Discovering Orson Welles
by Jonathan Rosenbaum
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jonathan RosenbaumEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-05-02
ISBN: 0520251237
Number of pages: 346
Publisher: University of California Press
Book Reviews of Discovering Orson Welles
Book Review: One of the best recent Welles titles, by one of the pre-eminent scholars of the filmmaker's work
Summary: 5 Stars
Former "Chicago Reader" chief film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has dedicated much of his career to an exploration of the work of America's greatest - and most misunderstood - filmmaker, editing the book of interviews "This is Orson Welles", contributing to the most recent re-edit of TOUCH OF EVIL, transalting an Andre Bazin book on Welles into English, etc. He had the fortune to meet the director once himself, as a young critic, in Paris in the early 1970s, and that brief meeting has repercussions and echoes that appear throughout this, his first collection of essays devoted entirely to Welles.
Most of the material gathered here is previously published, though much of it is heavily re-edited and re-worked to form something of a chronological history of Rosenbaum's own relationship to Welles, his work, and other Welles writers and scholars. The earliest piece is a rebuttal to Pauline Kael's "Raising Kane", from 1971; the most recent, an edited transcript of a lecture from 2005. Rosenbaum concentrates, rightly in my mind, on lesser-known and mostly later portions of Welles' career, from unfinished works like THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, DON QUIXOTE and THE DEEP to completed but obscure major creations such as FILMING 'OTHELLO' and THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. He's at his best in his lengthy explorations of such minutiae as the many different version of MR. ARKADIN; and he's not at his best when being occasionally petty in slamming other critics or writers. Then again, the conventional wisdom on Welles as argued over the years by people like Kael and Robert Carringer is that he was a one-hit wonder and a profligate who wasted his talent; if people like Jonathan Rosenbaum occasionally feel the need to get their dander up in indignantly arguing the obvious - that this was a filmmaker of prodigious talent who managed, against all odds, to keep doing great work under the most difficult of circumstance, should we blame them?
Very little of the book is spent on Welles' acting or radio careers - Rosenbaum's focus is on the director, not on his other endeavors (or his personal life for that matter). A reasonably thorough and up-to-date (2007) appendix on the state of Welles' films and their availability closes out this terrific book, essential to the serious Wellesian.
Summary of Discovering Orson Welles
Of the dozens of books written about Orson Welles, most focus on the central enigma of Welles's career: why did someone so extravagantly talented neglect to finish so many projects? Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has long believed that to dwell on this aspect of the Welles canon is to overlook the wealth of information available by studying the unrealized works. Discovering Orson Welles collects Rosenbaum's writings to date on Welles--some thirty-five years of them--and makes an irrefutable case for the seriousness of his work, illuminating both Welles the artist and Welles the man. The book is also a chronicle of Rosenbaum's highly personal writer's journey and his efforts to arrive at the truth. The essays, interviews, and reviews are arranged chronologically and are accompanied by commentary that updates the scholarship. Highlights include Rosenbaum's 1972 interview with Welles about his first Hollywood project, Heart of Darkness; Rosenbaum's rebuttal to Pauline Kael's famous essay "Raising Kane"; detailed essays and comprehensive discussions of Welles's major unfinished work, including two unrealized projects, The Big Brass Ring and The Cradle Will Rock; and an account of Rosenbaum's work as consultant on the 1998 re-editing of Touch of Evil, based on a studio memo by Welles.History & Criticism Books
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