Bridgewater Review

Volume 4 | Issue 2 Article 10

Sep-1986 Cultural Commentary: Looking For Orson Welles Joseph Liggera Bridgewater State College

Recommended Citation Liggera, Joseph (1986). Cultural Commentary: Looking For Orson Welles. Bridgewater Review, 4(2), 16-18. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol4/iss2/10

This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Cultural Commentary _

Looking For Orson Welles

Joseph Liggera

16 his is my second article about my day, embraced him. Citizen Kane, too, had its roots in the death of Orson Welles and There is the tendency, then, to be nostalgia. The newspaper magnate is T the meaning ofhis life and work. sentimental with praise for Welles, to done in because his famous sleigh was The first I junked because I had fallen make excuses for him, or to rail at the wrested from him, and he dies clutch­ into the trap of chasing each flash and failure of Hollywood money people to ing a child's crystal ball with a snow flicker ofWelles' career, then trying to take another chance on a Welles pro­ scene inside as he utters his last word, pull them together into a coherent ject. Failing such feelings, a more realis­ recalling the name in the sled, "Rose­ image ofthe man. Welles is and was so tic light may begin to shine in the bud." The little man, Bernstein, arrives many bits and pieces, brilliance and Wellesian darkness. First, it becomes to work as editor of a New York city bunkum, that he remains as he wished clear that the public maintained a nos­ paper with a horse drawn truck loaded to be, ever elusive. I am so teased by the talgia about art, nigh and low, nostalgia with all his belongings. The older re­ contradictions of the man that under­ for a simpler, slower, more peaceful porters close shop at the end ofthe day, standing him sometimes is more in­ time than Welles ever seemed to want. and the whole paper, presses too, sleep triguing than understanding myself. There was also a nostalgia for language, peacefully at night n until young Kane It is tempting to start bOy calling him a for spoken words like those of Shake­ takes over and wakes them up. But he genius, and to ask the inevitable ques­ speare, Kafka or Tarkington. Welles also is from an older era. First he tion: "Who is Orson Welles?" Welles had a love/hate relationship with his announces he will make The Enquirer as is devious, the various aspects of his audience, the great beast of the public important to the people of the city as personality splintered and dispersed. who he alternately fooled and em­ "the gas in that lamp." (The enfant Any critic of Welles' must not only braced. Lastly, he was most famous for terrible is nostalgic about a gas lamp?) examine the man but himself as well; a his multiple expressive virtuoso talent Later Kane cannot understand how his critic must ask the fundamental ques­ that raised radio, film, even television innocent affair is made to look scandal­ tion n "Who am l?" n and, "Who am I commercials to something finer than ous by other papers, or why he cannot in relation to Orson Welles?" they seemed capable ofbecoming. Nos­ make everyone love him by buying For my part, whoever I am, there is talgia, an intimate relationship with his them things. In fact, he thinks like an not a time that I can remember when I public n his seers and hearers -- and his aging pater familias and is amazed when did not "know" who Orson Welles histronic talent nlet us look at these to told that working men are now was, so fixed was he in my conscious­ find Welles. unionizing and no longer need his ness, and probably, the consciousness He made two films that keep pop­ benevolence. of America. I knew Welles