Treasure Island

[mido505]

Ladies, Gentlemen, Comrades!

I'll be in and out all day in short bursts, so keep the comments coming - this thread is getting fun again! A few short points:

tonyw - I appreciate the book recommendations. I've read RUN-THROUGH, perused ARENA, not read CULTURAL FRONT, though I will give it a look. But I am very familiar with the history of that era; I simply have a different take on it than you do. My book recommendations for you: THE COMPLETE WORKS OF GEORGE ORWELL; THE VENONA TRANSCRIPTS; ROBERT CONQUEST'S REFLECTIONS ON A RAVAGED CENTURY.

Later on, I am going to do a long post on LADY FROM SHANGHAI, again on your recommendation, as its politics are interesting, although, again, I have a very different take on it than you do.

As I am no longer a Marxist, I am completely uninterested in "the cultural and historical forces that formed (Welles') historical personality. I am very interested in how his unique, multiform, gargantuan personality impacted history and the culture. It is a major difference of emphasis.

I admire the work done by the Federal Theater Project. But, as matter of principle, I am opposed to government funding of the arts. With government money comes government control. History shows us that these things always end badly. The East German goverment after WWII had amazing subsidized theater. They built a theater for Brecht. So what? East Germany was still a totalitarian nightmare. I lived there for a while after the wall came down. Believe me, it wasn't pretty. Personally, I would rather live in a free country with bad theater and reality television, than live in an unfree one with subsidized opera.

Glenn: forgive my poor choice of words regarding Orson having "left" Paola. Of course, they remained married until Orson's death. Orson "left" Paola in the sense that she ceased to be his primary psychic interest; his muse, as it were. That interest was transferred to Oja, and that, I maintain, damaged his artistic life irrevocably.

My guess is that Paola was not much bothered that Orson had a mistress. Paola was European, and an aristocrat, and such things are taken more lightly in that ancient culture. I've read, somewhere, that Paola had her affairs, too. What is frowned upon is scandal, in flaunting the mistress publicly. Welles never did this deliberately, to my knowledge, but there was a public scandal, in Rome, that resulted in Welles returning to the U.S. That was the beginning of the end. My guess is that what infuriated the level-headed, practical Paola was seeing Welles wasting his valuable time and frittering away his artistic legacy with Oja and the gang in California, when he could have been making real movies back in the old country.

[Glenn Anders]

Sorry that I misunderstood your meaning in regard to Paola Mori. You may be right, mido505, about Oja Kodar "damaging [Welles'] artistic life irrevocably." There is a shrewd observation about the life of an artist which posits that some deep loss or irritant, like a grain of sand in an Oyster, produces the polished pearl of creativity in a man or (more seldom, Welles would say) in a woman. Remove the irritant, assuage the loss, and the need to generate real art disappears.

The exception in your thesis for Welles, that may ironically prove the point, is F FOR FAKE, of which "the critic whose name must never be named" says the following:

". . . if the film is happy it is because of Oja Kodar, too. She made the film with him, and she was with him when it was made. She is the naked lady who makes a monkey out of Picasso in its climax. She is more than Welles's accomplice and model, though. She seems to be his friend, too. Early on at the railway station, as Welles, in black cloak and Spanish hat, does elementary magic for a little boy, she is there, in furs, to say, "Up to your old tricks again, I see." It is a sweet, generous moment -- I don't think a woman in his work was ever so natural, so kind or so life enhancing. Kodar relaxed Welles, took the edge off his misogyny and made his gazing eyes innocent, sexual, and unashamed. We see bits and pieces of her naked in the Picasso period, and, again, the mood is that of paradise. We feel happy for him."

To be in paradise means there is no longer a need to create great art. Perhaps, F FOR FAKE is his only real artistic orgasm, full of the little boy entranced by magic, the delicious warmth of a naked mother in furs, youthful adventure after he lost her, the travels in Spain, the wanders in France, the jousting with giants of his time like Picasso and Hemingway, and that Irish country girl under an apple tree he abandoned in return for the wisdom and tools for making his Art. It is certainly Welles' second best film, I think. After that, there was increasingly the drowsiness which tends to overtake the male after coitus.

