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Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life
by Peter Conrad
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Faber & Faber (2005-01-15)
ISBN: 057121164X
EAN: 9780571211647
Dewey Decimal #: 790
Paperback: 368 pages
Edition: 1st
Release Date: 2004-12-23
SKU: 82008000118
Condition: New
Comments: 057121164X New, never read, may have minor wear on cover.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
A fresh, provocative look at one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of film by "one of our most acute cultural critics" (Paul Fussell)
Orson Welles was a metamorphic man, a magical shape-changer who made up myths about himself and permitted others to add to their store. On different occasions, he likened himself to Christ--mankind's redeemer--and to Lucifer--the rebel angel who brought about the fall. His persona compounded the roles he played--kings, despots, generals, captains of industry, autocratic film directors--and the more or less fictitious exploits with which he regaled other people or which they attributed to him. Hailed in childhood as a genius, he remained mystified by his own promise, unable to understand or control an intellect that he came to think of as a curse; and he ended his days shilling wine and performing magic tricks on talk shows. At times, he saw the collapse of his early ambitions as a tragedy; in other moods, he viewed his life as a humbling comedy, and settled down--like another favorite character, Shakespeare's Falstaff --to eat, drink and be irresponsibly merry.
Rather than producing another conventional biography of Welles, Peter Conrad has set out to investigate the stories Welles told about his life--the myths and secret histories hidden in films both made and unmade, in the books Welles wrote and those he read. The result takes us deep into Welles' imagination, showing how he created, then ultimately destroyed himself.
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Customer Reviews
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Rich And Strange
Rating  (4)
Date: 2005-11-14
2 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
Entertaining glimpse into a big man's many personalities. Conrad's schema is sweet: each chapter takes an established archetype and then shows the many ways in which Orson Welles seemed to try out each role and alter it as he saw fit.
Welles seems corny, as though he actually believed that he was bigger than life, but ultimately Conrad saves Welles from himself and his own delusions of grandeur.
One of the roles is "Everybody." There was a decidedly essentialist streak to Orson Welles, and when he directed Eartha Kitt as Helen in his version of Faustus, she was confounded when he told her his directorial rules, that she was required to play "every woman at every age in every historical time period." Sometimes Conrad plays the game a little too wellm he could cut himself he's so clever, as when he notices that the Mercury Shakespeare Welles edited was originally published as "Everybody's Shakespeare." But even as this example shows, it's telling all the same, and says something about Welles that I had never thought of before, and I don't expect any previous writer on Welles has either.
There's a chapter on "Mercury" (aha, thought of one already!), on "Prospero," on "Quixote," on "Peter Pan," "Kurtz," "Falstaff," and chapters on such vaguer archetypes as the "Lord of Misrule," the "Sacred Beasy," the "Renaissance Man," each chapter packed with dozens of insights and more than your ordinary share of whimsy.
If you're up for making the trip, this could be a valuable book. If not, you might find it too rich, like Jack Horner pulling plum after plum out an impossibly greasy pie.
PS, all the archetypes are very male, I wonder if Conrad considered any female archetypes for surely Welles tried these on too?
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The Whole Career
Rating  (5)
Date: 2005-07-10
4 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I thought this was a very interesting book on Welles. It is not a conventional biography. Peter Conrad covers Welles' career by looking at the various archetypes that Welles played/embodied/wrote about during his career: boy genius, Faust, Falstaff, etc.
It takes a while to get used to the book. Making a judgment after five minutes is a mistake. Once you get into Conrad's groove, leaping from Welles' radio work to stage, to movies in the space of a chapter makes sense. He shows how echoes of "Citizen Kane" recur in later Welles' projects, and how unrealized things like "Heart of Darkness" influenced the projects Welles was able to pull off.
The best thing about the book was that it covered all of Welles' career, instead of saying: "And after RKO took 'Magnificent Ambersons' away, Welles became a big fat loser." Conrad shows there was a consistency and throughlines in Welles' disrupted career.
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What a bunch of junk!
Rating  (1)
Date: 2005-06-02
3 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
I'm a librarian, and I threw this book away after five minutes. Conrad is the kind of author who tries to find some significance in comparing (Welles' made-up term) "pan-focus" with aspects of the god Pan. The book was filled with this sort of unrelenting BS word-play and devoid of any real research or insights. "Despite the System" offers a far better return of time and money for the Welles fan.
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