Maybe too gossipy, but a very, very good book. The author get a definitive look on a completely omitted period of O.W. life, the italian years (1947-1954). A great archive work, hundred of old italian magazines and newspaper consulted, some tasty interview and a lot of surprising details about welles life and dolce vita, friends, love and work: a dinner with Togliatti, head of italian communist party and the conseguent FBI's alert, his struggle against critical misunderstanding of Macbeth at Venice film festival, a definitive reconstruction of the endless adventure of filming Othello (the author, Alberto Anile, have access to the film production dossier at the Central State Archive), the tormented love with Lea Padovani, the many projects (The Circus, Cyrano, Ulysse, Julius Caesar, Henry IV etc.) unachieved or tattered in half-world moviolas, the efforts he always made to attain his creative aims and dreams (yes, now we know that he made, uncredited, even the dubbing director). From that mass of anectodes, records, documents, photos, articles by and about Welles, recovered from archive dust or newly find, comes out a bitter story of incomprehension, refusal, love and hate between Welles and Italians, between two too different conception of cinema (these was the years of neo-realism in Italy) and conseguently, with hindsight, the beginning of the end of Welles illusion to became a truly indipendent director, free from Hollywood oppression, and the starting point of a new directorial career that will never see the light. Even if sometimes questionable for his approach, one of the best biographical books about Welles, a sort of confidential report on these wellesian years now forgotten in Italy (and never known outside). In one word, a must have (note: i'm not the author
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