Welles' thought his best film was... ?

[Swithun]

I was just wondering which film Welles considered to be his best. I read somewhere that he said it was the Trial but they weren't sure if he was being serious. Any ideas?

[colwood]

I've read in different sources he considered the Trial his best and Chimes his favorite.

[Christopher]

I've heard it said by several who knew him personally that he felt CHIMES to be his masterpiece and superior to KANE.

[PigsCantFly]

On the back of the DVD for the Trial at my university there's a quote from Welles saying that it is his favourite picture. However, here's a quote from Peter Bogdanovich from his Citizen Kane commentary
"There are other Orson Welles films that, I have to say, I like more. Chimes at Midnight, which was Orson's Falstaff movie, is his own favourite among his films and I can see why. It's certainly one that I adore. Most people think of Orson Welles they think of Citizen Kane, they never know anything else he did, which is sad but true."

[Roger Ryan]

I've always thought the quote about "The Trial" being his favorite (or best) came from an interview immediately following the release of that film...before he made "Chimes", the film he considered superior.

[R Kadin]

Welles said it himself in "Filming Othello": his favourite was the one in his mind, the one he had yet to film - including "completed" works, like Othello, that he still considered works-in-progress.

While, from time to time, he might have supplied this or that title in response to questions about his personal "favourite", my guess is that such answers were offered more in the interests of courtesy and simplicity. Don't get me wrong: I don't doubt he was being sincere in supplying those answers; but sincere in his own way, where there was always more to things than met the eye - or ear.

I offer this mainly by way of attempting to understand the driving forces behind such a person. He seemed enthralled by what always lay just beyond the horizon and it propelled him relentlessly through decades that beat the stuffing out of the less stalwart. I think what put the gleam in his eye and the contagious enthusiasm in his demeanour was his rarely-faltering and bright vision of the offing - well out proportion to any self-satisfaction for accomplishments in the past .

[catbuglah]

'Experimentation is the only thing I have enthusiasm for.' OW - A. Bazin interview 1958

I think that despite his quixotic, mercurial nature, Welles does have a quite lucid understanding of what he's about creatively. The Bogdanovich book has many passages where he's quite clear on many topics that many writers have misinterpreted. His own writings on film art though short and scattered in various publications are quite incisive and would make a great compilation (based on the little bits I've read in this little book by Maurice Bessy).