Welles as Uncredited Director - Journey Into Fear/Black Magic

[Kubed]

As Welles' fans, I think there's an impulse to take away credit from directors in films that O.W. has acted in and give it to Welles. Anything good in the film is because of Welles. Anything unsuccesful is because of the director of record.

I know Welles did take part in the look of Journey and is credited as an uncredited director on Black Magic.

Welles did "design" the opening shot of Journey. And did help in the final chase on the side of the building. But according to Welles, he wasn't on the set in scenes he didn't act in. He adds that everyone helped direct the final chase scene.

For Black Magic. He was working on Ambersons during the day and acting at night on Black Magic.

Welles has said time and time again that Norman Foster deserved the credit for Journey.

And that Carol Reed solely directed Third Man.

Yes, we can see his influence on these films and many others. But to give him too much credit simply diluted the actual work that Welles did do.

[jbrooks]

For Black Magic. He was working on Ambersons during the day and acting at night on Black Magic.

It was "Journey into Fear" that he worked on at the same time as Ambersons. "Black Magic" was made several years later.

[Kubed]

I stand corrected.

Any thoughts on the post?

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Kubed: There seems so much contradictory information about the making of THE THIRD MAN that perhaps it is wise not to make any definitive statements because someone will come up with the opposite from some other source. The term "dutch tilt" is one of the common mistransliterations of "deutch tilt," referring to a camera technique developed by Expressionist cameramen in the 1920's. And so, for Carol Reed, his experience may begin with the German directors and production or art designers, like A.E.Dupont, Alfred Junge, and others, who came to England on the breakup of Ufa in the late 1920's. No one can overestimate the influence of German technicians on European black and white films in the 1920's and 1930's.

As for THE THIRD MAN, in her biographical essay on Carol Reed, Deirdre Feehan says the film was criticized for its cynicism and melodrama, but ". . . Yet the film's eerie Dutch tilts camera work produced the necessary tension and irony of the tale, as it had in Welles' CITIZEN KANE (1941)."

(Coincidentally, the leader of one of Robert Krasker's camera teams had worked with Leni Riefenstahl and been her lover in the late 1920's)

For Welles, we may be back, as he said, to "John Ford, John Ford, John Ford" (and Gregg Toland), if not Erich von Stroheim and Fritz Lang. (I also note that Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING makes significant use of the Dutch tilt or Dutch angle technique.) It comes down, I suppose, not to the camera shot but to how effectively it is used.

I hope that the above information is on the topic and goes to your question.

Glenn