marlene Dietrich’s deadpan, dark-wigged madam; and an elaborate chase through the canals of Venice... California. 1:30, 5:25, 9:10

• Classic Movies TOUCH OF EVIL Page

OTHELLO

(1952, ORSON WELLES) As Othello lies dead, a horrified Iago is hoisted above the crowd in an iron cage — and then the play begins. Shakespeare’s classic of jealousy and retribution becomes one of Welles’s most dazzingly visual works, from its baroque Venetian beginning to the stunning murder sequence in a Turkish bath. Despite perhaps Welles’s most chaotic shooting schedule (see Filming Othello, March 24), it took the Grand Prize at Cannes. 3:40, 7:35

MAN IN THE SHADOW

(1957, JACK ARNOLD) Modern bigtime rancher Orson Welles’s henchmen go a little too far disciplining a bracero migrant worker, but Sheriff Jeff Chandler isn’t falling for the resulting cover-up. 1:00, 4:30, 8:00

I’LL NEVER FORGET WHAT’S ’IS NAME

(1967, MICHAEL WINNER) Organization man Oliver Reed takes an axe to his desk as an emphatic way of opting out of the rat race; but as cigar-chomping boss Orson Welles chortles cynically, the question remains — can he stick to those ideals? 2:35, 6:05, 9:35

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

(1966, FRED ZINNEMANN) Crimson-garbed Welles guest stars as Cardinal Wolsey, while Paul Scofield’s Sir Thomas More risks his head opposing Robert Shaw’s Henry VIII, in this multi- Oscared (6 in all, including Film, Actor, and Director) adaptation of Robert Bolt’s stage classic. 3:05, 7:10

THE SAILOR FROM GIBRALTAR

(1967, TONY RICHARDSON) Welles as the fezzed “Louis from Mozambique” cameos as Jeanne Moreau, sailing the seas in search of the title mariner, runs off with Ian Bannen, a British clerk bored with his Italian holiday and mistress Vanessa Redgrave (?!). Screenplay co-written by Christopher Isherwood, from the Marguerite Duras novel. 1:15, 5:20, 9:25

JOURNEY INTO FEAR

(1942, NORMAN FOSTER) Joseph Cotten’s armaments expert is saved from murder by his disappearance during a magic act, trapped on a blacked-out ship with his nemesis, then held at gunpoint on a window ledge in a driving rain. Sometimes bizarre semi-spoof of vintage Eric Ambler intrigue, supervised and part-directed by Welles, who also cameos in heavy make-up as Turkish secret police chief Colonel Haki. 2:00, 5:30, 9:00

BLACK MAGIC

(1949, GREGORY RATOFF) Welles’s real life 18th-century con man/ magician/hypnotist Cagliostro helps bring down the French monarchy amid a cast of characters including Louis XV and XVI, Marie Antoinette, Madame du Barry, et al. While Ratoff is the director of record, can one discern the master’s touch? With Valentina Cortese. 3:30, 7:00

THE STRANGER

(1946, ORSON WELLES) I Married a Nazi War Criminal, as War Crimes Commissioner Edward G. Robinson tracks the supposed mastermind of the Final Solution to a quiet Connecticut village, the home of boys’ school prof Welles and all-American bride Loretta Young, as well as of a looming 124- foot clock tower, scene of the hair-raising climax. Welles’s return to Hollywood directing after his firing from RKO was his only film to be “very profitable.” 1:00, 4:35, 8:10

THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI

(1948, ORSON WELLES) “If I’d only known where it would end, I’d never have let anything start.” Footloose Irish sailor with literary aspirations Welles gets mixed up in murder with crooked and disabled lawyer Everett Sloane and his sultry wife Rita Hayworth (Mrs. Welles at the time), as Byzantine plot complications ensue, highlighted by the legendary Hall of Mirrors finale. “A reversion to the style of Citizen Kane: deeply shadowed photography, ogreish close-ups, settings heavy with association.” – Dilys Powell. 2:50, 6:25, 10:00

THE SOUTHERN STAR

(1969, SIDNEY HAYERS) Africa 1912 — and who’s got the eponymous diamond? Con man George Segal? Native Johnny Sekka? Or the ostrich? They’re all pursued by bad guy Welles and even worse Ian Hendry in this semi-spoof adaptation of a Jules Verne adventure. With Ursula Andress. Shot by New Wave great Raoul Coutard. 1:30, 5:30, 9:30

HOUSE OF CARDS

(1969, JOHN GUILLERMAN) Down-at-the-heels American boxer/ writer George Peppard and sexy widow Inger Stevens find themselves up against imposing millionaire Orson Welles and his gang of neo-Fascists — out to re-conquer Algeria for a new European empire! 3:30, 7:30

