I don’t think anybody actually loves it. Everybody finds it excruciating. Yet, there are plenty of good to great things in it by one of the most talented filmmakers ever (that title, in 2019, isn’t an opinion anymore, it’s a fact).
Like it’s often the case, I find it also easier to spot why a guy is a genius and how he achieved genius results by watching his failed attempts. Because the craft is more visible. The lack of polish makes the essence of his work more discernable. That being said I yet have to find the courage to watch the final hour.
I don't give a damn how "talented" a filmmaker is, or how much of a "genius" he is. I like to watch good movies and I hate to watch bad movies. And most of what Welles made was shit or average. I don't care how much he coulda woulda shoulda done. I care about how much pleasure, as a movie fan, he gives me. And Welles didn't give me much pleasure beyond
Citizen Kane.
(Note: This post is referring to his directed movies. As an actor, he did have some very good performances in other filmmakers' movies.)
I haven't seen his Shakespeare films. But I have seen
The Magnificent Ambersons, and I think it is crap. Not a masterpiece screwed up by the studio, but a movie that is crap and never had any potential to be anything other than crap.
The Lady from Shanghai is excruciating. Yeah yeah, I know all about the famous ending in the house of mirrors. Whoopdy do. The rest of the movie is crap.
The Stranger is decent, as is
F for Fake. The Immortal Story is not good.
Touch of Evil is crap besides the first scene and last scene.
Mr. Arkadin is excruciating. Am I supposed to enjoy an awful movie just because Welles was such a genius that he knew how to turn a camera diagonally when the mere mortal filmmakers were holding it straight?
Maybe Welles had more talent and genius than every other filmmaker who ever lived. Heck, maybe so do I. But I haven't made shit, so I'm no benefit to cinema. Name me Welles and 99 other filmmakers who ever lived, and odds are I'll tell you the other 99 gave me more pleasure than Welles did. Which means they have more value to me as a filmmaker than Welles did.
Movies are about both art and entertainment. We can have endless debates about whether the two are mutually exclusive or identical or the relative importance of each and how much they are intertwined, etc. But without entertainment, a film/filmmaker has no value. And for me, Welles produced minimal entertainment.
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The way people talk about Welles reminds me of Mickey Mantle. Mantle was a very famous baseball player from the 1950's and 1960's. He suffered numerous devastating injuries, so he missed lots of games, and the games in which he did play, he was often hurt. BY the end of his career, it was sad to watch him, he could barely move due to his injuries. So a big part of the Mickey Mantle Story is what could have been.
But injuries or not, Mantle indeed
was one of the greatest baseball players ever! (I won't go into the statistics cuz you Europeans don't know or care about that stuff, but) the fact is that he indeed was one of the all-time greats. Without the injuries, he could have been
even better! Maybe without the injuries he could have been one of the 5 greatest players ever - but even with the injuries he was one of the 10 or 20 greatest ever. So it's ok to talk about what "could have been." Because his output indeed was great.
But Welles's output was crap. When a guy had great output, you can talk about how much greater he could have been. But when a guy's output was shit, I'm sick and tired of hearing about him. Talent and genius and potential don't mean jack. Output is what matters. And any filmmaker who made more than one great movie already has a better output than Welles.
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I enjoyed Netflix's documentary about the making of
The Other Side of the Wind (it's called
They'll Love Me When I'm Dead) far more than I enjoyed
The Other Side of the Wind.
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