Review by New York Times Review
AS TIME MARCHES ON, it doesn't seem impossible that Orson Welles's legend as the screen's ultimate Sisyphean showman will outlast any particular familiarity with his movies. Interest in his later career has always been unduly dependent on the fact that he's the man who made "Citizen Kane" at the preposterous age of 25, but even "Kane" is apparently a tough sell in film classes nowadays. Once his 1941 debut's status as an unmatched screen achievement is no longer meaningful or vivid to budding cinephiles, they may not feel as compelled as their forebears were to seek out the more idiosyncratic splendors of "The Magnificent Ambersons," "Othello," "Touch of Evil" or "Chimes at Midnight." Yet as all Wellesians know, those remarkable movies are no mere appendages to his youthful masterpiece. Starring Welles as Falstaff in a startlingly mossfree amalgam of Shakespeare's "Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2," "Henry V" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor," the last of them is increasingly reckoned by his cultists as superior to "Kane" itself. It may also be the only film derived from Shakespeare to resonate primarily as an emotional autobiography. The final full-scale feature film he managed to complete in his lifetime, "Chimes at Midnight" is the climactic event of "Orson Welles: One-Man Band," the third installment of Simon Callow's supremely intelligent life of Welles. Callow is giving Robert A. Caro a run for his money, as his original two-volume plan has expanded to a projected four. Published in 1996, "The Road to Xanadu" took Welles from birth to "Kane's" premiere. Ten years later, "Hello Americans" covered the chaotic years he spent fencing with studio moguls, mounting a stage extravaganza that nearly ruined him ("Around the World in 80 Days"), and promoting himself as a political commentator until he and Hollywood more or less gave up on each other in 1948. In the new book's preface, Callow puckishly notes that friends commiserated with him over the "terrible decline" in Welles's fortunes he'd be depressingly obliged to record from then on. But he doesn't agree, and he's right to suspect that the conventional career Welles botched might have turned him into "just ... another filmmaker." Instead, once Welles relocated to Europe and embarked on his fantastically improvised course of acting in claptrap to help finance movies he shot in bits and patches ("Othello" took him four years), meanwhile experimenting industriously in other media and turning his superb personality into a brand as no movie director before or after him has, he became utterly unique. Even as America (in the person of The Herald Tribune's Walter Kerr) was dismissing him as "possibly the youngest living has-been," European critics had begun lionizing him as a thwarted genius. That became the conventional wisdom once their stateside epigones took up the cry. In 1949, he also played his most indelible role in a movie he didn't direct: Harry Lime in Carol Reed's "The Third Man." That part somehow got assimilated into his autobiography well, not least because the film itself looked quasi-Wellesian enough for him to seem like its uncredited auteur. A bit of doggerel he wrote for a "Faust" pastiche he staged in 1950 sums up how his career's real unifying principle and focus of interest became the drama of Welles conjuring art however he could: "All that you see/Is all about me." Callow is circumspect about Welles's private life, including the all too public "battle for his waistline" he lost for good at age 45 or so - something whose psychological effect can't have been trivial for a man so handsome in his youth. But no previous biographer has so expertly and convincingly analyzed Welles the creative dynamo, from his ebullient love of what Callow calls "Higher Hokum" to the depths of rue in his recurring themes of loss and betrayal. This Welles isn't the tragic martyr - permanently nailed to a celluloid cross - his devotees once saw him as. But he isn't the self-destructive dilettante his legend's detractors claim, either. Considering how often this period of Welles's life has been portrayed as one frustration or defeat after another, the fecundity of what he did achieve is astonishing. One sideline Callow explores at length is Welles's prescient understanding of television as more than "imitation movies," but a distinctive new medium with a special gift of intimacy. (Among his other 1950s forays into TV, which are too little seen even today, "The Fountain of Youth" - commissioned by, of all people, Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball - is a witty gem.) Callow is also particularly good at reconstructing Welles's fabled 1955 London stage production of "Moby-Dick," which he himself judged as his best work in any medium. The movies he titanically struggled to make all along included a couple of misfires. I'm no great fan of "Mr. Arkadin," from 1955, or his 1962 adaptation of Kafka's "The Trial." But his arduously