Critics Club 02: Welles

[Neon Ignition]

Second round in the search for the sites most well regarded movie takes us to Orson Welles who directed a number of films, shorts and tv projects upto his death with some releasing even beyond that point.

As last time, which of the above movies directed by Welles do you feel is the best movie?

[Dogg Thang]

Well someone is going to mention Unicron so I might as well get it over with. Also here is my favourite work from Welles...



As for movies, I have seen embarrassingly few of his. I find I'd have to vote for Citizen Kane but the truth is that it's pretty much by default because I'm not sure if I've seen many of the others. I really should rectify that...

[QualityChimp]

As for movies, I have seen embarrassingly few of his.

Now I've seen the list, I've realised I'm in this boat too. I think I need to rectify it because I love what I've seen.

Decades before everybody started gushing over Alfonso Cuar?n's long takes in Gravity (which was all CGI) and Children of Men (which actually has a cut in the middle), Welles was doing a couple of amazing sequences in Touch of Evil.
The most celebrated one was the opening sequence where the camera starts on a tight shot of an unknown man planting a bomb in a car. The camera then leaves the bomber and follows the car and swoops up high on a crane. As it drives, it establishes where the setting is and introduces some of the characters. By this point, the viewer probably hasn't noticed it's one take, because of the focus on if or when the bomb will go off.
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However, probably more important to the film is a second one-take sequence about half an hour into the film. The sequence shows the lead character Vargas looking around the home of the suspected bomber accompanied by Welles' character, Police Chief Quinlan. By using one take, we know that there's nobody else in the house and an empty shoebox that Vargas looks in later has dynamite in it, insinuating that Quinlan planted it.

Apparently, the sequence was shot with the presence of a Universal executive because they were worried that Welles had been rehearsing all day without filming a single second of footage.


There are a lot of similarities between ToE and Psycho, which came two years later. Hitchcock used the same Director of Photography, so it also has a long tracking opening crane shot and similar motifs such as the character lit by a swinging lightbulb, stuffed animals and Janet Leigh being terrorised by a madman in a motel. Would Hitch be as successful without Welles before him?

I definitely think that ToE is a better film as it's tightly-scripted, brilliantly acted and a great story, but I'm voting for Citizen Kane because it's a masterclass in filming and features so many innovative shots that subtly effect the viewer.

• Backlighting to keep the characters anonymous
• strange angles (in the snow globe)
• shadows to hint at foreboding problems
• low camera angles to make the lead taller and a stronger image (Welles dug a hole in the ground for the cameraman to get as low as possible and show the ceiling)
• deep focus so we can see several things happening at once (Kane's mother signing boarding school papers in the foreground whilst he is seen through the window happily playing outside, oblivious he's about to be shipped across the country)
• use of perspective (Kane is stood at the back of the room and seems tiny in comparison to the antagonists in the foreground)
• wide shots (to establish just how far apart Kane and his wife have grown)
• optical effects when deep focus wasn't possible (Kane fires Leland)
• mirrors (as Kane reflects up on his life)

...and so on and so on! You could freeze-frame it at any moment and analyse what Welles is doing to frame his shot and use the camera to do more than just film what's in front of it.

A genuine cinematic genius and a film that deserves to be seen as one of the best films ever made.

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[Neon Ignition]

For this one I'm going to abstain as I think I've seen bits of Citizen Kane and possibly Don Quixote but that's all. Not enough to choose one. Saturday morning though we'll be going much more modern for vote 3

[QualityChimp]

Get watching some Welles!

Start with Touch of Evil.

[Guts]

Shamefully, I think I've only seen Citizen Kane, which I actually watched just a little while ago, so I'd have to vote on it by default like Dogg Thang.

[QualityChimp]

You can watch "Touch of Evil" for free online here:

http://putlocker.bz/watch-touch-of-evil-online-free-putlocker.html

It's black & white and from 1958, so you need to give it some context, but I doubt the likes of Captain America 2, coming out this weekend, will be revered as much as this film in 56 years time!

There's not a single second of CGI in it, it's hard to believe that a mere prosthetic moustache turns Charlton Heston into a Mexican!
With all the gun nut business, it's hard to remember that Heston was a brilliant actor. Welles is great in this too, playing an overweight police chief, who mumbles some of his lines as he sits in the grey area of justice, manipulating the circumstances to his liking.

It's the kind of thing police dramas have been doing for decades since and coming across as if they're fresh ideas.

Myself, I might re-watch this, or try "F for Fake" or "The Trial".