Don Quijote

[Glenn Anders]

The idea is really not so absurd, halfaorson. Welles whole background, once he left music and painting behind, was in collaborative arts: the theater, radio, and then, movies. In those forms, he was able present himself behind the protective banner of The Mercury Players as "the director." But even in the theater and radio, Richard Wilson, John Houseman, or Paul Stewart often stood in for him, necessarily so if he were carrying a heavy role.

A careful study of his movies, I think, would reveal portions of a fair number of them, from the beginning, were fashioned by Welles but directed by others. For instance, because of the complicated camera movements and special lenses used in CITIZEN KANE, and his own inexperience, plus the requirements of stardom in a new medium, Welles depended heavily on Gregg Toland in making that first masterpiece. Welles acknowledged the fact.

Again, one of Welles' frustrations in shooting THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS was that Cameraman Stanley Cortez was not so facile and quick as Toland had been on CITIZEN KANE, and Welles' arduous schedule was thrown off. Obviously, if Welles were not to come back immediately from South America, someone in the hire of the Mercury Theater would have had to do those re-takes he ordered by wire from Rio.

In IT'S ALL TRUE, Norman Foster was off in Mexico shooting a whole segment, after he had already done much of the direction on JOURNEY INTO FEAR. In Brazil, the RKO company men complained to the head office in Hollywood that Welles was away among the poor, or soaking up South American culture, while some of the "most objectionable" and wasteful shooting, from their standpoint, was actually being done by Robert "Bob" Meltzer and others.

We could go through many subsequent Welles' films and find a similar pattern. The mystique of the Mercury Theater was that one man -- Orson Welles -- conceived, wrote, directed, and often starred in . . . everything. That idea followed him long after he had lost the technical support which made the illusion possible. He did do a hell of a lot, but he could not do it all.

Perhaps, the latter decades of his career, in which he schlepped his own cameras, post-synched whole scenes, played multiple characters, tirelessly re-wrote scenes he had already shot, and re-recorded the performances of fine actors using his own voice, reveal evidence of a desire to fulfill that original promise given to the public by the Mercury Theater: "The One Man Band."

Toward the end, certain of his collaborators were not so brilliant and understanding as Houseman or Toland had been, but what mattered, I think, was whether or not these assistants were able to carry out his instructions, execute his concepts.

Evidently, if the financial and legal matters can be overcome, Welles' remaining unfinished films may require technicians of top talent from a new generation who can understand his direction(s).

We may only hope that they will step forward, as Rick Schmidlin and Walter Murch did in the case of TOUCH OF EVIL.

Glenn

[Roger Ryan]

Of course Welles used second unit directors. Virtually every filmmaker working on feature films does. Kubrick, who was much more hands-on than even Welles and had much longer shooting schedules, would rely on second unit work for establishing shots and aerial photography. There's no shame in that or subterfuge.

[Glenn Anders]

True, true, Roger, as I was pointing out to halfaorson, but also that Welles, by the unique nature of his talents, came to Hollywood trailing a kind of superman image, which he applied to his new role of "movie director." Given his twenty hour days, some of that appearance was genuine, some of it conjured in the popular imagination, and some of it fostered by Herb Drake's Mercury Theater PR office. Hollywood directors widely known by name existed, like John Ford, Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks, but none of them claimed to conceive, write or adapt, direct and STAR in their own productions.

In that, Welles was a different breed of his species, consciously harking back to the 19th Century British theatrical player managers he much admired.

And so, to the extent that he began to publicly lose control of his projects, he was punished by the press as a charlatan in way no one would have thought of criticizing a John Ford. And what Welles failed to achieve successfully, Stanley Kubrick would capitalize upon, creating a new mystique. Warner Brothers, by contractual essence, paid Kubrick to maintain absolute control of his films.

The very plum which had fallen innocently into Welles' lap in 1939.

Glenn

[mido505]

I found this interview with Jess Franco regarding his work on Chimes at Midnight at YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DON-c9YX ... re=related
If anyone knows Spanish and can transcribe it, the information might be useful.

[nextren]

Someone said nothing like the "Chimes" battle scene exists in the rest of Welles's work.

