Tribute to Orson Welles in Chicago

[Cole]

I noticed in yesterday’s edition of the Chicago Tribune that the Pickwick Theatre in Chicago will be holding a tribute to the Great One on October 19th. According to the article, part of the program includes a panel discussion with Beatrice Welles-Smith and Oja Kodar. I went to the web site for the Pickwick Theatre and I see that the attendance charge for the panel discussion is a bit pricey, but it might be worth it. If any of the Chicagoans who visit Wellesnet go to the program, I’d love to hear your review.

[mteal]

Thanks for the info, Cole. I still haven't had a chance to see Orson's Shadow yet, and now this too? Yes, it is pricey, in fact, that evening VIP reception is way too pricey for me, but I'll have to consider the afternoon programs.

I couldn't find the Trib article. However, as yu said, it is mentioned at the Pickwick site

http://www.pickwick.org

Beatrice Welles leads the panel discussion after a showing of Ambersons. No mention of Oja Kodar. It's hard to imagine Beatrice and Oja sharing a panel discussion.

Hey Jeff, how come my links don't link? Am I doing something wrong?

[Jeff Wilson]

You're probably not adding the http:// before the link, is all I can guess. The event sounds interesting, though I can't imagine why Beatrice deserves an award for anything Welles-related.

[dm olson]

wouldn't this be the perfect forum for wellesnet to kindly make its case to Aunt Bee about resolving any difficulties and letting someone finish TOSOTW? I don't think 'confrontation' would be the best tool, since her growling schnauser's will likely be at her sleeve or at least on speed dial, but to have a few constructive voices giving her some nice feedback, well...

[mteal]

Two years playing around on the Net and I still don't know what the hell I'm doing - thanks, Jeff.

dm olson,
Yes, this would be a good forum to try and get some straight answers out of Beatrice, but from my experience she tends not to stick around at these things too long. 10 years ago at the world premeire of the Othello restoration she gave a short speech before the movie and then stayed about 5 minutes at the champaigne reception afterwards. Hopefully this will be different...if she's even there, that is. Frankly, I'm curious as to why she is going there just for some award and another routine showing of Kane and Ambersons. Does she have a new Welles project to announce, perhaps? I doubt it.

[Fat Annie]

Oak Street Cinema called its weeklong Welles tribute "The Essential Auteur." http://www.startribune.com/stories/412/3325908.html

They ran what was labeled 'A long-lost 1960 Canadian TV documentary, "The Paris Interview," ' Is this 'newly rediscovered' documentary of any significance?

[mteal]

I guess the Oak street Welles fest is in Minneapolis. Any Wellesnetters from Minnesota? BTW, has anyone heard anything about the big Welles blowout in Deutschland? Looks like they had a pretty impressive list of programs lined up over there.

[Cole]

There’s one Minnesotan here, and I was able to catch the Touch of Evil, Citizen Kane double feature at the Oak Street Cinema last Sunday. I just had to see what Hank Quinlan looked like on the big screen. The prints weren’t too hot, so I passed on the other films they were showing which included Mr. Arkadin. That’s another movie that probably should be seen on the big screen, but they didn’t indicate which version they were showing. Now that I have a copy of the Corinth version, thanks to Fredric, no other version of Mr. Arkadin will do.

Unfortunately, I missed the “Paris interview” they were showing according to the Star Tribune article. The theater failed to publicize the screening, so I had no idea they were showing it until I read that article. Kind of irks me.

Incidentally, I convinced myself this time around that Orson dubbed in Joe Cotton’s first lines in Touch of Evil. Is that already common knowledge? And assuming I’m right about this, was this a small joke he was playing on Hollywood? I doubt Cotton was unavailable to do all his lines.

[fantomas]

mteal:

what do you want to know? i just returned from the welles conference in mannheim. it was great, well organised, brandnew prints, very interesting lectures and discussions with guests like oja kodar, gary graver, willy kurant, jonathan rosenbaum, esteve riambau and francois thomas.
for me the most striking discoveries were:
a 115 minutes workprint of THE DEEP which contains the whole storyline and a complex dream structure. according to stefan droessler who presented it the filmmuseum muenchen needs some more time to restore THE DEEP, but even now it is breathtaking to see the blueprint of a great film with a quite funny orson doing a lot of cynical remarks.
the restored material of THE DREAMERS which was meant to be a demo tape to find money to shoot the film.
the well done documentary ORSON WELLES IN THE LAND OF DON QUIJOTE which contains very rare material and good interviews.
the short ORSON WELLES - SPAIN by the brothers maysles in which orson is explaining his project SACRED BEASTS.
the short SCENES FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND which showed much more than the known sequences.
there were so many news and information that it's impossible to mention all. but i can try to answer specific questions.