IT’S ALL TRUE

(1993, RICHARD WILSON, MYRON MEISEL & BILL KROHN) Reconstruction of Welles’s aborted 1942 South American project, with his dazzling color footage of Rio’s Carnival, the “blessing of the bull,” and the almost complete semi-documentary story of four fishermen’s nearly 2000-mile sea voyage to Rio on a tiny raft; plus surviving participants exploding the myth of Welles’s irresponsibility. “A must-see. . . a long, seductive footnote to a cinema legend.” – Vincent Canby, NY Times. 2:50, 6:25, 10:00

FILMING OTHELLO

(1978, ORSON WELLES) Sitting at the editing table, Welles recuts his own footage and reminisces about his barely-financed 1952 adaptation of the Shakespeare play, including the single scene that took two years to shoot; his staging of Cassio's murder in a Turkish bath when costumes didn't arrive; and his three Iagos, three Desdemonas and four Cassios. “A good filmmaker is one who presides over accidents.” – Welles. 1:00, 4:35, 8:10

CONFIDENTIAL REPORT (MR. ARKADIN)

(1955, ORSON WELLES) “On December 25 an airplane was sighted off the coast of Barcelona. It was flying empty.” Citizen Kane in reverse, as drifter Robert Arden is recruited by mysterious zillionaire Orson Welles to research his own past, the witnesses providing a memorable procession of grotesques, from Mischa Auer’s flea circus magnate, to Michael Redgrave’s swish antique dealer, to Katina Paxinou’s retired crime boss. 1:20, 5:25, 9:30

THE TRIAL

(1962, ORSON WELLES) Anthony Perkins’s Josef K enters a nondescript door and an immense crowd rises to its feet; two detectives beat a third in a tiny room lit by a single bulb; and in a gigantic office the desks stretch on, and on . . . Welles’s idiosyncratic view of Kafka’s classic of meaningless persecution unfolds against locations in Zagreb and in the vast, deserted Gare (now Musée) d’Orsay in Paris. With Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider and Welles himself, onscreen and dubbing 11 different characters. 3:10, 7:15

Milestone Film THE TRIAL Page

A SAFE PLACE

(1971, HENRY JAGLOM) That’s what young New Yorker Tuesday Weld is searching for in this dream-like fantasy — funded by a major studio after Jaglom’s edit job on Easy Rider — as she gravitates between Jack Nicholson and Phil Proctor (Firesign Theatre), watched over by magician Welles. 1:20, 5:20, 9:20

SOMEONE TO LOVE

(1987, HENRY JAGLOM) In his final (posthumous) role, Welles muses on film, feminism, and marriage as one of a group of Henry Jaglom’s unmarried friends — among them Ronee Blakley, Dave Frishberg and Sally Kellerman — invited to chronicle their relationship woes on the stage of an about-to be- demolished theater. 3:10, 7:10

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THE DOMINICI AFFAIR

(1999, CHRISTOPHE COGNET) In 1952, in Europe to shoot episodes of his “Around the World” tv series, Welles began “The Tragedy of Lurs,” an investigation into the recent murders of a British family in the French countryside. But pressures from the French government prevented its completion. This French documentary re-constructs the case and puts the finishing touches on Welles’s film. Digital projection. 3:45, 7:00

ROSABELLA: ORSON WELLES IN ITALY

(1993, GIANFRANCO GIAGNI & CIRO GIORGINI) Or “Rosebud” Italian style. Welles’s 20 years in Italy are chronicled via rare film footage and interviews with friends and colleagues, including his third wife Paola Mori; plus footage from Kane, Macbeth, and the unfinished Don Quixote. Digital projection. 2:30, 5:45, 9:00

THE V.I.P.s

(1963, ANTHONY ASQUITH) Grand Hotel for rich people in a London airport locked in by fog, with Welles as a posh-accented, mountainous impresario among an all-star cast including Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Maggie Smith, and Oscar-winning Margaret Rutherford. 2:20, 5:55, 9:30

“Ricotta” &
“Lord Mountdrago”

In “Ricotta,” the Pasolini episode from RoGoPaG (1962), Welles is an über-jaded American director filming the Passion at Cinecittà. In “Lord Mountdrago,” a sequence from the British portmanteau film Three Cases of Murder (1955), Welles is a pompous Foreign Secretary who ruins the career of a fiery Welsh parliamentarian — only to be haunted in three deliriously funny dream sequences. Digital projection. Plus Hearts of Age (1934), Welles’s first short.1:00, 4:35, 8:10

