Random Banter about some Rare Things

[Store Hadji]

I like the editing in the opening of the EU Othello much better than the US version. I have the French version, but one lucky person on the board found it in English.

The Spanish Arkadin is the same cut as the 99-minute Arkadin. Robert Arden is billed as "Bob Harden," which gave me a good laugh. The Spanish Baroness Nagel is intercut with the same shots of Welles, but Bob Harden appears with the Spanish Sophie, in what looks to be a totally different sequence.

Peter Bogdanovich's cut of One Man Band looks wonderful. Lots of new and excellent narration by Peter, lots of clips from the released films. Still uses that pathetic "sad clown" musical theme from the other OMB versions. Too bad this cut wasn't included on the F for Fake set. It truly looks superior (as far as I've gotten.)

When did Welles film that virtual interactive card trick which David Copperfield used in his act? I like Orson surrounded by the gaggle of cute girls at the beginning. (No wonder poor Rita felt insecure)

The French DVD of Journey into Fear looks and sounds superb. Too bad "She Who.." is apparently holding up release over here.

Ah, yet more of Oja being nude, this time in The Deep. That film needs to be restored and released.

Peter's OMB has some more shots of TOSOTW which I'd never seen.

[Store Hadji]

Peter's OMB also has some clips of Welles talking to the crowd of students that I hadn't seen.

[Store Hadji]

Anyone else wonder if Everett Sloane as Iago would have been similar to his performance in Prince of Foxes?

[Roger Ryan]

"In 'This is Orson Welles' Jonathan Rosenbaum mentions that in 1952 Dick Himber presented a live card trick that he performed with Orson Welles in a film segment. The same film segment was later used by other magicians - including David Copperfield as early as 1978 in a CBS-TV Special" - Eve_h

This is from a response Eve posted last year regarding that Copperfield illusion.

Regarding OMB: I actually prefer the original German version included on the "F For Fake" DVD although it includes less rare Welles footage. The SHOWTIME edit took TOSOTW's screening room sequence directly from the AFI Life Achievement Award TV special which is why you hear people laughing in the background on the soundtrack (the award show audience). This is a bit disconcerting since the clip is played out of context.

Store Hadji - The footage of Welles talking to the students (a filmed Q & A session at USC on Nov. 14, 1981 following a screening of "The Trial") is included on the "F For Fake" DVD; the Bogdanovich version doesn't have any more of this, does it?

[Store Hadji]

There's a sequence with Welles talking about Othello that I don't recall seeing/hearing before:

"A movie has to have a great opening; it must command attention. The opening of Othello is written for an audience that's just getting quiet, and like all openings in a play, because you don't ever want to open a play, uh, at the top of your bent, but a movie should open at the top of its bent. It must, because (points at screen) this damn thing is dead. The only living thing are the people sitting out here. It's a projected image, and you cannot bring the thing alive unless you (clenches fist) seize the people at the beginning. The riderless horse has to come in, and the funeral of Othello and the lynching of Iago is the riderless horse. I visualize the editing while I'm filming, and when I change that idea it is a deliberate change, because actors teach you so much - the scenery, the smell of the thing. You come on the set in the morning to do a scene, whether it's Othello or a modern story, whatever it might be, and if you have a master plan for what you're going to do, exactly where the camera's going to be, exactly what the scene is supposed to state - if you are locked into that you are depriving yourself of the divine accidents of moviemaking, because everywhere there are beautiful accidents: the actor says something in a different way than you ever dreamed it could be said, she looks differently, there's a smell in the air, there's a look that changes the whole resonance of what you expected, and then there are the true accidents, and my definition of a film director is: the man who presides over accidents - but doesn't make them! (chuckles)"

Regarding the Norman Foster screening room sequence, maybe the AFI clip is the only version that was available. That scene isn't in OMB-DE at all. And the birthday party scene is the version without the, uh, repetition of Susan Strasberg's lines and the game-show buzzer sound.

Peter's narration is suberb. The original version can't even be compared.

I think OMB-US contains a longer segment of Merchant of Venice as well.

Maybe the card trick sequence was from 1952. No reflection on Rita, then. Welles sure looks young in it. I thought it was from the mid 1940s.

The EU Othello contains many more shots in the opening. I like the shots of the pussy cats, and the kitty on the roof (looking as though he wants to know why the hell he's been put there) which turns and watches a bird fly past.

[Glenn Anders]

Speaking of "Random Banter about some Rare Things," last night at "The 4th Noir City Film Festival" in San Francisco, I saw a film on the big screen for perhaps the first time since I was a small child; never had seen it in a theater again; only seen it since in a chopped up version or two, on late night TV: CRIME WITHOUT PASSION (1934).

You all have probably discussed this film many times, but bearing in mind that it was written and directed by Ben Hecht (who brought Herman J. Mankiewicz to Hollywood) and Charles McArthur (friend of Welles, as was McArthur's wife, Helen Hayes), I was immediately struck by several startling conincidences.

CRIME WITHOUT PASSION, one of the first independent American sound films, shot in the East to avoid interference from Adolph Zucker of Paramount, opens with a spectacular montage (courtesy of Hollywood Specialist Slavko Vorkopitch) which shows, among other things, images of a large eye, the barrel of a gun, a falling body, muttered words (unfortunately they had trouble cranking up the sound at the start) and, oh yes, three half-dressed female furies laughing at the folly of various New York adulterers!

