Favorite Welles' films? - Lay it down, yo!

[Lance Morrison]

Out of curiosity i decided to compile a cumulative ranking based on weighted values from everyone's lists--i.e. giving #1 a higher value than #2 on someone's list, etc. I am NOT a mathematician or a statistics expert, so i can't comment on the accuracy of my method, but i think it worked fairly well. The Results:

1. Citizen Kane
2. Chimes at Midnight
3. The Magnificent Ambersons
4. Touch of Evil
5. The Trial
6. Lady from Shanghai
7. Othello
8. F for Fake
9. Mr. Arkadin
10. Macbeth
11. The Stranger
12. The Immortal Story / The Fountain of Youth

Chimes and Ambersons were close enough that they could be considered tied, as could Othello and Lady. The results would be more accurate if everyone had put every film here into their rankings, but i tried to account for that in the tallying

[ZenKaneCity]

Thanks for the effort, Lance! I can't believe I sweated over a couple of spots on my list, only to have it end up so close to the status quo. As more time goes by, I wonder if the Criterion ARKADIN package will gradually drag it up a few notches in the canon (it eventually may for me; I ranked it at #9).

[Skylark]

from http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=443

Wellesnet experts rate their Ten favorite films by ORSON WELLES
March 7th, 2009 Lawrence French Posted in Criticism & Research | Comments Off

Thanks to Lance Morrison for tallying up all the votes so far of Wellesnet members ongoing ranking of their favorite Orson Welles’ movies. I’ve taken the results Lance has posted on the message board and added in ten more votes, including my own, as well as people I’ve asked to send me their rankings, including Christopher Welles Feder, Juan Cobos, Richard France, etc.

The results change slightly, but rather significantly, in that now FALSTAFF comes in at number one!

*****
1. Falstaff (Chimes at Midnight)
2. Citizen Kane
3. The Magnificent Ambersons
4. Touch of Evil

5. The Trial
6. The Lady from Shanghai
7. Othello
8. F For Fake

9. Mr. Arkadin
10. Macbeth
11. The Stranger
12. The Immortal Story
The Fountain of Youth

[Glenn Anders]

[Snuffle . . . Snuffle.] Darn such weather!

Thank you, Lance, for your brave compilation. Though both yours and Mr. French's lists differ considerably from mine, I think I prefer yours to Larry's. For instance, why not transcribe the lists of these people he has brought in, a couple of whom we have never heard from directly on the board (so far as I know)? It may be the influence of Todd Baesen or Nick Badseed, both of whom are generally ready to have their way, at any cost. [Think of those poor devils in the cellar of the Ha-Ra Club, led to believe that Sibyl Vane will come to save their souls!]

What remains evident, however, is the great diversity of preference about Welles' films among a group of people who have made it a point in their lives to seek out the best of Orson Welles. So what if FALSTAFF: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT or CITIZEN KANE is number one? Each has its sublime virtues, no doubt. My only caveat would be that relatively few people have seen a perfect copy of FALSTAFF: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, whereas anyone may easily appreciate from many sources the splendor of CITIZEN KANE, which has the additional advantages of being contemporary, beautifully preserved, and completely original.

Keep on taking the square root of those numbers, Lance.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

--

The final results bring up a rather interesting question...

Namely, how might have Orson Welles ranked his own films?

Supposedly he thought THE TRIAL was his best film, at least until he made FALSTAFF three years later.

In any case, based on Welles own statements, we know that his two favorite films were FALSTAFF and THE TRIAL. We also know his two least favorite films were THE STRANGER and MR. ARKADIN.

The big question then becomes how would he rate all of his films between those two extremes?

Obviously, we don't really know, but I think we can assume Welles would prefer all of the films where he had complete control over the final editing, rather than the films where he lost control over the editing.

So in the following list, I've automatically listed all those films Welles edited himself above the movies he lost control over.

Strangely enough, it turns out to be a perfect "mirror" image. There are six films Welles edited as he wished, and six movies he lost control over.