as an actor ping into everyone's list ofthe Greatest Welles' nostalgia is refreshing in that and a voice first, having been born a Films ofAll Time, the second ofwhich he never joined the despair rampant in year before the release of his film is The Magnificent Ambersons, based on his century. Instead, he only came Citizen Kane. By the time I was growing a Booth Tarkington novel. It is said along to play with his toys: the papers, up, Welles had already been reduced to that Welles believed the studio had radio, film, television, acting. Nonethe­ the status ofa legend. He wished to be butchered it, and that he, to his dying less, every Welles film is heavy at the known as an active maker of his own day, vowed to bring together the re­ end and, if Welles stars, as he usually films, not for his involvement in other maining living actors and shoot a new does, we feel his weight, physical and people's films or films for literature. ending. For once there is no Welles psychic. Then he falters, totters, and Some time during my teens his image persona in the film, though he could finally collapses, seemingly of his own was blown up to the dimensions of an not resist narrating it. Nevertheless, the weight, but really for his wanting what oversized balloon, like those in the film is rife with nostalgia, not only for has been long gone. Hence Kane dies Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. My times past, but for the kind of quick, with his fond memories ofthe snows of view of him took on a luminous, yet graceful prose, that Tarkington the Middle West from his lost child­ romantic glow because, though his best· wrote. The opening credits are a joy. hood. Welles, asked what he thought work was well behind him, he was still loseph Cotten, swirling through of the twentieth century, revealed his blustering as if it were still in front of changes of costume, foreshadows the nostalgia in his reply that he "could him, if he were given a chance. War of film's celebration of the gay turn-of­ pick a better one out of a hat." the Worlds, the Mercury Theater, the-century life. Snow falls and sleigh To Welles, the world had become Shakespeare in modern dress, classic bells tinkle. Welles narrates that in fragmented and corrupt. A better way performances (notably in Jane Eyre) -­ those days, they had time for every­ of life lay buried in some horse and that was all behind him. But Welles thing. Alas, the whole ofthat sequence, buggy past. He found it impossible to never gave it up. He seemed to be and the best ofwhat follows, is directly face the stark realities (or evils) of forever young, and nearly every discov­ from Tarkington's prose. Welles' se­ modern life. That is why Welles' great­ ery I made about media art proved to cret is out. He loves words. He simply est artistic sin is that each of his films me that Welles had been there; if not puts pictures to them, brilliantly. By goes to pieces at the end, heaping first, at least flashiest. Then, like Papa the end of the film, the huge mansion images of immense size and blackness Hemingway's The Old Man and The becomes dark and ominous as the on an audience previously charmed by Sea, the gargantuan boy genius reached family fortunes fall. With them goes his celebration ofform and, seemingly, down and produced his long, gruelling nostalgia, and in comes the automo­ of life. He has style but no content. masterworking of Kafka's The TriaL bile, running roughshod over most Unlike Hemingway, also a great stylist, We all knew then that Welles was no everything and burying what it misses he does not teach us anything about has-been. We, the young art fanciers of in soot. how to live our lives. Grasping to