[Talk about getting your audience's attention, as Welles did in CITIZEN KANE.]

Then, a few minutes later, sardonic Criminal Defense Attorney Lee Gentry (Claude Rains), perched in the window of his office advising his secretary to fob off anxious clients in his ante room, looks down on people in the street, far below, and compares them to ants. Whereas, of course, a genius like himself can save the life of any one of them he chooses -- that is if one of those poor suckers gets in in trouble, and Gentry takes his case.

[Remind anyone of Welles' repeated use of the image as an indication of the fascist mind?]

Now Gentry has several attractive women on his string. One he has been besotted by, but wants to dump for a socially better connected girl, is a dancer named Carmen Brown. You might half-way expect Miss Brown, given simple stereotypes of the time, to be a black woman. [Surely, Adolph Zucker would not.] But she is played by Margo (later married to Eddie Albert), one of relatively few Latina Hollywood stars of the late 1930's. (Lupe Valez, Dolores Del Rio, Carmen Miranda, and Rita Hayworth come to mind.) Miss Brown listens to a personal Mariachi, dances to a Ramon Raqello-type orchestra in her night club (which has an illuminated glass sign which glistens in the rain). She is quite sympathetic but has a mishap on which the plot turns.

[Such a cad, impeccably played by Rains, would seem up the alley of Charles Foster Kane and/or Orson Welles. Carmen Brown's co-star at the club, incidentally, is a baby-faced gal, who dresses on stage in a little girl's dress, long white stockings, and buckle shoes. Fannie Brice happens to be an extra in a later lobby scene, as is Helen Hayes; it's the kind of thing Welles later had friends and associates do. Writers Hecht and McArthur have tiny cameos, too, as leaders of a grand jury investigating Attorney Gentry's ethics, much in the way Welles put Writer Mankiewicz and Cinematographer Gregg Toland into CITIZEN KANE as inquiring reporters.]

Finally, most obscure possibly, looking up CRIME WITHOUT PASSION on the IMDb today, I came across the career listing for one Frank Tours. Tours is credited with the music for the film. [Most effective in the several montage sequences.] Now, Tours had a very spotty record, often working uncredited in maybe a dozen pictures, such as THE EMPEROR JONES (1933) and Hecht/McArthur's second effort, THE SCOUNDREL (1935, with Noel Coward in the title part), but more interestingly for us perhaps, he is noted as the "uncredited" provider of the music for the "Newsreel Sequence" in CITIZEN KANE, and "incidental music" (also uncredited) for JOURNEY INTO FEAR.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, do we have makings of a prima facie case for an authentic influence on CITIZEN KANE?

I leave it for you to decide.

Glenn Anders

[Store Hadji]

Orson has that giant zit on his right cheek for some of the scenes in Othello. I noticed today he has it for some of the scenes in Prince of Foxes as well. That gives a very tight window for when they could both have been shot. Some of the locales in Prince of Foxes remind me of those in Othello. They could be some of the same places.

[Glenn Anders]

I rather think that is a mole or a blemish, Hadji.

Glenn

[Store Hadji]

If so, I've never noticed it elsewhere. Whatever it is, it seemed to tie those sequences from those two films to the same narrow time period - that was my point in mentioning it.

[Store Hadji]

The weakest thing in Journey into Fear is the narration. Howard Graham begins his note to his wife with "if this letter is found on me" which sounds as though he expects to be killed, yet, as we see at the end of the film, he is writing it after Mueller and Banat are both dead. I'm looking forward to the EU version without the narration - I'll bet that one is remarkably better.

[Store Hadji]

So, why on earth was Robert Arden billed as 'Bob Harden?' That just isn't even remotely right. Sounds like the name of some director of dirty movies.

[Roger Ryan]

The weakest thing in Journey into Fear is the narration. Howard Graham begins his note to his wife with "if this letter is found on me" which sounds as though he expects to be killed, yet, as we see at the end of the film, he is writing it after Mueller and Banat are both dead. I'm looking forward to the EU version without the narration - I'll bet that one is remarkably better.

In fairness to Welles' attempt to force a first person narration on "Journey Into Fear", Graham tells Haki in the final scene that he is attempting to finish a letter he "started on the boat". This is meant to suggest that the earlier narration/letter writing was done when Graham was fearing for his life. I know - it's not entirely convincing and I, too, prefer the film without the narration.

[Store Hadji]

Okay, if he started it on the boat, I'll buy it better.

Another thing the narration does is distract me from the action on the screen, I found I could follow the first reel better with the sound turned off.

Is there enough unique footage from the two versions to do a reconstruction? How many seconds or minutes would that extend the running time?

[Roger Ryan]

Stefan Droessler of the Munich Film Museum has been working on a reconstruction of "Journey Into Fear" (a work-in-progress edit has already had public screenings in Germany and Switzerland) which combines the footage from the two known versions (minus Cotten's narration). I believe the total running time is approx. 75 or 76 minutes. This is still about 15 to 16 minutes shorter than the 91 min. preview version shown in the spring of '42, but I imagine the reconstruction is superior to either of the two edits we currently have.

[Store Hadji]

So, an extra 6 or 7 minutes? Sehr cool. Any unique footage under the narration could be played silent, with ambient sound made from other bits of the soundtrack, or use actors to speak the lost lines...

Yes, I hope this cut makes the rounds some day.