1. Falstaff (Chimes at Midnight)
2. The Trial

3. Othello
4. Citizen Kane
5. F For Fake
6. The Immortal Story

These are the films Welles lost control over in the final editing:

7. The Magnificent Ambersons
8. Touch of Evil
9. Macbeth
10. The Lady From Shanghai

11. Mr. Arkadin
12. The Stranger

[Glenn Anders]

Todd: You are now having seances in which you call up the spirit of Orson Welles to have him reassure us that your own algorithm for ranking his films is the correct one.

You know where that comes from. I told you not to go down into the cellar!

Why not just allow us all have our list of favorites, and settle for Lance's compilation?

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

Glenn:

Once again you've had too much gin! I told you to add more Vermouth into the mix, but some people just won't listen!

I clearly state I don't know how Welles would rank his films, except for what we can glean from his interviews. From those, it is very clear what his two favorite, and his two least favorite films were.

However, as I understand it, from reading your own list of 10 best Welles' films you posted to this thread, you have seen neither FALSTAFF or THE TRIAL, the two films Welles himself considered his best. This suggests to me you need to watch these films and spend less time at the Ha-Ra club drinking straight gin Martini's!

[Glenn Anders]

Toddy: This exchange does not entertain our peers, but once again you are careless with your citations. I did not say that I had not seen FALSTAFF or THE TRIAL. I wrote on page 3 of this thread:

"I have never seen CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT or THE TRIAL in what I understand to be their best copies extant, and so, I can't judge them properly. But I have now seen enough of the rough footage from THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND to believe in its potential for making the Wellesnet List within the next year or two."

Your misstatement of my position raises a leviathan of difference. When I took my wife to see CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT in the 1970's, the version we saw was so incomprehensible that neither of us could make Falstaff or Chimes of it, and she fell asleep. The same was true of the edition we saw of MR. ARKADIN. In fact, that I dragged her to these atrocities (and another one I've blanked out -- ah, yes, THE TRIAL, crazily enough, a second viewing for me) were a minor factor in our subsequent divorce because divine Grace knew a good movie when she saw one. But when she was forced to see a bad one, she never forgot it!

And so, Toddy, I stand by my listing and by my statement. I do have a copy of THE TRIAL on laserdisc, which I believe is better than the versions I saw in theaters, but is it really complete? Who can say? But as you've urged me many a night at "the good place on Divisadero," at Whiskey Thieves, at Rasselas, and at Rye, where they make proper Gimlets (the expensive kind), and now here, I shall search through my extensive laserdisc collection for that edition of THE TRIAL, and give serious study to it.

A report will be forthcoming at the appropriate time, Toddy, and at the appointed place.

Glenn

[Lance Morrison]

Glenn is of course correct about the availibility of GOOD versions of these films; this most CERTAINLY affects peoples' lists here a great deal. For most everyone can see the glory of CITIZEN KANE and TOUCH OF EVIL (if not on a proper screen size) with little effort, compared to what they need to go through for a nice OTHELLO or CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT experience.

When i saw Falstaff myself for the first time on a copied VHS 6 years ago, it was difficult to follow, even knowing the Shakespeare. The clarity of the image was also quite compromised. Nevertheless i was able through subsequent viewing to increase my comprehension. I am amazed that the bloody version posted on Youtube currently has so much better sound and image than what i originally was able to see---so much is obvious in it which i had to struggle to find previously. I find it more or less perfectly comprehensible, despite the fact that the clips tend to become unsynced near the end of their running time, and it certainly whets the appetite for something like the Studio Canal version.

When looking at everyone's lists here, it became quite clear that the more commonly viewable films were, by default, doing much better than those which are harder to find. I do think that Falstaff probably belongs at top of the list; 4 peoples' lists did not contain it at all, whereas everyone's contained Kane. If it were more availible in GOOD versions, i really do not feel this would be the case. I cannot help but feel this is the same for his Othello, and the Immortal Story. Interestingly, Mr. Arkadin certainly overall seemed to do a bit better here after the new DVDs were released.