Not true. From Simon Callow's Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu, pp. 440-1:

"[While the rest of the staging of Welles's 1939 production "Five Kings," a precursor of "Chimes", was problematic,] what certainly did work (as in the film) were the battle scenes. Martin Gabel attended the show [...]: 'Orson had a kind of No Man's Land onstage, a painted canvas looking like churned earth over mounds, and in the centre he had a single, leafless tree...as they began fighting, the stage started to revolve, and the music came in to support the fight. They fought on this stage as the knights of old must have fought - up hill and down dale, fighting it out. As the battle became more intense, the revolving stage went faster, the music approached a climax[...] And then, slowly, the revolve was brought round and Hotspur gave his death speech, lying prostrate below the mound. It was an absolutely perfect piece of work.' [Herbert] Drake, too, was thrilled by the fighting: 'the battle scenes are the best I ever saw on any stage...the scenes in which the Welles flair for spectacle is most adequately exhibited are the battles of Shrewsbury and Agincourt. He has exploding bombards, the usual banners and highly effective, if somewhat terrifying flights of arrows which fly across the stage[...] no pink-tea fencing for his princes and kings. They lay on with roundhouse swings and highly satisfactory clanging of claymores. The actor mortality will doubtless be high. The property room already had replaced more than a dozen broken swords, but it is worth the expenditure." (Emphases added)

Welles did not direct or cut the "Chimes" battle sequence. Michelangelo did not paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. And Neil Armstrong was not an astronaut.

Do the fanboys wiping the counters in the video stores read the most relevant materials before "blogging," such as biographies of the main figures whom they are writing about? We shall never know.

As to the "Psycho" shower scene, everyone involved affirms that Alfred Hitchcock directed it - except Saul Bass. Bass is the sole source of the idea that Hitchcock didn't direct it - because, according to Saul Bass, it was directed by Saul Bass. With apologies to Mr. Wilson for going OT, here are a few quotes (from Stephen Rebello's Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, pp. 110-4):

Assistant Director Hilton Green: "I read [the Bass claim] somewhere. That really upsets me. That's absolutely ridiculous. Mr. Hitchcock was there every second of the time, I won't even say 'minute.'"

Wardrobe supervisor Rita Riggs: "I was involved daily because it was such a critical experience. The storyboards for that sequence were unbelievable, but Mr. Hitchcock absolutely shot it himself. We shot frame by frame from the storyboards because each of us had to look at them to know exactly what the camera would see[...] Mr. Hitchcock got impatient several times and would say, 'Oh, come now, we've all seen more than that at the beach.' [...] Mr. Hitchcock sometimes walked away because he became so exasperated by three hours of running water, nudity, and wipe-offs [of (Janet Leigh's) moleskin covering]. He may have turned over a brief shot or two to an assistant. I remember him sitting there twiddling his thumbs clockwise or, when particularly exasperated, counterclockwise. I also remember him trying not to generate any giggles to break the tension."

Janet Leigh: "Saul Bass was there for the shooting, but he never directed me. Absolutely not. Saul Bass is brilliant, but he couldn't have done the drawings had Mr. Hitchcock not discussed with him what he wanted to get. And [anyone else] couldn't have filmed the drawings."

Screenwriter Joseph Stefano: "I know [Hitchcock] shot it. Because one of my favorite memories of the whole experience was of Alfred Hitchcock standing there talking seriously about camera angles with a naked model."

Stuntwoman Margo Epper ("Mother" for the shower sequence): "Mr. Hitchcock was an odd person to work for. We were working on a kind of raised platform. I can remember him standing just below us looking up and saying exactly what to do and how to do it [...] he'd have you doing the smallest things over and over."

Here is an interesting paragraph indicating whose was the main mind involved in the moment-to-moment grind of shooting, the man who had the ideas and solutions:

"It is not surprising that Hitchcock would have specific notions as to how the 'Psycho' bathroom set should be dressed and photographed. Having once boasted to a baffled interviewer: 'Visit a bathroom after I have been there, you would never know I had been there,' Hitchcock insisted upon dazzling white plastic tiles, gleaming fixtures, and an opaque shower curtain. In 'Spellbound' (1945), Hitchcock and cinematographer George Barnes had conjured up an eerily disorienting brightness for the bathroom scene in which Gregory Peck hoists a straight razor and heads toward the sleeping Ingrid Bergman. Obtaining a similar effect in 'Psycho' created additional headaches for the director and his crew. The high-key lighting created by cinematographer John Russell and the lighting men generated so much reflection that the face of stuntwoman Epper, having been painstakingly backlit to mask her identity, was clearly visible. The problem forced Hitchcock to reshoot Mother's 'entry' and stabbing motions. The second time around, makeup man Jack Barron blackened Epper's face[...] Hitchcock challenged cameraman Russell and his production team by devising a point-of-view shot to heighten audience identification with Janet Leigh. He wanted to show water pulsing out the shower head straight toward the camera. 'It was an old-fashioned shower head,' noted script supervisor Schlom. 'You couldn't control the spray every way you wanted it. Everyone's first and obvious question was, "If we shoot right at it, how are we going to keep the lens dry?" Mr. Hitchcock said, "Put the camera there with a long lens and block off the inner holes on the shower head so they won't spout water." By using the longer lens, we could get back a little farther, shoot a little tighter and the water appeared to hit the lens but actually sprayed past it. The guys on the sides got a little soaked but, meanwhile, we got the shot.'"

Etc.

A certain kind of person seeks attention by making juicy but false claims that someone of accomplishment is a phony. Orson Welles was, and is, a special target of this sort of thing (altogether different from recognizing the real and valuable contributions of collaborators). It's a sad phenomenon we've discussed in another context.

But I find the reality of someone's accomplishment much juicier. I'm sure, gentle reader, that you do, too.

[nextren]

duplicate-delete

[Tony]

Nextren: Thanks for one of the most sarcastic, nasty and plain vicious posts that I have ever seen on Wellesnet. Since most, if not all, of it was directed against me, I feel you should really learn to make your point without descending into personal attacks, and you should also learn some manners.

Your infantile irony is not appreciated; your factual reporting and informed opinions are.

[nextren]

Nextren: Thanks for one of the most sarcastic, nasty and plain vicious posts that I have ever seen on Wellesnet. Since most, if not all, of it was directed against me, I feel you should really learn to make your point without descending into personal attacks, and you should also learn some manners.

Your infantile irony is not appreciated; your factual reporting and informed opinions are.

Dearest Tony,

Thanks for one of the most sarcastic, nasty and plain vicious posts that I have ever seen on Wellesnet. Since most, if not all, of it was directed against me, I feel you should really learn to make your point without descending into personal attacks, and you should also learn some manners.

Your irrationality is not appreciated; your factual reporting and informed opinions are.

I don't know who you are, but I guess, from this post of yours, that you work in a video store. Was that the bit where you saw red? I didn't know.

[Tony]

Nextren:

Thanks for your original reply to my post; I look forward to your 14th post. You really are a man of words.

[MartynH]

I watched Don Quixote last night and it made me think about how and why the film was put together the way it was. I refer to Franco using bits of 'In the land of Don Quixote' in his cut.

It seems to me that perhaps Welles had something like this in mind because, correct me if I am wrong, Sancho goes up to a black car when he is looking for Don Quixote towards the end of the film - we see this from a distance. It looks like the same black car that Welles is travelling around in the aforementioned doc. It struck me as being odd.

[Tony]

Marty: You're absolutley right: I've noticed that too; clearly Welles was going for a very "meta" experience all the way through. He's telling the story to Patty, and then Patty's in the story, and of course the Don and Sancho are recognized throughout the movie as real people by people who have read the book (as happens in Part 2 of the novel). Then, Welles is in the movie and Sancho is trying to stop Welles's car and speak to him. And we see Welles in the car. I think Franco was totally correct in including this for the reason you've mentioned, but as far as I know Franco has never been given credit for this, at least around these parts. (I could be wrong.) As I wrote last week, Franco's crimes are not enough time and an impossible schedule. The 92 edit started off well with a 3 million dollar budget from the Spanish government to do a world-wide search for footage, which was done, and then a team was assembled. Mauro Bonanni was part of the original team, but left and took his footage with him because he didn't like the approach being taken. I don't know his precise complaint, but it may have had something to do with Oja not wanting to include the Patty footage.

Now if Franco had been allowed to use the Patty footage, his cut would be immeasurably better, though I still think the English voices are very badly chosen. Also I have heard that part of the problem with the bad quality of the footage was due not to money but to time: the film had to be ready in time for the Columbus celebrations.

I'm turning into an apologist for Franco! But I hate to see someone unjustly maligned, as I think he may have been in this case.

