Junior Orson Wells
Time Network Feature Article Orson Wells, born may 6, 1915 in Wisconsin, USA, died in Los Angeles on October 10, 1985, at the age of 70.
At 18 months, he was judged by psychologists to be a genius; at the age of 6, his parents divorced; at the age of 9, his mother died; at the age of 15, his father died. Before the age of 20, he wrote and directed stage plays, was a successful stage actor and radio announcer, and worked as a wandering painter, thriller writer and matador. He has traveled to many countries in Europe, South America, and Asia (including China).
His life's artistic achievements mainly focused on drama, radio and film, and he was also an actor, director, screenwriter and producer. On the film side, as an actor, he has been involved in more than 100 films (including dubbing); as a screenwriter he has written 42 screenplays; as a director, he has directed nearly 40 films. He has received three lifetime achievement awards, but his contributions to the art of cinema have far outweighed any other.
His life was like a legend, and his films changed history. Grand Director Robert Wise famously said, "Orson Wells is the closest person I have ever met to God." This seemingly absurd claim has been repeatedly confirmed by many film critics and film historians since then. He was a rare filmmaker of great cultural significance in American history, and thus won the respect of the literary masters of Europe and the United States. So far, all the directors and actors engaged in serious film business are afraid to face up to this unprecedented "giant".
Elder Orson Wells
Interestingly, Wells was also a "giant" in appearance, he was 192 centimeters tall and weighed 400 pounds in his later years. In Hollywood, only the tonnage of Marlon Brando can compete with it, and it is called two "human mountains", but in terms of volume alone, Orson Wells must have won - once his entire body was stuck in the saddle and had to be dismantled by a mechanic.
Because of Orson Wells, we are willing to believe that there really is a "cinematic genius" in this world.
<b>Orson Wells's "Three Mountains"</b>
There has never been a talented man in the history of cinema, as troubled as Orson Wells, who has suffered to varying degrees in almost all of his film productions since he shot the epoch-making Citizen Kane at the age of 26. The producers interfered with his work and edited the film in a messy way, saying it was "for the audience to see clearly." After making two films that cost RKO money, in order not to be constrained by the big studios, he wrote scripts and starred in various new films of his peers, earning a salary for shooting his own films. For more than 30 years, he was unable to get out of this situation. According to François Truffaut, "Those who 'directed' him were directors who were less than a tenth of his talent."
The external forces that influenced Orson Wells' film career came mainly from the following three aspects:
Wells entered the era of the film industry, which was the stage when Hollywood went from monopolizing several major production companies to rising together. In the monopoly period, large companies are rich and wealthy, and they will not be preoccupied with the profits of each film, and they will also come up with one or two plays to find "geeks" like Wells to try their luck, and they don't care if they lose. Wells benefited from this environment to make two masterpieces, but unfortunately the good times flew by.
At the age of 22, Wells was the youngest theater producer and director on Broadway
But he always hoped to use his own vision and cultivation to compete with Hollywood, and the result was that although the producers admired his personal talent, they could not give him greater freedom at work. François Truffaut said, "The real tragedy of Wells is that for 30 years he spent so much time dealing with producers of boundless power who would ask him to smoke cigars and would not even give him a hundred feet of film." "In terms of time, David Lane could spend 10 months making Doctor Zhivago, while Wells could only take 5 weeks to make "The Lady of the Dead.""
The second comes from the audience's incomprehension. Later generations often say that Orson Wells was a director who shot films with 22nd-century thinking, but his audience was from the 20th century. So, he couldn't attract more audiences to the cinema to enjoy his films. And without the audience box office will not be good, naturally will not let the producers look at him differently. This leads to a vicious circle.
The other is the "killing" from film critics. Wells, who was not popular in the United States, won the praise of film critics of the "Film Manual" school in France. His representative, André Bazin, argued that Wells was "a Renaissance man in 20th-century America" and an "artist who existed only in the Holy Grail." This high evaluation severed Wells's connection with the general audience, and although he was an active and world-class director whose films were not sophisticated in terms of story content and subject matter, such evaluations and reputation did not help him get funding to shoot another "Citizen Kane".