Still, i tend to think that the difficulty of such a list for Mr. Welles comes from the fact that his oeuvre is full of such riches; i would rather for myself put all of his films, with the exception of the Stranger, as equals, with sometimes comparable and sometimes wildly different charms and merits. This is rarely the case for me in film; with Kubrick, another favourite director, i can rather easily rank them for myself.

[Store Hadji]

Kane didn't make my list as I have no fun watching it beyond the Bernstein narrative and it subsequently isn't a favourite, which was the focus of this exercise.

Were we after that vague and contentious quality known as "best," I would have included it.

How does one determine whether one film is better than another? I haven't been able to suss out any empirical method for doing so. All I can find are a host of x-factors which rely solely upon personal taste, and I cannot and would not ascribe superiority based upon that; to do so would be demagoguery and little more.

I do feel the acting in Kane is better than that in Arkadin, but I can't justify that belief in any meaningful way and subsequently feel it doesn't bear mention.

How to review a film: write a complete plot synopsis including every spoiler you can remember and conclude it with two paragraphs of unjustified sycophancy or disparagement.



Terry

[Lance Morrison]

Sorry Store; i forgot Kane was off your list.

Something that i find wonderful about Welles' films: whether anyone thought so in the day, or what his intent was, they end up being for me extremely entertaining. I find myself delighted almost constantly, even if it is within the darker moods of his work. I believe it just comes from the energy, the great joy of creation that runs throughout his films. I first experienced it in Touch of Evil when a friend loaned it to me, and i was unusually spellbound.

Next i saw Citizen Kane, and once i stopped relating Mr. Kane to myself (which took a couple weeks of reflection), i was once again dazzled and thrilled by the pure energy of the filmmaking. That overwhelmed any feelings of darkness. I am more interested in Welles' later work because it seems so much more bare and nakedly personal, but i take no less delight in Kane than i did originally. I regret any work's reputation as "THE GREATEST!" and wish people would just watch CK and enjoy it for the great time that offers as a film. Then go beyond, if you want, and see the depth that it offers. This is how i feel about Joyce's Ulysses too, which i find to be such a wonderful and entertaining experience as a novel, and am constantly annoyed with its scary reputation (although i admit it is far less accessible than CK as a film is)

Nowadays people in America realize that Welles did a film called Touch of Evil too, and some of them know about Ambersons. So i would like to say, optimistically, that knowledge of his work is only improving. In any case, i would much rather speak about what pleases me than what is "the best". These types of lists are a bit of fun, no more; i will gladly acknowledge their futility and pointlessness, and meanwhile be moderately interested in what they contain

[Glenn Anders]

Terry: You make the essential point. Way back when catburglah proposed this thread, the first respondent exclaimed how much fun it was. Over time, one or two members posted slightly different lists, perhaps forgetting an earlier one, possibly having seen a new Welles film or a better print of another. Now we are making it into one of those dreaded "zero sum games" Americans have taken to in the last twenty years or so.

To me, and I think it would have been to Welles, as it seems to be to Lance, the final brilliance of CITIZEN KANE is in its editing, the sheer bursting energy which propels its first hour. Pauline Kael made the point in her early re-evaluation of the film, way back in her unknown days managing the Berkeley Rep, that people from other countries could not quite grasp the wonderful fun (that word again) which Americans might experience watching it. At one level, the quality which impressed me without my knowing quite why, even at the age of nine or ten, was the American exuberance the film generated. I was dazzled by its youth (which was my own within my grasp), and both awed and frightened by its vision of old age. [How true it is!] Only later did I realize that CITIZEN KANE is not just about one American, the guy who won the lottery we dream of, but all Americans, and of course, really, about all human beings. The arc of the film gives us the visual and kinetic equivalent in film time of living a life from childhood to death, with the added advantage or disadvantage of getting more than a peek at what people will say about us, if anything, after we are gone.

It is usually in the editing or the sound (ironically) where some of Welles' later films fail for me, as you describe, Lance. I think it may be that Welles lived his youth at an astonishing clip, so that before he was forty, he seems to have lost the power to express the wonderful, foolish energy of youth. It is as if, with the exception of F FOR FAKE, he is condemning us to live the last half hour of KANE over and over as a film experience. I remember a friend saying to me after seeing the restoration of OTHELLO: "Sad, that at the age of 37, he was finished as a leading man."