Here is my full review of it:

http://www0.epinions.com/mvie-review-3D ... 1581-prod6

Glenn

[mido505]

Glenn:

You are spot on about F FOR FAKE - it is the great late period anomaly. It's number five on my favorite Welles films list, and some days it moves higher than that. I first saw FAKE in high school with an extremely irreverent buddy of mine, and we both adored it. We used to do imitations of Welles doing the coin trick for the kid in the railway station (Gee Orson!) for laughs. In retrospect, that seems a little odd!

As time moves forward I have found the Picasso sequence to be less and less interesting, and, at times, an irritant, just as I have found the rest of FAKE to be more and more fascinating, a profound and moving meditation on the nature of art, the artist, and the human condition. But THE CRITIC WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED is absolutely correct that Oja seems to have brought out a sense of joy and playfulness in Welles that was somewhat absent before in the art, if not the man. FAKE deserves all the importance that Welles attributed to it; it was new form, a new direction, a new road, and one well worth travelling.

So why did it end? After FAKE, silence. FILMING OTHELLO is a good idea for a film, and interesting to watch, but it is no FAKE. FAKE was cheap, it must have cost peanuts; it's success depended on three things that Welles had in abundance - talent, ideas, and superlative editing skills. The type of movie that FAKE represented was tailor made for Welles in his sunset years. A couple of wine commercials and an appearance or two for Bert I. Gordon would have paid for the budget. He should have made ten of them, or twenty (The Collected Essay Films of Orson Welles, now available from the Criterion Collection!). Forget another Citizen Kane, wouldn't that have been wonderful? Instead, after TOSOTW peters out, he dicks around with this and dicks around with that, but nothing really serious or interesting. Then, strangely, he becomes energized, becomes interested in DON QUIXOTE again, gets moving on THE BIG BRASS RING, THE CRADLE WILL ROCK, and KING LEAR, but by then it is too late and his health finally gives out.

Was he content, with Oja and with his life, in those last years? Did he become less interested in his art, because he was more interested in his life? Had he esssentially given up? Did the well run dry? Did the Muse abandon him (she is fickle, that one)? Was he, finally, just tired of being Orson Welles?

[Tony]

Mido: I'm pissed at you: I wrote an 8 point response to a long post you wrote to me, and you never responded. I didn't want to get dragged into this, but you wrote such a passionate post that I had to respond, and did, in detail.



PS: Re: your comment: "After TOSOTW peters out, he dicks around with this and dicks around with that, but nothing really serious or interesting."

My impression is that he was always hustling, desperately trying to get money for films.

[mido505]

Tony, I didn't realise you were so sensitive!

Forgive me, I am easily distracted, and I was distracted by those political posts that got me so obviously wound up, as you can see.

I have been pondering your replies to my post, most specifically this statement:

"But I also believe another thing that Stravinsky said: "I am the vessel through which "Le sacre de Printemps" passed", meaning: I don't create the work: God (or whatever you want to call it) transmits the work through me. Now I believe it was T.S. Eliot who wrote "The farther the artist's work is from his personality, the purer the work." And to add another Stravinsky statement (papraphrased) : "My job is to stay out of the way as much as possible."

Now I'm no great supporter of organized religion, but it's a fact there hasn't been a major composer since the death of God in the west in the 60s; I believe all the transmitters in the post-modern era believe it was they who were creating the art.

Which is why I'm a fan of all art up to and including modern art, but from about 73 on, forget it (though recently films and architecture are picking up, I believe)."

That is profound. Not many people talk like that these days. I'd like to discuss this further with you, but I don't have the words yet - my thoughts are not organized, they need a little time to percolate. Hence the delay.

[mido505]

Tony wrote:

"My impression is that he was always hustling, desperately trying to get money for films."

The question is, Tony, during the period between TOSOTW and BBR/TCWR/KL, hustling for what reason? There is no grand project. He shoots a little of this; he shoots a little of that; he puts some money into this; and he puts some money into that. I never bought THE OTHER CRITIC WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS'S "fear of completion" theory, because, up until TOSOTW Welles, while often finicky, slow, and obsessive during the editing process, was a man who moved heaven and earth to get films made, his way. After TOSOTW, there seems to be this...dimunition. He's going through the motions, like one of those writers who writes a couple of pages a day, even when inspiration is lacking. I really only see the old Welles coming back, the Welles that made Othello, near the end.