Wells's favorite novel is Don Quixote, and he himself is a character full of Don Quixote metaphors. He was full of talent, but he was out of place; he challenged the limits of people's perception and acceptance, challenged the system and money, so he was bound to be bruised.
<b>Orson Wells Talent and self-destruction coexist</b>
Scholars and writers from Europe and the United States wrote research and recollections of Orson Wells. Among them, British writer, director and actor Simon Carlo published a blockbuster biography of Orson Wells since 2003, "Hello Americans", and in 2006, the second volume of biography describing his mid-term film career made waves, which specifically studied the cruel process of Wells's "genius self-destruction".
1941-1948 was the 7 years after the release of Citizen Kane, and it was also a turning point in Wells's film career, although these 7 years accounted for only one-tenth of the master's 70 years of life, Carlo spent 452 pages to record it. Simon Carlo believed that the failure of "Abesun" was an important sign of Wells's career decline, and he flatly deduced from historical data and his professional experience that Orson Wells himself should be primarily responsible for the film's failure. Wells did not realize the seriousness of the failure of "Abesun" at that time, and his arrogant personality intensified. Simon Carlo also blames his arrogant character on the self-destructive tendencies of many geniuses.
Judging by Richard Linklater's famous account of Me and Orson Wells, Orson Wells is a talented, self-absorbed, lawless bastard artist. Although the depiction of the film may be biased, the arrogant image of Orson Wells is real.
Wells at the time of the first feature film, Citizen Kane
His overbloated ambitions made him unwilling to bury his head in the studio day after day, like other directors, struggling to edit every shot. He also worked as a radio host, writing columns for newspapers to promote his political ideals to the American people. With the encouragement of President Roosevelt, he even hoped to become president of the United States one day. His desire for control and his unattainable talent became, on the one hand, the foundation of his foothold; on the other hand, it became the foundation of his tragic life.
Simon Carlo also wrote in his biography: Wells later completely relied on the money he earned from acting to make films, but he did as he pleased, shooting when the mood was good, and resting when the mood was bad, a film was often delayed again and again, causing other actors to have to withdraw, so the heroine of his film often mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the film, which made the audience feel both inexplicable and terrifying. And he was also gifted in annoying the studio investors who favored him, and some people said that once Wells lost interest in the film, he would simply walk away, leaving the investors staring at it.
Today, it is no longer possible to produce the Orson Wellsian "genius self-destruct" type of figure. Most of the filmmakers produced by commodity societies are highly efficient and disciplined, with no tendency to self-destruction at all, and they do not have the qualifications of genius at all. And that's why we've repeatedly reviewed orthough Orson Wells and his work.
<b>Orson Wells Looks Back on His Film Career</b>
Orson Wells during the radio era
<b>Panic created by the "prodigy"</b>
Orson Wells was the second son of a wealthy family in Wisconsin, USA, the father of an inventor and a pianist, who died at the age of 15 and 9, respectively. He was able to read at the age of 3, and at the age of 4, he showed his talent for painting and magic, and he was considered a "prodigy" by the people of his hometown. As a child, his father took him on a tour of various countries, including Shanghai in China.
He entered an expensive private school in Illinois at the age of 11, and the principal advocated a special educational environment that gave him extreme freedom and sufficient learning space. When he graduated at the age of 15, he received a scholarship from Harvard University, but instead of choosing to further his education, he traveled to Europe with his parents' small inheritance, starring in dublin's famous Gate Theatre at the age of 16, and later writing books about Shakespeare in London at the age of 18. At the age of 19, he participated in the performance of "Romeo and Juliet" on Broadway.
At the age of 22, he founded the Mercury Theater Company, networking a large number of talents, including excellent actors he can see, many of whom have worked for him for a long time, have deep acting skills and tacit understanding with each other, and become his reliable team. Wells has a rich and gorgeous sound, and has worked as a broadcaster for NBC and Columbia Graduate Company, shuttling between Broadway and Manhattan. From 1935 to 1937, he was paid $2,000 a week for radio, and used it to subsidize the company's expenses and bring his beloved Shakespeare to the stage, including the black version of Macbeth. The troupe adapted many famous works into radio dramas and broadcast them on the radio, which was very popular, such as the modern version of "Caesar".
