Orson Welles (Cinema one, 19) - Softcover

McBride, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0436099276 ISBN 13: 9780436099274

Publisher: Secker and Warburg [for] the British Film Institute, 1972

Synopsis

Orson Welles (1915–1985) revolutionized the art of filmmaking with his first feature, Citizen Kane, made when he was only twenty-five. This landmark study challenges the conventional wisdom that regards Welles's subsequent career as a long decline from that early peak, demonstrating that Welles continued to create audacious, profoundly moving, and richly varied films throughout his tumultuous life. Tracing Welles's development from his playful beginnings as an amateur filmmaker in the early 1930s to his masterly artistic summation in such late works as Chimes at Midnight, The Immortal Story, and F for Fake, the book brilliantly synthesizes Welles's wide-ranging body of work into a thematic whole while providing in-depth analyses of the films he directed.Joseph McBride's passion for Welles's work and his groundbreaking scholarship made the first edition of Orson Welles a landmark study and a major influence on subsequent Welles critics and biographers. Out of print for almost two decades, Orson Welles has now been revised and expanded, with new sections on important films and restored versions that have come to light since the book's original publication in 1972, along with an introductory essay and an extended portrait of Welles at work on the still-unreleased Hollywood satire The Other Side of the Wind (in which the author played an important role). The whole adds up to a work of film criticism that will stand as a model of the genre.

About this title

Review

An excellent introduction to Orson Welles's career and accomplishments. Newly revised by author Joseph McBride, Orson Welles now features essays on F for Fake, Welles's last theatrical film; the recently reconstructed It's All True; the still unreleased The Other Side of the Wind (which Welles completed in the late '70s and in which McBride acted); and the seldom seen television pilot The Fountain of Youth. In addition, McBride has updated his chapters on The Magnificent Ambersons, The Stranger, and Macbeth. But, as the author states in his new preface, the core of this volume is still the work written in 1972 by a young enthusiast, a Welles fanatic who viewed Citizen Kane scores of times before composing the essay that would became the book's third chapter. --Raphael Shargel

About the Author

Joseph McBrides's many books include John Ford (with Michael Wilmington) and Orson Welles, Hawks on Hawks, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, and The Book of Movie Lists. His film scripts include the cult classic Rock146 n146 Roll High School and five American Film Institute Life Achievement Award television specials. He lives in Los Angeles.

About this edition

• Publisher: Secker and Warburg [for] the British Film Institute
• Publication date: 1972
• ISBN 10: 0436099276
• ISBN 13: 9780436099274
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192