Welles: the lost stuff

[fantomas]

jeaime marzol:

i didn't want to start a battle. but allow at last word on MOBY DICK REHEARSED.

in my edition of brady's welles biography i cannot find any quote concerning the film version.

jonathan rosenbaum reports in his welles' chronology that 75 minutes were filmed.

peter noble writes about the film version:
hilton craig, who acted as lighting camera-amn on the film, told me that orson had worked on a complete screen adaption of his play and that it was by no means merely a photographed stage-play. on the contrary, it was shot largely in close-ups and looked very impressive on near-completion.

the only surviving participant of the filming seems to be christopher lee who describes the shooting in the book "the films of christopher lee" by Pohle Jr. & Hart:
it was a film made in black and white by orson welles, with himself as captain ahab, for ameriacn television, in england. it was his version of the stage play that he did in london, which i was not in. and it's basically the story - i've still got the script - of a group of actors; and the film is the day they rehearse, on the stage of an empty theatre, MOBY DICK ... which happens to be the play they're doing that week. it opens with the actors arriving, as themselves, in victorian times, in an empty theater. we used the scala, ant the hackney empire. and welles directed all this - all his own material he did later on in rome, by himself: he didn't work with us at all, except as a director. [...] it was done partly in mime, with a company of actors who jumped in and out of character. and he would swing the camera - literally swing it from side to side - while we on the flat stage staggered off in the opposite direction; and the effect was that the entire stage tilted: which was supposed to be the deck of a ship at sea in a storm, and we were all supposed to be drunk. then there were ladders, which were the rails of the ship; and the harpooners would harpoon the whale (which of course you never saw) and the harpooners had nothing in their hands. it was extraordinary.

for me there is no reason to doubt the reports of rosenbaum, noble and lee.

but maybe you can tell me the name of the actor who was interviewed by brady and give me a hint where to find this quote.

[jaime marzol]

.................

i don't see this as a battle, on the contrary, i've enjoyed the posting experience tremendously.

i didn't read in the brady book, which is great, i read it in a film mag article brady wrote a few years after the book. i guess with new info that came his way after the book was published. i have 4 of those huge, ring notebooks of film mag articles on welles that i have yet to cataloge, and don't really feel like searching now, but if my wrong information got you to post that tremendous discription from christopher lee, it was all worth it.

keep checking back, i'll post more wrong shit.

fantomas wrote:
for me there is no reason to doubt the reports of rosenbaum, noble and lee.

i said:
relax, it's only the web. this is less significant than AM radio, no reason to get excited, or feel this is a battle. enjoy the experience. i do, very much.

and:
noble's book has been said to be a bunch of wrong information from newspaper columns, and rosenbaum is only a researcher that didn't have contact with any original sources. the unarguable story here is from lee and no one else. i think what you posted from lee pretty much puts a cap on the whole discussion. that whole victorian stage actor thing is a tremendous idea. i never read any of that. now it sounds more interesting than it ever did before.

this is getting worn out. lets back off and discuss some new topic.... can you discribe what you saw of THE DEEP at the welles convention? i've always read it was a minor effort but i just don't see welles minimalizing anything on his own dime.

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[Harvey Chartrand]

Christopher Lee's comments are great. If you want additional first-hand information on the filming of Moby Dick Rehearsed, why not ask Patrick McGoohan and Joan Plowright, who are still around? Perhaps they can shed some light on this cinematic mystery.
McGoohan and Plowright both starred in the stage play and I'm not sure if they appear in the film. I read that Welles was enormously impressed with McGoohan, whose career took off after this production. It's surprising that Welles and McGoohan never worked together again. McGoohan's most recent credit is voicework on Treasure Planet.
More info on Moby Dick Rehearsed appears at http://members.rogers.com/leslie4550/smorgan2.htm

[Jeff Wilson]

As far as Noble's book, it is a puff piece and has any amount of incorrect information, but he wrote it in 1956, and was placed perefectly to have legit info on Moby Dick Rehearsed. Looking at what he wrote, I see no reason to doubt that particular element of the book. And for those who want to look it up, Joan Plowright wrote an autobiography in the last year or two which probably mentions the production.

[jaime marzol]

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harvey:
agreed. those comments from lee sprung right off the page and painted 1000 pictures for me. and i saw it in rich, deep color, not in B&W. yes, welles was very impressed by McGoohan, siad he didn't know why McGoohan was not the biggest tv star ever, or something to that effect.

jeff:
same thing i read. noble's book was written from newspaper articles on welles, and welles was never honest with them. i got that book also from the library and didn't think it merited pirating. but lee's commenst put a lid on the discussion for me. no matter how factual brady's book is, it was published in 1985, the film mag article, maybe in 1987?. a lot has come to light since then. like lee's comments!

still would like to hear about THE DEEP.

[jaime marzol]

.............

harvey, excellent linked article. after seeing that i went to google, did a search on MOBY DICK REHEARSED ORSON WELLES and was completely surprised at the amount of hits, and at how oftern the play has been staged, though everything i found was not about welles' production, but about everybody else's production of welles' play

jaime c.
go here
http://www.geocities.com/orsonwelleslives/
a long, long list of titles with a short abstract of projects welles started.

beware:
after seeing the link harvey put in i did another search In google, 'orson welles patrick mcgoohan moby dick rehearsed.' only 2 links came up. the one harvey posted, and a second link, 'www.danger_man, a uk site. when i clicked on it, my virus scan went nuts, it was like the robot in lost in space, "DANGER, DANGER, MALICIOUS SCRIPTS ON THIS PAGE."

[fantomas]

jaime marzol:

you can find reports about the workprint of THE DEEP in spanish (www.avui.es/avui/diari/02/oct/13/pdf/02o13d58.pdf ) and in german (www.frames-online.de "specials" or www.cinefoyer.de/set_2.html). i have given my commentary some weeks ago. what do you want to know?

[jaime marzol]

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nothing really, don't worry about it.

[Jaime N. Christley]

All this info is great. I'm drawing up a broad and non-exhaustive outline of his unreleased stuff for the Senses of Cinema website, and this is great. Thanks everyone.

[jaime marzol]

...............

glad we could help. if i come across any other info on unfished films i will post it here. i have a bunch of articles on OSOTW if those will help you any. most are already in computer, i can e-mail them, no prob.

[alan smithee]

[/quote]>IN THE LAND OF DON QUIXOTE was an italian(!) tv series which was filmed and edited by welles but left without a soundtrack.

i read this was this was a 30-minute tv thing done for spain. you listed it as a lost film[quote]

"Appunti di viaggio nella terra di Don Chisciotte" was an italian tv series (9 episodes of twentysome minutes each) aired in '62, produced by W. with is own money, shoot in 16mm and recovered in 1985 in the RAI archives by Enrico Ghezzi and the late Marco Melani, that already showed the series a couple of times in their all-night cinephile emission "Fuori Orario" (RAI 3). The sound was only by music and natural sound, but RAI added a voice over commentary read by Arnoldo Foà, a leading theatre actor (he appears also at the beginning of The Trial), refusing Welles voice because 'he had a too strong foreign accent' and in the same time rearranging the original editing. The shooting was made by a troupe of five person (Welles, Alessandro Tasca di Cutò, two operators - of italian and spanish tv - and a sound technician). The sat channel CIneclassics will show the series in the night of april 23, at 2.10.