In 1938, the United States was shrouded in pre-World War II clouds. On Halloween, Wells and the Mercury Theater Company aired the radio drama "Space Wars", (according to the famous writer H. Thompson). An adaptation of G. Wells's science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, the 2005 Spielberg and Tom Cruise film of the same name is based on the book), although it was hinted that "the show is purely fictional" before it began, it did not go unnoticed by the audience. Wells said in a tense and short tone: "Martians have been discovered invading Earth, are landing in New Jersey, and the president has declared a state of emergency in the United States..." Mistaking it for a news report by the audience, causing panic in many cities in the United States, creating a classic moment in the history of American broadcasting. The incident made headlines in all U.S. newspapers the next day, and Wells became a household name overnight.
After the radio drama "Space Wars" aired, at a press conference
<b>A</b> <b>63-page contract</b>
George Schaefer, then chairman of RKO, valued the talented newcomer to the film with radio and theater experience and gave him an irresistible contract. The contract had very attractive terms: Wells had complete creative, artistic control, including the right to decide on the script, the cast, the crew, and even the final editing rights of the film— a power that very few directors could have in Hollywood in the days of the big studios. On August 21, 1939, Wells signed the 63-page contract with Raiden. He and almost the entire Mercury troupe moved from Broadway to Hollywood.
After entering Raiden, although Wells had the right to choose the script, the actors, the behind-the-scenes team, and the final editing, his film had a cost limit, and he was ready to put Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" on the screen, and he was ready to shoot a film with a subjective perspective, but he could not make the trip due to financial problems. Later, the plans for these two films became "Apocalypse Now" and "Corpses on the Lake", respectively. He was accustomed to full control when directing plays and radio plays, but when he arrived in Hollywood, the director had not yet become the master of a film, and his needs were not in line with the needs of investors.
Stills from Citizen Kane, Wells plays the protagonist of three age groups
<b>Citizen Kane</b>
Citizen Kane is wells' third film project to Raiden, and the first to be shot. Although the investment was modest, Wells was given relative freedom of artistic decision-making. He participated in the writing of the screenplay, based on the American newspaper magnate Hearst, and used his own growth experience to depict the complex life of a modern industrial oligarch named Kane. Wells himself as the director and starring, portrayed an artistic image with the depth and boldness of Shakespeare's plays on the screen, and completed an epic biopic that no one has surpassed so far.
The story of the film is not the point, the method of telling the story is the most valuable. The film consists of six flashbacks that have a logical and emotional connection between them. Deep focal photography was used in the glossary of photography, which was borrowed by Werner Herzog in Northfaratu 38 years later. It changed the traditional Hollywood filmmaking model, and in 1941 and many years afterwards, it was a work full of ambition. It is said that Yasujiro Ozu, who had retired from the Japanese army at the time, said after watching the film that "Japan will undoubtedly lose if it wants to fight with a country that can make "Citizen Kane"."
To this day, Citizen Kane is still considered "a great film of any era" by the industry. Wells wasn't so magical, he watched "Guan Shan Fei Du" dozens of times during the filming process, and the deep focus photography and multiple exposures that made Citizen Kane famous were not the first, but all of this was combined with Wells's well-known scheduling techniques and brilliant ideas, making the film a classic.
On May 1, 1941, Citizen Kane premiered in New York
After the release of "Citizen Kane", he was spat on and drafted a statement with the team
The dazzling words "genius" and "master" are destined to be reserved for future generations. Audiences from more than 70 years ago didn't buy these accounts, they were interested in dramatic feature films such as Gone with the Wind. Citizen Kane is too esoteric and too far ahead of their time, and the dizzying language of the film has disoriented them.
The newspaper king is not easy to mess with, and when Hearst learns that the film innuendos himself, he is furious, and he forbids his newspapers to mention anything about Citizen Kane or even Raiden Hua. He also tried to buy copies from George Schaffer and destroy them. Citizen Kane was able to be released to a limited extent after several twists and turns, and was praised by critics in the non-Hearst camp. In terms of the Oscars, although the film received nine nominations in one fell swoop, it only won the Best Original Screenplay award. To no avail, the film cost Lei Dianhua $150,000. Citizen Kane's commercial failure became a lifelong shadow hanging over Wells.
