Bob's Take: Orson Welles’ genius flowered from his earliest work

At age 26, he made what many consider to be the greatest film of all time, “Citizen Kane.”

It failed commercially, since publisher William Randolph Hearst didn’t like the parallels between its story and his life and set his newspapers against it. But every movie Orson Welles made after that was compared unfavorably.

Welles was called a prodigy, a genius, even before the launch of his film career as he logged controversial sensations in the theater (“The Cradle Will Rock”) and on radio (“The War of the Worlds”).

He didn’t live up to his early promise, because he couldn’t work within the studio system and had trouble completing nearly every project he took on. He was a bigger-than-life showman, with all that implies. He wrote, he directed, he starred.

“They don’t review my work,” Welles once said of his critics. “They review me.”

Today, nearly every movie historian and critic agrees Welles is one of the giants of American cinema. That includes Wheeler Winston Dixon, the Ryan professor of film studies and editor of the Quarterly Review of Film and Video at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

“He was emblematic of directors who don’t get the credit they deserve,” Dixon said recently. “He was a stylist and an individualist in a system that encouraged contract directors.” As such, Dixon said, he was an exemplar of auteur theory, along with Alfred Hitchcock.

Auteur theory, which came to flower in the 1950s and 1960s, says the real artist behind the creation of a movie is its director. It should be his vision. And with Welles, when he could scrounge the money and fly in the face of the studio suits, it was.

Starting Friday, Film Streams is launching a seven-film retrospective of Welles’ work. The series is an installment in the nonprofit art-house movie theater’s salute to great directors. While Dixon isn’t a fan of all the films in the series, he encourages movie fans to go.

“The chance to see all these titles on a big screen is the thing that’s a big draw,” he said. “When my students say they saw a movie in streaming video or on TV, I tell them it’s not the same. Projecting a DVD, not the same. These films were not designed for television. They need to be 30 feet by 40 feet.”

Here are Dixon’s assessments of the Welles movies about to play at Film Streams’ Ruth Sokolof Theater, 14th and Mike Fahey (formerly Webster) Streets:

“Citizen Kane,” 1941, Friday through Feb. 25: “It’s like Shakespeare. If you haven’t seen it, you’re not on the planet if you’re really interested in film. His use of camera angles, pioneering lighting techniques, flashbacks within flashbacks — it’s a mosaic that comes into focus only when you have all the pieces.”

“The Magnificent Ambersons,” 1942, Feb. 26-March 4: “Long takes become even longer takes, and there are some incredible dolly shots (the camera tracking on mini-rails). The opening is a spectacular seven-minute tracking shot. Ignore the tacked-on happy ending.” That came from editor Robert Wise, whom the studio forced to recut the film after a disastrous preview screening, chopping out nearly a third of the footage.

“The Stranger,” 1946, Feb. 26-March 4: “Welles’ most workmanlike film, and his least favorite. He did it to prove he could make a film on budget and on schedule, and he did. But there’s nothing personal about that film, it’s typical genre. Pay attention to Welles’ performance.”

“The Lady From Shanghai,” 1947, March 5-11. “An absolutely wild, overcut, explosive film. Scenes pile up in a frenzy. The final sequence of mirrors is a remarkable piece of cinema. This is really delicious, complex film noir.” And it stars his wife at the time, Rita Hayworth.

“The Trial,” 1962, March 5-11. “A really good cast — Jeanne Moreau, Anthony Perkins, Romy Schneider — but he had no money. A really ambitious attempt to film the unfilmable, which is a Kafka nightmare. Spectacular sets, amazing lighting. Done on a shoestring, yet you’re not aware of that when watching it.”

“Touch of Evil,” 1958, March 12-18. “It was the last big American movie he made. He took a bet that he couldn’t make a movie out of the worst script a particular producer had. He rewrote it and shot it. It took all day to rehearse the long opening crane shot, but he got it in one take. A very brutal, cynical, sinister vision of human existence.”

“F for Fake,” 1973, March 12-18. “This is the least of Welles, about people who perpetuate mistakes and frauds. It’s full of optical effects and tricks, and it’s really pasted together. You almost wish it didn’t exist because it’s a patchwork. He was calling in favors from everyone when he made it.”

Each Tuesday during the series, Film Streams will host 4 p.m. screenings free for high school students, with guided post-show discussions that are open to the public as well.

Other Welles-directed films worth catching: “Macbeth,” 1948; “Othello,” 1952; and “Chimes at Midnight,” 1965. Fun Welles performances in “The Long Hot Summer” (1958); “The V.I.P.s” (1963); “A Man for All Seasons” (1966); and, especially, “The Third Man,” 1949.

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