The Deep Rough Cut?

[Jay]

At the risk of sounding ignorant, I'll admit that I have no idea what "The Dreamers" is or what it's about, other than the scarce info on imdb.com. Can someone fill me in?

[Glenn Anders]

Ray: I wish Stefan Droessler could speak for himself -- he has taken part in our discussions -- but perhaps he is busy, or restricted still by contractual agreements and confidences. My impression, however, is that he has found Oja Kodar's "gift" of two tons of Welles material, over time, something of "an embarrassment of riches." He and his team at the Munich Film Museum already have a silver wealth of German expressionistic silent and other films to work on. [The last time I saw him, he brought me a beautiful souvenir book of the three part restoration (German, French, and English) of Max Ophul's last great film, LOLA MONTES, which he had worked on.] He tends to be an archivist, a compiler, a polisher of films, not a creator, as such, his THE COMPLETE MR. ARKADIN, notwithstanding. He did not strike me as someone with an overwhelming desire to complete either THE DEEP or THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. Too many lost sound tracks, missing scenes, various contradictions between scripts and shot footage stood in his way. But I hope that he is still digging away at finding those elements, for he he has shown himself among the best at his craft. As you suggest, also, Ray, funding may be a factor. There is not an overwhelming outcry or market for these Welles' films or we would have them.

Besides, unlike THE DEEP, the actual negative of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND is said to still be locked within in that vault in Paris. [It's a bit like the plot of Billy Wilder's great "lost" film, THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES.]

* * * *

Jay: "The Dreamers" is a short story by Isak Dinesen (aka, the Baroness Karen Blixen), whose other works (from many), Out of Africa and "Babette's Feast," made bases for successful movies. "The Dreamers" tells the story of Pellegrina Leoni, a beautiful opera star, who loses her voice. She has been guided by an old mentor, who tells the tale, and it is not hard, for me at least, to see Orson Welles, at his stage of life, imagining Oja Kodar as his Pellegrina, dedicating himself to freeing her "voice." Under the influence of the great poet Robert Graves, Welles was attracted to Isak Dinesen, too, because she saw herself as "a storyteller" and created a mask and a persona, which she gradually became. Unfortunately, only a few scenes based on "The Dreamers" were ever shot by Welles and Ms. Kodar, most of them in Welles' Los Angeles home.

Looking over "The Dreamers" again, a glass of red wine at hand in a balloon glass found at the Good Will, I cannot resist the irony of the following line in regard to Welles and others I've known, as we grow older:

"What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?"

Try the Baroness Blixen, Jay. You might like her.

Glenn

[RayKelly]

Glenn,
You are quite right. The Munich Film Museum has more on its collection than just Welles to occupy its time.
And there is obviously not a huge market for all things Orson. (If there was, Warner would have given us Ambersons and Journey Into Fear by now).
I am pretty sure OSOTW was not donated by Oja to Munich. Stefan Droessler was pretty critical of it at the presentation I attended.

[Glenn Anders]

Glad you agree, Ray. Stefan Droessler, the last I knew, had footage from Ms. Kodar, not the negative itself. He showed us on one of his several visits to the Bay Area an assemblage of shots and sequences, about two hours worth. (As in rushes, there were many repetitions, sound and no sound, sequences which hung together pretty well and some that were disjointed; I don't remember seeing "the screening room sequence in such a coherent form). On a later visit, Droessler showed Baesen and Larry a longer version, sequences in order, and according to Baesen, a recognizable film edit of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, one which matched the script in their possession. But as you say, and Peter Bogdanovitch confirmed to us several years ago, the full negative of everything shot is locked up in Paris, and relatively few people have seen it. Nothing I've heard since would alter that fact. My understanding is that the material which people were working with in LA was a work print similar to that Droessler had.

"The search goes on."

Glenn

[Roger Ryan]

The entire 1975 AFI Tribute show was available on VHS for a while. The other clip from TOSOTW shown that night was the one where John Huston encounters the mob of photographers as he arrives at his birthday party. A more complete version of this scene was included in the "One-Man Band" documentary on Criterion's F FOR FAKE DVD.

THE DREAMERS, I feel, is the Munich Filmmuseum's finest attempt at presenting footage from an unfinished film. It almost feels like a complete, albeit abstract, 20 minute short.

[mteal]

That's interesting. I'd like to see that sometime. Sounds it would make a good DVD set with THE IMMORTAL STORY. But of course, we're not likely to see it in America, as The Estate owns the American rights to TIS.

[maxrael]

Like many, having waited with baited breath for many years and having those flushes of excitement everytime there's news that TOSOTW or The Deep is almost there and almost certainly coming soon... i've gradually moved to the opinion that if there was potential for The Deep to actually be something, then Welles had ample time to finish it himself. The fact he didn't, and pretty much lost total interest in it after being ripped off yet again, suggests to me that it was supposed to be a by-the-book drama in a similar way that The Stranger came about to show that Welles could do straight-forward bankable low-art projects.

As Welles said, "My hope is that it won’t be an art-house movie. I hope it’s the kind of movie I enjoy seeing myself. I felt it was high time to show that we could make some money." And for many reasons it failed. It didn't have Welles heart in it, so he wasn't prepared to go through an Othello-like triumph against the odds to get it finished.

Wind is to me, more interesting because Welles seemed to always have wanted to finish it. That he allegedly never got around to recording the film's planned opening narration at any point between 1976 and 1985, is either untrue and the audio is lost somewhere / possibly destroyed, or if true maybe casts a shadow on how much he wanted it completed, posthumously if necessary. As Welles said, "It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money."

As we know, no-one can finish either of the films as Welles would have done. And I fear anyone who tries to pretend to be Welles will be destined to failure.
My biggest hope now is that the people who want to make money out of any of the projects, passes asap, and the shot footage is made freely available for Welles fans to assemble their own versions. With the advancements in video-editing technology surely it's just a matter of time before we're able to knock-up a convincing CGI explosion seen for The Deep... and use sophisticated voice synthesizers to recreate the missing audio in such a way that it's seamless!
Or have i gone too far!

[Reppid]

Notice that a whole load of OW work relating to The Deep is up for auction at Juliens Auctions in early Nov. Looks interesting.

[RayKelly]

Welcome Reppid and thanks for the tip. I have
posted details athttp://www.wellesnet.com/?p=2032

[mteal]

Good to see these papers being made available. I would think the Munich Filmmuseum, holders of one of the three major Welles archives, might be interested in these, to go with the DEEP workprint. Here's another page on the auction:
http://www.julienslive.com/view-auction ... lot/31820/
This page says Welles "left" these materials to his longtime friend Bill Cronshaw. Too bad he didn't also leave to Cronshaw the negative of the film itself, which now appears to be lost.