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recapture innocence, Welles tries the corrupt world ofreality, or that can which opened this paper: Welles trying mightily to hold back Original Sin, but be used to manipulate us. Itdepends on to make us believe he is necessary to us. in the end he suffers the Fall, the mind behind the form. Welles was Nostalgia, his view of the common repeatedly. clear that there was a mind behind the man, and his talent -- these are places to As an American artist cut in the form, be it Shakespeare's, Welles', or look when trying to find Welles. In image ofWhitman, Welles established even that of an egoist like Kane. In summing up, then, what are his accom­ a relationship with his audience that showing us how he was making Kane, plishments? First, he was able to manip­ was intimate and based on his under­ in the very act of doing it, Welles was ulate forms, particularly media, in a standing of the common man. At his teaching us to analyze form and to see way that simultaneously deceived and best, he simply assumed we would what was being d6ne to us. None ofthe delighted his audience. Second, he was think as he did. The momentum of his devices in Kane -- the newsreels, deep a teacher, revealing in the act of cre­ "song of himself" carried us along. focus, odd camera angles, aural non­ ating how form dictates content and, But underneath, Welles was hard at sequiturs -- are real ways ofseeing and despite its immediacy and suggestion work trying to educate his audience hearing. Yet, together, they make an of catching reality in the act, is really and bring them up to the level of high artistic "lie" that is the film's truth. spun out of a maker with a singular art, such as Shakespeare's. Welles once Welles' talent finally was destroyed view of the truth. Third, he was an asserted that the key to his work was by the unresolved strain between his entertainer par excellence, one of the the word. Where better to turn, then, real and fantasy worlds, by the contrast finest motion picture actors American but to the Bard, whom Welles loved between his vision of decadence and cinema has yet produced. Fourth, he from his childhood. Welles wished to the glitter of his private life. One day made literature accessible on film in a bring words alive for an audience that Welles' crew, filming a documentary in way that preserved the word as the had been force-fed Shakespeare's plays Rio, (Welles was away at the time) saw essence of its art, and still maintained in high school. film form while using it as a medium of His audience could be found sitting Welles established a translation. Last, he was, as everyone in a movie theater, waiting to be enter­ relationship with his audience hears, the man who gave film its vocab­ tained. The trick was to join art and that was intimate and based ulary. What this means is that he entertainment. Thus, his film of Mac­ on his understanding ofthe created a way for film to express its beth starts with a preface to explain the common man. truth in its own voice, freeing it from dynamics of the play, has a Holy Man its origins in other arts. to etch the tension of pagan evil versus a local hero fall out of a boat and be Why, then, is Welles not one ofthe Christianity, and switches lines among devoured by a shark. Worse, six days luminaries of that century which he minor characters. These changes are later the shark was caught with the joyously influenced and simultaneous­ made to promote Shakespeare to a partly digested head and arms of the ly abhorred? The answer lies within his general audience. His Falstaff looses man still in its stomach. Welles had failure to face the oldest leger de main the verse as if it were actual speech or, been on an extended bash at the time, of all, reality. His refusal to fall from to moviegoers, dialogue. His pyrotech­ revelling in his new found fame. He was grace, his need to cling to innocence nic film technique is subordinated to blamed. (This gory episode later in­ and to continuously express shock at words, is used to support words, and forms the overview of his Lady From the world's corruption; these leave still retain the fluidity of the film. Shanghi. There the Irish lug hero lam­ Welles in a rut of his own making. These two films, plus his Othello, bastes his wealthy employers for their These failures also prevent him from achieve something of the Whitman wasteful lives and for .going at each approaching the greatest artistry of his ideal; if not to see the audience as its other like "sharks in a frenzy.") In time, notably Ingmar Bergman and own poem, at least to trust it to be led Welles' vision, nostalgia darkens to Hemingway whose innovations gave us into appreciating someone else's. reality in his depiction of a society fresh language while tackling reality Welles also invented or found a "little which, even among its elite, devours head on. Welles' greatest work was man," a sidekick, in each film in which itself. collaborative, usually drawing on litera­ he acted, whom he loved and abused, The last two decades of Welles' life ture and/or the talents of other cre­ reflecting no doubt his ambivalence were nearly fruitless as far as film ative people, as in the case of Citizen about an audience he both needed and production was concerned. Yet he con­ Kane. On his own, his opus was medi­ thought was too dense to appreciate tinued to use his great talent for in­ ocre and he was content to play his him. forming and manipulating the public, lamented "legend" to the hilt. He used Perhaps Welles' greatest talent is turning handstands to maintain his the legend as an excuse, as another ruse that he was, in many respects, a teacher popularity. Welles kept himself afloat in which, like his broadcast of War of who taught by doing, by performing in via a number of television roles and The Worlds, he first warned his audi­ a new way. It was his knack for reveal­ remained widely known. His reputa­ ence and then went right ahead and ing and re-creating forms, particularly tion, buoyed by the sympathies of deceived them. Perhaps he was cheat­ of film, that put him into the central many of the best artists and critics -­ ing his audiences as he felt life, or nervous system ofthe public. What he tens ofwhom he had worked with over reality, had cheatedhim. did in Kane was to show that art is a lie the years -- kept refreshing itself, but that can either lead us closer to the also led away from his art and to the Joseph Liggera is an Associate Professor of truth than we could otherwise know in man as a personality. Hence the trap English at Bridgewater State College.

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