WELLESNET MESSAGE BOARD

This is a hilarious pseudo-conversation of just a few minutes between Welles, Darryl Zanuck and Juliette Greco at the 1959 Cannes Festival.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1dXiAiGb5wI&feature=related

Tony:

What a great find! Notice how Welles naturally directs things, even when doing a newsreel interview. And notice too, the incorrect commentary from the narrator, who when Welles refers to winning the Cannes Prize for OTHELLO in 1952, says it was for THE THIRD MAN!

Also, be sure to watch to the end for a brief clip of Jean Cocteau. I don't think I'd ever seen Cocteau speaking in English before, so that's quite a nice clip to see.

So that means the audience at Cannes booed Welles for his Palme d'Or for Othello? What's up with that? I'd never heard of this before.

I was surprised at that too, Store. Was he kidding?

And Todd: I think he mentions that he was supposed to interview Zanuck.

I only wish it were longer. If you watch the other parts, the documentary is so banal, superficial and relentlessly sexist it's kind of impressive for its purity; for example, check out the interview with Lawrence Harvey while he's smoking a cigar and pretending to play golf! There's almost nothing of content in the whole doc.

Somewhat strange, also ,was the presenting of the award for best actor, won by Dillman, Stockwell and Welles for Compulsion. I recall reading Dillman saying that Welles clearly didn't want the others onstage with him, that Welles was extremely upset he had to share the award. But in this bizarre little doc, it's some American representaive who accepts the award, not the actors.

If you watch the other parts, the documentary is so banal, superficial and relentlessly sexist it's kind of impressive for its purity;

That clip alone makes Cannes look like something out of a Fellini parody. The rich and the bored.

It is a revelation concerning the type of film industry Welles had to deal with at the time which shunned him then and also posthumously as the wellesnet posting about the leading lights of Hollywood refusing to aid the restoration of TOSW shows.

Welles championed a different type of cinema far removed from what is celebrated in this historical clip not too far removed from today.

Hello indeed:

Small 2 cents, just to say the 1920's Loews theatre in Jersey City, quite a Versailles-looking place run by volunteers, showed Citizen Kane, Lady From Shanghai, Magnificent Ambersons, and Touch of Evil this weekend. The Touch of Evil print was of the Murch reconstruction, and apparently it was the first time that print was let off the lot since the 1998 restoration (thus, a 10th anniversary event). Very smooth experience...

The theater was so cavernous that the reverb really became a character of its own, or at least a very noticeable factor. Look them up next month if you like Bette Davis, and in May if you like the Final Cut of Blade Runner.

It is available for birthday parties and bar mitzvahs....

How was the turnout?

I'd say 50 people for the first three, and then 100+ for Touch of Evil at 8:45.

Not too good for the first three, not too bad for Touch of Evil. I guess people will mainly turn out for new stuff. Or relatively new.

Orson Welles's Shakespeare
http://hollowaypages.com/welles.htm

Cool page...

From the 12/26/08 San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... L&type=art

Two programs of rarities by Orson Welles will be shown Jan. 17 and 18 at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive. The event is co-presented with the Goethe-Institut San Francisco.

The Jan. 17 program includes footage Welles shot for TV shows such as "Around the World With Orson Welles" and "Orson's Bag." The material focuses on the director's visits to Paris, London, Vienna and other European locations. Also on the program, according to the archive, is material showing "different approaches by Welles to Shakespeare's 'Merchant of Venice.' "

On Jan. 18, the subject will be Welles' unfinished works, with excerpts from "The Deep" (based on a Charles Williams thriller), "The Dreamers" (from stories by Isak Dinesen) and "Don Quixote."

The programs will be presented by Stefan Drössler, director of the Munich Filmmuseum. The archive says Drössler, working with Welles' companion Oja Kodar, has assembled the world's largest collection of Welles rarities.

The events begin at 5 p.m. Jan. 17 and 2 p.m. Jan. 18. The Pacific Film Archive is at 2575 Bancroft Way in Berkeley. For information on advance tickets, call (510) 642-5249. For general archive information, call (510) 642-1412 or go to bampfa.berkeley.edu

Did anybody go to this?

What I found most interesting out of all the unfinished material Stefan Drossler showed at the PFA last week, was THE DREAMERS "test footage," which included basically everything Welles shot on the project. I think what also helped so much, was that of all the material shown, this footage was in such pristine condition. There were no scratches, blemishes, color problems, etc. that mar so much of the other unfinished Welles footage.

There was also a second alternate version of Pellegrina's farewell scene with Marcus Kleek. The first farewell scene is the one that is more well known, shot in the garden of Welles house in Hollywood.

The second one shows us Pellegrina inside of the house talking to Marcus Kleek, but in typical fashion, Welles designed this scene as a series of alternating shots between Kleek and Pellegrina, so the two are never seen on screen at the same time together. Unfortunately, Welles never shot the reverse shots of himself, so we never see him, but only hear the lines he recorded for his scenes, shown against black leader, as Kleek is talking to Pellegrina. One suggestion that might improve this segment, would be to insert a still shot of Welles as Marcus Kleek into the scenes, instead of simply having audiences look at a lot of black leader. Luckily, the scenes of Oja Kodar as Pellegrina are in ravishing color, and also have a simple but rather astonishing art direction to them, which was obviously done by Welles himself. There is a very elegant 19th Century feel to the footage, with several beautiful candlelit lighting effects highlighting the scenes.

One can only imagine how Welles would have handled the opening of his script, once again set on a boat, this time off the coast of east Africa, where we are introduced to three men, lit by the light from a full moon...


___________________________________

ISAK DINESEN'S

THE DREAMERS

adapted for the screen by ORSON WELLES (1978)

___________________________________




O.W. as NARRATOR:
On a full moon night in 1870, a dhow was on its way to Zanzibar...


FADE IN:

EXT. - THE DHOW UNDER SAIL

A small lantern is hung up over the deck. Three persons are grouped under it.

O.W. as NARRATOR:
Her freight was ivory and rhino horn. But the ship held also a secret human cargo --

As'id Ben Ahamed, the young Arab chieftan, was about to stir and raise great forces of which the slumbering world did not yet dream...


SA'ID, a fierce and strongly beautiful young hero of his people, sits on the deck cross-legged, bent forward, his hands loosely folded and resting on the planks before him.

O.W. as NARRATOR:
Through treachery, he had been made a prisoner in the North: he was now on his way to take revenge upon his enemies.

With him there was a person once of great renown: the storyteller, Mira Jamal.


MIRA sits, like SA'ID, with his legs crossed. His back is to the moon, but the night is clear enough to show that he is dressed in rags.



O.W. as NARRATOR:
The third in the company was the young Englishman, Lincoln Forsner.


LINCOLN lies flat on his stomach on the deck. He wears an Arab shirt and Indian trousers.

They sail for a time.

Then LINCOLN changes his position: he sits up and makes himself comfortable.

LINCOLN:
The night is very still... bewildering in its silence and its peace. It is as if something had happened to the soul of the world... As if some magic... turned it upside-down.

___________________________________

Thanks for the info, Todd. I'm thinking of that guy who put an extended amount of Dreamers footage on Youtube last year, along with alot of other great stuff, and then took it all off about a week later. Too bad the guy apparently got cold feet. I didn't even get a chance to watch all the stuff he had put on.