[Peter Tonguette]

fantomas:

Thanks for your report. Your comments about "The Deep" lead me to believe that there was a soundtrack with the print you saw? It was my understanding that this was the main issue holding up any kind of release of the film - the soundtrack was lost. Of course, I'd love to be proven wrong...

Peter

[fantomas]

they put most of the sound on the workprint. the noises were missing but most of the lines were there. partly it was original sound with the camera noise in the background, partly it was redubbed by the actors and partly welles, laurence harvey and even michael bryant were redubbed by orson himself. (strange effect to hear the actors switching from their own voices to the voice of orson). there was some jazz music like in the lengthy trailer which was shown before and which was used in the documentary ONE-MAN BAND. all in all about 80% of the dialogues were in the workprint and you could follow the story quite easily. since there are a lot of more reels from dubbing the guy from filmmuseum muenchen said that he is in good hope to find more sound. obviously jaenne moreau didn't dub her lines but fortunately most of her lines were in the original sound.

[jaime marzol]

................

glad to hear The Deep holds promise. all these years i've been reading that The Deep was a very minor effort from welles.

was there anything from Merchant Of Venice?

how did the extra clips you saw of Other Side Of The Wind look? can you discribe any of them?

[mteal]

Thanks for all the info, Fantomas. The situation with THE DEEP sounds rather similar to the situation with DON QUIXOTE: Welles probably could have finished the film in some form, but declined to for whatever reason(s). Do you think it would be better to try and complete the work, the way Franco did with QUIXOTE, or would it be better to make some kind of documentary of it like THE DOMINICI AFFAIR?

[fantomas]

the deep:

yes, it's a simple thriller welles did more for commercial reasons than to prove his creativity or to renew the language of cinema. at a certain point he planned to release THE DEEP and OSOTW together, the first to be a commercial success, the second to be an artistic effort. Nevertheless THE DEEP is much better than expected: it has great dialogues, and the dream structure (maybe referring to BELLE DE JOUR) makes it story about a wife loosing her innocense on a wedding trip.
i don't believe that this film should be treated like DQ by franco. it works as it is. adding additional filmed material (as franco did) or playing with digital trickery (as franco also did) or adding a new music (i don't want to mention the boring soundtrack franco used) can only destroy the film. maybe one could make a documentary about the project with parts of the workprint. but i would say that the entire film should also be available in its uncompleted version.

merchant of venice:

they showed a compilation titled ORSON WELLES' SHYLOCK which contains a clip from the record version, orson at the dean martin show, the known 9 minutes fragment from 1969, orson in trenchcoat 1971 in france doing the shylock monolog and orson in trenchcoat 1973 in spain doing the monolog. the fragment from 1969 is obviously part of a workprint. it's not clear how complete the 1969 film was but obviously some reels were stolen after a screening in italy. as stefan droessler said they are tracing material in spain and in france. maybe soon a little more of MERCHANT OF VENICE can be shown.

osotw:

they showed a 30 minutes tape with six scenes: john huston and peter bogdanovich in a car with two reporters in the back. it's jake hannaford on his way to the birthday party. then a sequence with jake's stooges in a bus also going to the birthday party. the next sequence was the long scene in the projection room with norman foster watching hannaford's movie. the fourth scene was huston's arrival at his birthday party (as seen in ONE MAN BAND). the fifth the love scene "car in the rain". and in the end a short clip from the bithday party with henry jaglom and paul mazursky. all the clips were introduced by intertitles which explained the storyline. it looked very impressive and everybody wanted to see more. unfortunately neither oja kodar nor gary graver could tell any good news about the completion of osotw.

[mteal]

Thanks, Fantomas. That dream structure on THE DEEP sounds very exciting. Maybe Welles was making up for the dream sequence which was cut out of THE STRANGER. I doubt we'll ever see that. As for THE DEEP, I'm much more optimistic now.

Another item on the list of programs that piqued my curiosity was Richard Wilson's 22-minute cut of "Four Men on a Raft" which I've heard is better then the 45 minute version of "Raft" that wound up in the IT'S ALL TRUE documentary. I'm hoping for a chance to see this one too sometime.