<b>The Abesun Family</b>
In 1942, Wells followed up with another film, "The Abbesons," a portrait of the American chaebol family. Lei Dianhua's investment in this film is greater than that of "Citizen Kane", but it has also strengthened its control over the production process, and they undoubtedly expect the film to recover the losses caused by "Citizen Kane". After the film was made, Wells responded to President Roosevelt's call to go to Brazil to shoot a documentary about the lives of locals, "It's All facts".
Wells during the filming of Abesun
The rough cut of Abbesons was 135 minutes long, which was cut by Robert Wise, the editor at the time and later the director of The Sound of Music. After several poorly responded test screenings, Lei Dianhua's executives cut out 43 minutes in one go, and replaced it with a happy ending, and the cut negatives were subsequently destroyed. This became a famous tragedy in the history of modern art.
According to biographer Simon Carlo, when Wells finished "Abesun Family", he should have stayed in the editing room to complete the editing himself, but he miscalculated the situation and handed over the film to the assistant staff to "remote control" the post-production from Brazil. When Wells learned that the film had been brutally edited, he should heed the urging of his friends and rush back to Hollywood from Brazil to defend his work. But the reality is that due to the unsuccessful filming in Brazil, Wells was depressed, soaking in the taverns in Rio de Janeiro all day and getting drunk, missing the opportunity to save in vain.
Stills from "The Abesun Family"
Although it was changed beyond recognition, "Abesun" is still impressive. French film critic André Bazin praised the film's deep-focus photography and long shots.
In 1939, RKO and Wells signed an agreement for only two films, and Abesons was the second. However, RKO also wanted to recover some costs from him, and weighing it out, Wells made a spy movie called "The Long Night". The film has some elements of genre films, but it is not outstanding. In fact, a large part of the film was directed by Norman Foster.
The commercial fiasco of "Abesun" left Raidenhua with no return, and after that, it closed its doors. Wells terminated his contract, and the person in charge of introducing him to the company was swept out.
<b>And the end of a honeymoon in Hollywood</b>
Perhaps it was the premature patronage of the god of luck that caused Wells's honeymoon with Hollywood to come to an end before it even began. After a series of failures, Wells couldn't get along in Hollywood, and he returned to radio again. Still, he has a place in Hollywood as an actor. In 1943, he starred in the classic Jane Eyre with Joan Fontaine, and in addition to playing the male protagonist Rochester, he also almost single-handedly did the film's art and design work.
Stills from Jane Eyre
At first, the director wanted to shoot in the high moorlands of Yorkshire, England, but Wells thought that the film would be "more effective" in Hollywood, and after showing some renderings, the crew stayed in the United States and set up a set in the studio. Wells designed the architecture and visual effects for Jane Eyre in a distinct gothic style — especially the use of thick fog , adding a "gothic effect" to the film. Not only that, the screenplay for the film is not based on the original novel, but is based on a radio play by the Mercury Theatre Company in Wales.
After the film was made, director Robert Stevenson wanted Wells to sign his name on the producer column, but the half-flame, half-sea genius flatly refused their request, with a simple reason - "If you don't want to be a director, how can you 'make' this movie?" "But by then no one dared to let him direct a film. It wasn't until 1946 that he made an independent thriller, Stranger, which was his only blockbuster as a director.
A famous shot from Miss Shanghai
<b>Miss Shanghai, Macbeth</b>
"Miss Shanghai" starred Wells's wife at the time, Hollywood sexy goddess Rita Hayworth, Columbia obviously valued Hayworth's screen value more, so it added a lot of unreasonable demands to the shooting, and also hid the film for a whole year before it was released. The film also encountered the scissor hand of the studio, cutting from the original 155 minutes to 87 minutes. In the year the film was released, Wells divorced Hayworth. Constantly hurt by these big studios, Wells had the idea of leaving Hollywood. The last film he shot before leaving Hollywood this time was "Macbeth", adapted from Shakespeare's play, but the film was inevitably cut for 20 minutes and also failed at the box office.
