Night That Panicked America on DVD, WOTW on CD - Re: quality, content

[R Kadin]

For those who might have seen or considered it on ebay, someone who had taped a re-broadcast of this recreation of Welles' "War of the World" broadcast has transferred it to DVDs that he's auctioning off, there. As for any copyright implications, the original is old enough to qualify for public domain status, by now; but who knows?

A word to the wise, though: whereas the seller rates the image quality as 8-ish on a scale of 10, I would be hard pressed to agree, based on the darkish, blurry visuals my recently-arrived copy offers. So, caveat emptor.

I'm still happy to have it in my collection, mind you, despite the odd, overwrought dramatic side-stories that are intercut with the main event and other acts of artistic licence. I found I still rather enjoy the lead actor's Welles portrayal - an important bonus.

It was enough to get me to spring for a CD version of the original WOTW broadcast with a bonus interview thrown in of both OW and H.G. Wells together commenting on both the broadcast and on the then yet-to-be-released "Citizen Kane". I believe H.G. Wells' remark was that he was looking forward to hearing some "jolly good noises" in connection with the film upon its debut.

Interesting, too, in that conversation was OW drawing sympathetic attention to how Wells' "The Shape of Things to Come" and remarks he had delivered in an earlier speech about the world's future prospects offered some thoughful, though gloomy, support for "the less optimistic point of view".

I find that all the more fascinating, considering what was going on in OW's life at that time: still the brash boy wonder, still dining out on the celebrity WOTW had bestowed upon him with a hotly-anticipated and innovative film debut bearing directly down on him - truly, to quote James Cameron, "King of the World!" - ripe with every conceivable reason for unbridled optimism, and here he was being drawn, instead, to "the less optimistic point of view". Consider Charles Foster Kane's pathetic end and the impoverished obscurity awaiting the once-proud Amberson clan whose story he was keen to tell next. (Yes, I am mindful that the world being at war at the time would have had some influence, as well.) Was Welles so captivated by themes of melancholy and loss that his career trajectory had little option but to see his life imitate his art?

Even as I write that last sentence, I realize how trite it seems; and yet, faced with such evidence, I can't shake the thought, entirely.

[Glenn Anders]

Not trite at all, R Kadin, certainly not as an observation of Welles in !940 or 1941. It took the French, nearly a decade later, to begin to make such connections. Welles early experiences with disease and death, his father's alcoholism (which would not have been seen as a disease, then, but a character flaw), shaped a pessimistic view of life, which his expansive personality must have covered like a shell.

Well done, R Kadin

[dmolson]

It also follows pretty much the trajectory of each main character in any of his scripts – someone who would/had reach the peak but were summarily handed their 'comeuppance, not once, twice but three-fold' -- Having seen what he'd seen and studied the great dramas of the world, in a time where major changes left other, older innovators in the dust, would it not be a common thread in his thought process that clear skies hide the gloomy and thunder of a vengeful future?
Also, while WOTW and Kane had huge benefits, he faced some severe obstacles and criticism after the first and while conjuring up the second. The label 'Wonder Boy' was put on him by the kingpins and writers around Hollywood not without a lot of sarcasm, right?

[Glenn Anders]

Yes, actually, what you say suggests one of the early cases of character assassination, which has now become a major industry in our American media. After a (temporary and premature, as it turned out) decline of tabloid journalism (a theme of CITIZEN KANE), Welles was one of the first figures, who was branded and flayed for the provocative nature of his artistic ideas, in the new cycle which opened up into McCarthism. In this, he was almost entirely innocent. After Welles, he did not become involved in public scandals, did not avow anarchist ideas, did not do anything on the record which was not American, in the best sense of the word. Yet, he was virtually sent into exile, deprived of many of his artistic opportunities, and until his death, hounded by lesser individuals who jeered at his career and physical distress.

Well said, dmolson.

Glenn