Thursday, April 3, 2014

Orson Welles: The One-Man Band

When Orson Welles died in 1985 he left a laundry list of unrealized dreams and incomplete projects which, to name a few, included adaptations of Moby Dick, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear and Don Quixote and also a political satire featuring a Kennedyesque leading figure entitled The Big Brass Ring and Cradle Will Rock, which detailed a famous political staging by his own Mercury Theater. His will bequeathed a warehouse sized treasure trove of much of this footage to his longtime mistress Oja Kodar who, with the director Vassili Silovic, crafted this fascinating love letter to the irascible genius which (of course) winds up being a somewhat depressing tease of what might have been.