Along with Rita Hayworth and his friends, Hayworth is the best-known of his three ex-wives
<b>Othello, The Third Man, Mr. Arcatine</b>
In 1947, Wells, who was unsustainable in Hollywood, left the United States for Europe. Perhaps the main reason for this is that he was considered a communist by the FBI and was investigated, so he was blacklisted by Hollywood. During this time, Wells continued to act in various films, endlessly acting as supporting roles, dragon sets, and narrators, in order to earn a salary for shooting his own films. For the next thirty years, he was unable to escape this situation.
Stills from Othello
Stills from "The Third Man"
Stills from "Mr. Arcadin"
In Italy, he spent three years shooting Othello and starred in four films, the most of which were
The successful character is the mysterious murderer in "The Third Man", although the role is small, but the eyes are deep and seductive, and every appearance is extremely stunning. The line he wrote for the film was also popular — "Although Italy was filled with war, terror, murder and bloodshed during the 30 years of Borgia rule, it gave birth to Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and even the great Renaissance." In contrast, Switzerland, which is full of fraternal fraternity and 500 years of democratic peace, is just a cuckoo clock. ”
In 1955, Wells filmed the ambitious Mr. Arcatine, a suspense film shot in the format of a thriller, psychoanalytic film, filmed in France, Spain, Germany and Italy. The entire film is full of fantastical textures and tones. Wells showed great scene scheduling, cutting, screenwriting and acting skills in the film, becoming his most famous film since Citizen Kane. In the mid-1950s, Wells was stripped of the final editing rights, and There were several different versions of Mr. Arkadin, The most "Borgesian" film in Wells can be seen as a European version of Citizen Kane, but what his intentions were, with wells' death in 1985, became another mystery in the history of cinema.
<b>"The Lady of the Past"</b>
Wells followed in a series of works, mostly based on literary masterpieces. For example, it is adapted from Kafka's "Judgment" and adapted from Shakespeare's "Midnight Bells". In 1956, Wells returned to Hollywood, hosting a number of television and radio shows. This time he spent three years in the United States, the most important of which was the film adaptation of Universal's popular crime novel, "The Adventures of the Past", which slowed his descent from glory.
During the filming of "Lady Of All Time," Wells did everything in his power to get along with the producers. His efforts paid off, and Universal and Wells had even negotiated a five-film contract. However, everything was ruined in the editing stage. By the mid-1950s, Wells had been stripped of the final editing rights. Universal even refused him access to the editing room of "The Lady of the Past", and he had to go to South America to shoot "Don Quixote". Universal once again picked up the scissors and cut wells' ingenuity and the famous long shot at the opening scene, which was opposed by the film's lead actors, but to no avail. Knowing this, Wells wrote a 58-page memo condemning Universal's actions and detailing how the editing was right.
Wells' original film opens with nearly four minutes of footage following a car carrying a bomb from the parking lot to a couple crossing the U.S. border from Mexico, before an explosion rings off camera. The creativity and difficulty of this shot is breathtaking, and all positions and movements are cut together so accurately that some people call it the camera's "aerial dance.".
Stills from "The Lady of the Past"
History is always strikingly similar, and the tragedy of more than a decade ago repeats itself: like the case with Citizen Kane, Americans at the time almost unanimously agreed that "The Lady of the Dead" was an inferior, cheap crime film, and it was The French critics who discovered its value so that it would not be buried. In 1959, Truffaut and Godard's debut films "Four Hundred Blows" and "Exhausted" came out one after another, and both admitted to being influenced by this film. It can be said that "The Lady of the Past" is not only Wells's last "American film", but also the last great work of film noir in the classic period.
After ruining the movie, Universal did not know how to take this 93-minute version of "The Robber Lady" as a good thing, and finally it was hastily released. Over time, after years of revision, a total of 6 versions of the film appeared before and after. Later, in 1998, when fixing "The Adventures", Universal realized his mistake and hired experts such as Janet Lee to edit a 111-minute version according to Wells's memorandum, which is the origin of the "director's cut version" that is now popular. But the version that Wells did himself no one knows what it looked like.
<b>Three times missed with masterpieces</b>
Later in his film career, he stopped working for big studios and was only involved in small investments in film and television, endlessly acting as a supporting cast, dragon set, and narrator. He also became a stand-up celebrity, writing scripts, making documentaries, making commercials, and lecturing. Six years of this period were spent on The Other Side of the Wind, which tells the story of an old director and an old case, but it is not completed in the end.
