Thank you, Mr Welles

~ beetleypete

Reblogging this personal tribute to Orson Welles from 2013. Not many of you will have seen it before.

beetleypete

Orson Welles is considered by many to be the greatest film maker in history. I do not necessarily agree with that, although I do consider him to be one of the greatest actors of all time. His voice alone is worth a career, let alone his charismatic presence in a film.

As a very young man, I was captivated by him on film at the cinema, and on TV, when his films were shown there. His brief appearances in ‘The Third Man’, lift the film totally, and his wry grin steals every scene that he is in. Whatever you might think of him, his talent is surely indisputable, and from an early age, he showed the touch of genius that would characterise his life in cinema. The ensemble cast of his best known films, ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’, and ‘Citizen Kane’, was to follow him throughout his all too short film…

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12 thoughts on “Thank you, Mr Welles”

    1. He wasn’t in The War of The Worlds. He did that as a radio play, and terrified America, as the country thought it was a real alien invasion! 🙂 You really must try to watch ‘The Third man’. It’s simply wonderful. 🙂
      Best ishes, Pete.

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  4. Well it’s good to have a hero in your life. Not seen either of these, the Chime movie looks great fun, I’d choose that one. The other one, I get what you mean, it is very well choreographed, so much so that it appears too contrived to me, though the crane bit was probably a wow factor back then and sorry but I laughed out loud at Charlton Heston with his moustache. I wonder what Welles would have done if he’d had access to drones and CGI!

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    1. Heston was desperately miscast in the role of a Mexican, and far from being a good actor anyway. Welles and Marlene stole their scenes, but overall it works well as a kind of ‘film noir’. Chimes at Midnight is a forgotten classic, and hard to find on DVD. (It used to be on You Tube, the whole film)
      I could have picked many other films though, as I just love Welles! 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  6. Thanks for the repost, Pete. That opening scene in Touch of Evil is one I have watched over and over, just as I watched the coo coo clock scene, that Welles ad libbed, over and over. Just like I watch both movies over and over. And just like I listen to the 3 Old Time Radio series Welles did.

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