I wonder if Callow will investigate this stuff, in the next volume?

[Glenn Anders]

Thank you, mido505: I know an artist (he lives with my second wife), and one Christmas I gave him a copy of F FOR FAKE, along with a request that he watch it a few times, and tell me what he thought of it. A year later, he told me that he had been drawn back to the picture every month or so, and along with RIVERS AND TIDES, he thought it the best picture about an artist and the artistic process that he'd ever seen.

Your use of the word "irritant" reminds me of a theory which states that a great artist (I suppose any artist, really) is the product of a loss, an incompleteness, something embittering or exulting, in his or (Welles would say, less often) her life. That loss acts an "irritant," the grain of sand in an oyster that produces the perfect pearl of creativity, which obsession may then polish. Welles had all those losses, real and imaginary, those grains of sand, which drove him to excel in theater, radio and the movies.

In addition to fame, adulation, talented and loyal associates, he had relationships with many intelligent, beautiful women, married three times, had three daughters, but perhaps he never found a woman with the additional warmth, straight-on friendliness, and artistic ambition which made her, for him, an equal.

Then, one day, he met Oja Kodar.

In time, they collaborated on F FOR FAKE, that full public artistic orgasm. [Oja and the 22 Picasso's (why 22?) are the sled and pies of CITIZEN KANE and THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, respectively, but this time, the protagonist gets to have them and keep them, too.] But after orgasm, when the deep irritant in one's life is removed, only the collapsing flesh, the money problems, the harrassments, and the millstone of reputation are left. For all that which she could not change, Oja seems to have been enough, but not enough for him to give up his pater familias status.

Gary Graver is quoted as saying that, "hustling" as he was (to use Tony's term) for money, he had an income in the late 1970's of over half a million a year. But, if true, then there were the doctor bills, the tax agents, the moochers, the constant shuttling, and those two households to maintain. All that would have gotten in the way of completing movies.

I have also talked with people claiming to know, who say nothing in Welles' life was perfect (as whose life is?); that complications marred all his friendships, marriages, and liaisons. I'm told that there were a number of of offspring, a couple of rather surprising ones. I think of that little boy in F FOR FAKE, identified as Julio Palinkas, then Alexander Welles, born Sasha Devcic, later Sasha Welles; now said to be in Hollywood, working on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND "for something to do." He is a figure straight out of CITIZEN KANE . . . or MR. ARKADIN. Uncle Orson was showing him those magical coins as if they might purchase a sled to take him somewhere, to a magic land.

Welles, like Charles Foster Kane, no doubt did the best he could, "under the circumstances."

The ego is now gone, or at least, should be, and only the Art remains.

Glenn

[Tony]

I believe he was concentrating on editing Wind until he lost control in 77; that's when he wrote that heartbreaking letter saying how his second act was now ruined; he seemed to have lost heart after that, but still tried with the Magic Show, the Orson Welles Show, the commercials, the acting cameos, the tv appearances, planning to complete Don Quixote, the projected series which began with Filming Othello and Filming The Trial and trying to get funding for The Dreamers, The Big Brass Ring, Lear and the Cradle. My impression is he never stopped working and hustling from 77-85, even though nobody gets a third act, and he knew it.


mido: I await the results of your...percolating!

[ToddBaesen]

Since this thread about TREASURE ISLAND has somehow wandered off into many interesting directions, I thought I'd add another tangent, since Picasso and Stravinsky have been mentioned...

I was just listening to Erik Satie's score for the ballet PARADE by Jean Cocteau, with decor and costumes by Picasso, and read something Cocteau wrote about Satie:

COCTEAU: When people asked Rossini who was the greatest composer he would reply: "Beethoven." When they said, 'what about Mozart?' he would reply: "You asked me who was the greatest. You did not ask me which one was unique."

If people were to ask me about our age, I would no doubt repy that the greatest are Debussy and Stravinsky. And I would add: "But Satie is unique."


I found this very interesting, since if you were to ask people who is the greatest film director, they are likely to think of Orson Welles. Likewise if you were to ask them who is 'unique' they might also name Orson Welles!