Although highly unsuccessful commercially, Wells became an icon for a new generation of Hollywood directors, and the up-and-comers gave him great respect. He starred as Brigadier General in Mike Nichols' Catch-22 and met the up-and-coming director Peter Bogdanovich, who has since become the face of Wells, having a lengthy conversation, and the later publication of I Am Orson Wells is the most important way to get to know Wells.
The last completed directorial work "F for Fake" (1973)
In Wells' downbringing years, before Francis Coppola made The Godfather, both he and Paramount considered having Wells play The Godfather Vito. Whether it is posture, age, acting, voice and temperament, Wells is the best choice. However, after many trade-offs, Coppola finally chose Marlon Brando. At the time of filming Apocalypse Now, Wells was also a candidate to play Colonel Coates, and he was replaced by Brando at the last minute. When George Lucas was filming Star Wars, Wells was invited to voice The Black Knight, only this time it was Wells who turned down the opportunity.
In 1983, 68-year-old Orson Wells
In wells' later years, he enjoyed the honor of a master. In 1970, the Venice Film Festival awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1971, the Academy of Motion Picture and Arts Sciences nominated it for an Honorary Academy Award. In 1975, the American Film Institute (AFI) awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award. Wells didn't show up to receive the award, and he really didn't take it seriously. Ten years later, Orson Wells died of a heart attack at his home in Los Angeles, USA, and his body was buried in Spain. Perhaps, America and Hollywood are both his home and his eternal pain.
By the time of his death in 1985, Orson Wells had at least six unfinished films. Among the many posthumous works, "The Other Side of the Wind", starring John Huston, is currently in editing, and it is reported that the film will be released at this year's Cannes Film Festival to celebrate the 100th birthday of the die-hard genius.
<b>Unfulfilled wish as a director</b><b></b>
In the last 10 years of Wells' life, he had given up making films, still due to financial problems. In his film career, there are 19 planned films that have not been made, some of which have been bought by others or changed the directorship, some of which have already written the script, and even more of which have been filmed for some time, or have been in operation for decades, but ultimately have not been completed. Some films, made by other directors, have become classics; others have been edited and made into the works of others; and the last ones have been forever sunk.
<b>Heart of Darkness</b>
In 1940, Wells began to prepare for the filming of Heart of Darkness, and he wrote a large number of texts to plan the filming. In Wells's plan, the film consists of a subjective long shot, and the foresight can be imagined. However, due to financial problems, filming could not start. In 1979, the novel was adapted into Apocalypse Now.
<b>"Monsieur Verdoux"</b>
In 1944, Wells wrote the screenplay for Monsieur Verdun, where he was the director and Chaplin starred. But then Chaplin changed his mind, feeling that he had never played a role in a feature film directed by anyone else, so he later bought the film rights and made it in 1947. On the issue of the authorship of the script, Chaplin only said that "Wells contributed the idea". Wells, for his part, said, "most of the plot was written by me."
<b>Around the World in 80 Days</b>
Wells had produced a stage play for Around the World in 80 Days, after which he began preparing to shoot a film version of the novel. In 1947, he shot some test shots of the film in Morocco. Later, Wells himself abandoned the project. Nine years later, Michael Todd, the producer of the original stage play, made the film, which won him an Oscar.
<b>"It's All Facts"</b>
"It's All Facts" is a documentary film on Wells' trip to South America, and he devoted a lot of effort to this movie. However, after leaving RKO, he never had the opportunity to edit the material he shot and explained. Throughout the 1940s, Wells was actively hoping to get the footage back. RKO claims that these "have been lost.". Fifty years later, in 1993, some of the footage was rediscovered and then edited by the producers into "All Is The Truth: The Unfinished Work of Orson Wells."
<b>Don Quixote</b>
Don Quixote is Wells's favorite novel, and he has been adapting it since the 1950s and has shot it in different parts of South America and Europe. In 1959, Wells finished pre-filming the film and began post-production, but this post-production was not completed for 10 years. In 1970, distraught by various news, Wells resolutely gave up the filming of "Don Quixote" and returned to the United States. In 1992, Wells's assistant and the famous Spanish B-movie director Jesús Franco cut a version based on some of the negatives left by Wells, which was not well received.