F FOR FAKE

(1976, ORSON WELLES) A skilled magician in real life, Welles the filmmaker keeps the rabbits coming, starting with already-shot footage by François Reichenbach on art forger Elmyr de Hory (who effortlessly tosses off a Picasso drawing on screen) and Howard Hughes “memoirs” hoaxer Clifford Irving, then adding his own visual and verbal sleight-of-hand. “One of the most dazzling, equivocal and personal films ever made.” – Jack Kroll, Newsweek.
FRI/SAT/SUN 1:10, 4:05, 7:00, 9:55
MON 1:10, 4:05

THE IMMORTAL STORY

(1968, ORSON WELLES) To make the perennial tall tale of the title come true, aging Macao merchant Welles hires a toopretty sailor to sleep with his (also hired) wife Jeanne Moreau; but then the elaborate setup starts to take on a life of its own. Welles’s first color film, adapted from an Isak Dinesen story, with music by Erik Satie. Due to print problems, IMMORTAL STORY will be projected digitally.
FRI/SAT/SUN 2:50, 5:45, 8:40
MON 2:50

MACBETH

(1948, ORSON WELLES) In the gloomy, claustrophobic atmosphere of a studio-shot (Republic!) primitive world, a feudal lord (Welles in the title role) decides to go for the kingship, with horrifically fated results. Originally mutilated by its studio — with the original Scottish brogues re-dubbed into American accents — but here fully restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. “Pure cinema.” – Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London)

AND

RETURN TO GLENNASCAUL

(1952, HILTON EDWARDS) In this Oscar-nominated short, Orson Welles, on a drive in the Irish countryside after a hard day’s work on Othello, picks up a man with car trouble, who then relates a strange “story told in Dublin.” With an introduction by Peter Bogdanovich, shot in 1992. aka Orson Welles’s Ghost Story.
BOTH FILMS AT 6:40, 9:25

PRINCE OF FOXES

(1949, HENRY KING) During the Italian Renaissance, Welles’s Cesare Borgia (real-life model for Machiavelli’s Prince) goes too far when he orders Tyrone Power to break up Wanda Hendrix’s marriage to elderly Felix Aylmer. Spectacular location filming among the towers of Volterra. 1:00, 5:20, 9:40

THE BLACK ROSE

(1950, HENRY HATHAWAY) In medieval Cathay, Welles’s Mongol warrior “Bayan of the Hundred Eyes” leads the hordes, aided by far-from-home English bowmen Tyrone Power and Jack Hawkins, with unnervingly youthful Cécile Aubry in tow in the title role. 3:05, 7:25

AROUND THE WORLD WITH ORSON WELLES:
“ST. GERMAIN DES PRÉS” and “THE BASQUE COUNTRY (Parts I & II)”

Due to legal complications, ORSON WELLES: THE ONE-MAN BAND will not be shown

In its place, on Wednesday, April 7, we will present three episodes from “AROUND THE WORLD WITH ORSON WELLES,” a 1950s British TV series directed by and featuring Welles: THE BASQUE COUNTRY (Parts I & II), an exploration of the Basque people of southern France, including a visit to an expatriate American writer and her 11-year-old son; and ST. GERMAIN DES PRÉS, a celebration of Paris’s famed Left Bank quartier, with appearances by Art Buchwald (then at the International Herald Tribune), Jean Cocteau, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, bohemian singer Juliette Greco, and an extended interview with artist/printer/sandal-maker and all-round eccentric Raymond Duncan, brother of Isadora. 3:45, 7:20

OEDIPUS THE KING

(1967, PHILIP SAVILLE) Welles’s blind seer Tiresias issues fair warning but Christopher Plummer’s Oedipus isn’t listening, as he inadvertently kills his father and marries his mother Lilli Palmer, in this adaptation of the Sophocles tragedy. With Donald Sutherland (dubbed) as the chorus leader. 1:55, 5:30, 9:05

SHOWTIMES: 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30

Click here for more information about THE THIRD MAN

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Links:

• Orson Welles Poster Show at POSTERITATI GALLERY
• Orson Welles Official Site
• The estate of Orson Welles
• The man and his genius
• Audio clips of Welles radio programs at mercury
• A tribute to Orson Welles

For sale at concession stand:

This is Orson Welles by Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Rosenbaum (Editor) $18.25 tax included

Available from Amazon.com:

Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles by David Thomson

Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu by Simon Callow

The Third Man: 50th Anniversary Edition (2000 Re-recording of 1949 Film) [SOUNDTRACK] Anton Karas

THE 3rd MAN Special 50th Anniversary Movie Edition [book] by Graham Greene

The Trial by Franz Kafka

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