Maybe, that's why he kept on with the Magic, maybe that's why Oja Kodar meant so much to him. Magic could charm the child in himself and others (as in F FOR FAKE), and Oja's youth, beauty and artistic zeal buoyed him up. I expect the sudden loss of youth, and its long, slow aftermath, is what he was trying to come to terms with in DON QUIJOTE, certainly in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.

I fully agree with you, Lance, that the lists should be fun, and that we should not contend too much over which is "the best."

And though I find, as a son of middle America, more in KANE than you do, Terry, I agree with much of what you say, too. I only hope that all the first time movie reviews you read are not like the one you describe! If so, you would be left with no sense of surprise, scant hope of great expectations.

Glenn

[nextren]

Did Welles truly lose control over the editing of Macbeth? From what I can make out from a reading of Callow, Welles supervised the assembly edit and then split for Europe, where he saw the workprint in various stages and instructed Richard Wilson on a fine cut. The studio grumbled but accepted his cut - it was the initial release cut, i.e. the longer cut rediscovered decades later. This was widely panned, so the studio demanded that Wilson or anybody "cut out 20 minutes, and get rid of the accents!" Welles heroically returned from Europe, took the film in hand, and cut and dubbed the second version (the shorter version, released in the early '50s).

It is therefore possible to conjecture that Macbeth is truthfully TWO Welles-edited films (although he crafted the second version after critical and studio feedback). And as Callow says, there are gains and losses in both versions of the film.

I'd put MB smack in the list of films Welles edited.

(Both versions of MB will soon be available [again] on DVD, in crystalline restorations and with oodles of French-language extras, in a 3-disc package from France's Wild Side Video. Link: http://www.amazon.fr/Macbeth-Orson-Welles/dp/B0019RVG2O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1236634854&sr=1-1.)

[Lance Morrison]

I am not one of the experts here, but i believe you are completely correct, nextren. I am not sure why it wasn't listed among his self-completed works. Having not seen the shorter version, i am not sure of the nature of the cuts. I would be very happy with such a region 1 release

I was just watching Macbeth today and find it just wonderful.

[Store Hadji]

From what I've read, Macbeth looks to be a long-distance studio-compromise cut in its release version. Welles was off in Italy donned as Cagliostro, seeking tax haven, and looking for directorial work, Republic wanted changes on Macbeth, so Welles' deputy Richard Wilson implemented them with input from Welles when he was reachable in Rome. Did Welles ever come back to record his narration and supervise a clean-up edit while in town (as he had done in three or seven days on the US version of Journey into Fear,) or was Wilson in charge the entire time?

The longer version, to my knowledge, is a reconstruction of the rough cut and not an extant print, though what work was done on it in the 70s I never heard. And I believe Welles, uh, went off "to appear in sherry commercials" before the rough cut was completed, so neither version is something we can call a Welles cut, though both had his input. I'd call them both Richard Wilson cuts, or Welles cuts by proxy of Richard Wilson at best.

The Lady from Shanghai was another studio-compromise cut, though Welles seems to have been involved in the entire process, expressing regret only at the funhouse scene being truncated and his sound mix and temp music score being ignored - other than that Welles said the film was as he cut it, though Harry Cohn was certainly in charge. Does that make Lady more a Welles film than Macbeth, if the editing is the all-important factor Welles said it was?

This is why Jane Eyre is more a Welles film to me than Lady from Shanghai is. In pure Tinseltown irony, Eyre was another director's film, yet Welles was the one who supervised the postproduction. I think that accounts for what a Wellesian film it is, even if Eyre does have some sloppiness going on in the dubbing. Welles' "radio director ears" would frequently get the better of what was onscreen, which was certainly never more apparent than in Arkadin, which amusingly looks to be dubbed from a foreign language at times.

As for film reviews, I refuse to read them until after I see the film. As for Best Lists, I'll happily read them to see if there's any consensus with my opinions or if there are some films or directors whose work I haven't discovered yet.

Terry