[MartynH]

Before I saw Renoir's 40 minute 'Day in the Countryside' I thought a masterpiece would have to be longer, but DITC changed my viewpoint of this. So could Franco have produced a 40 min masterpiece of DQ? Is there enough meat in the footage to do this?

The odd thing about the Renoir film it was put together 10 years after it was made and the director had nothing to do with that process. In fact, Renoir was in the states at the time.

I also feel Franco had a very difficult job and would love hear his opinion in all of this.

[ToddBaesen]

Martyn:

You make an excellent point! Clearly one of the faults of the 1992 version is at 116 minutes, it is seriously over-length. It appears they simply tried to include as much footage as they could find, even if it was takes or bad footage that Welles or any other director would probably never have included.

Given the problems with the quality as well as suitablity of much of the QUIXOTE footage, I'm sure a much better short version of QUIXOTE could be put together, rather than trying to stretch it out to the length of a feature film.

Films like A DAY IN THE COUNTRY, Bunuel's SIMON OF THE DESERT and Welles own THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH indicate great films can still be made that run less than an hour. And Welles originally started out making QUIXOTE as a half-hour TV show!

Here is an account of an earlier 1986 assembly of only 35-minutes of DON QUIXOTE material, put together by Costa-Cavras, which indicates the material was of much better visual quality than what turned up in the 1992 version.



EXISTING FOOTAGE OF WELLES' DON QUIXOTE SHOWN AT CANNES

Variety - May 23, 1986

After a week of waiting, film buffs attending the Cannes festival were finally rewarded with a screening May 18 of the existing footage of Orson Welles’ Don Quixote. Production of the film originally commenced in Mexico in 1957, was abandoned, then restarted, and abandoned again. Just 35 minutes of the film was shown here in a very rough state with white spacing inserted between shots. Some of the sequences were seemingly edited, while other scenes were merely rushes. Only the two principal actors, Francisco Reiguera as Don Quixote, and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza, appear.

The assembly of the footage seemed haphazard, and it was not even certain that it was in the correct order. There was no direct sound: some footage was shown silent, and in other scenes the voice of Welles was heard speaking for both actors, using different accents.

One point that immediately becomes apparent is that Welles was making the film in a deliberately anachronistic style: in one scene, Quixote and his squire ride into a modern city, filled with cars and TV aerials; gawking bystanders cheer them on. A wry joke has a poster for Don Quixote beer prominently displayed.

The photography was handled by various cameramen at different times, and the differences tend to show, especially in varying grades of stock. Much of it is visually splendid, with classical images of the pair riding across arid landscapes reminiscent of the work of some Soviet directors, such as Alexander Dovzhenko. One especially good scene has Quixote, standing in a wheat field, making an exhortation to the absent Dulcinea.

It’s also clear that Welles was being very faithful to the text of the novel, sticking closely to the original dialogue. Reiguera and Tamiroff are perfectly cast, each looking exactly like one’s idea of how the characters should be.

Would it have been a masterpiece? The best moments look as striking as Welles’ finest work, but there are a few clumsy bits, and unsightly use of the zoom lens, not usual for Welles. Possibly these bits wouldn’t have found their way into the finished film if it had been completed. Footage as shown managed to be both fascinating and, for obvious reasons, frustrating.

Film was introduced by Welles’ long-time companion, Oja Kodar, who gave a moving address, almost breaking down at one point. Afterwards, in conversation, Kodar said she intends to dedicate her time to getting the remaining unseen Welles footage shown.

The Other Side Of The Wind, toplining John Huston among others, is “nearly ready.” She also revealed that some 40 minutes of footage exists from an equally rare uncompleted Welles: The Merchant Of Venice, shot in the Italian city in the mid-1970s, with Welles himself as Shylock.

Two boxes of the film have apparently been lost, but Kodar hopes to unveil the footage that survives, appropriately enough, at the Venice fest this September.

-Strat.

[Tony]

Todd: I don't know, but the Costa Gravas sounds very similar to the Franco, only rougher. What's really interesting to me is the criticism of the zoom shot: Oja complained that Franco added this, but the costa Gravas cut was done before Franco did his version.

Hmmmmm...... Are we talking about the same zoom shot?

The plot thickens. Franco has definitely been blamed for the zoom.

[mido505]

You took the words right out of my mouth, Tony!