cobbled-together "Othello" is a thorny, dynamic visual marvel, and both "Touch of Evil" - his one return to American filmmaking - and "Chimes at Midnight" are as good as movie directing gets. "Chimes" was also the capstone of his long rivalry with Laurence Olivier in interpreting Shakespeare for modern audiences, and though Olivier easily outpointed him onstage - Welles's New York "King Lear" in 1956 was a costly flop - their duel on movie screens was a different story. However widely acclaimed at the time, Olivier's Shakespeare films look awfully square today. But Welles's much more adventurous ones still teem with emotion and life. "ONE-MAN BAND" MAKES the whole saga so vibrant that treating "Citizen Kane" as the best reason to be interested in Welles comes to seem almost as absurd as only feeling curious about "Ulysses" because it was written by the author of "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." But studies of "Kane" remain an industry in their own right, and Harlan Lebo's "Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker's Journey" - timed to mark the movie's 75th anniversary - is probably the most thorough account yet of the genesis, production and release of Welles's most famous film. It's hardly Lebo's fault that venerating "Kane" as guilelessly as he does can't help seeming quaint up against Callow's rich chronicle of its energetic aftermath. Though a lot of the material here will be familiar to Welles buffs - the key collaboration with the cinematographer Gregg Toland, the vexed question of whether Welles or his co-scenarist, Herman J. Mankiewicz, deserves more credit for the script, and so on - it's never been presented this comprehensively. Lebo is especially good at recounting the maneuvers to suppress the film once word got around that it was based on the life of William Randolph Hearst and Hearst's minions wheeled into action. Unfortunately, he's not the most sparkling writer - how can he have spent a quarter-century studying this movie without any of its wit rubbing off? - and he's often unable to distinguish substance from trivia, right down to a six-page list of uncredited bit players and extras that may split the difference between obsessiveness and padding. Lebo's book is useful, and certainly the one I'll reach for whenever I want to look up a half-remembered detail about "Kane." I don't know how often that will happen, however, since my admiration for the movie - despite being undimmed - doesn't provide me with much in the way of fresh stimulus. That's not the case with Welles's other films, and "One-Man Band" is an exhilarating reminder that his true greatness began once he'd put "Kane's" virtuoso precocity behind him. TOM CARSON, a freelance critic, is the author of the novels "Gilligan's Wake" and "Daisy Buchanan's Daughter."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 5, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
When Welles arrived in Hollywood in 1940, his work on stage and radio had already earned him a reputation as a genius, but at 24, he lacked experience making movies. So when RKO awarded him a contract with unparalleled creative control and the unprecedented right to the final cut, everyone predicted a spectacular failure. Of course, Welles proved them all wrong, and 75 years after its release, Citizen Kane is still recognized as a masterpiece. But there was a time when the fate of the film was in doubt. Film-scholar Lebo has conducted painstaking research, combing through voluminous interviews as well as production reports, memos, budgets, drafts of the script, news accounts, and critiques. In great detail, he recounts Welles' collaboration with noted scriptwriter Herman Mackiewicz; the great cinematographer Gregg Toland, whose technical breakthroughs gave the film much of it visual interest; and the excellent cast of first-time film actors. Lebo also reveals how gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, along with the William Randolph Hearst organization, attempted to thwart Citizen Kane's distribution but couldn't prevent rave reviews.--Segedin, Ben Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Lebo pays tribute to Orson Welles's masterpiece Citizen Kane in this history of the film's production and release, published just in time for its 75th anniversary. The book honors Welles's filmmaking genius, but it also goes notably in-depth on Welles's principal collaborators. Lebo's detailed examination takes listeners from Welles's success on the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast to the nuances of the Kane's production to its complicated release, impaired by publisher William Randolph Hearst, who tried to prevent the film from coming out when he saw too much of himself in the morally shaky title character. Reader Zingarelli's deep and projective voice is reminiscent of Orson Welles, which makes him a fun choice to read the audio edition. When the text quotes primary sources, he creates distinct voices that do not attempt to imitate the original speakers but are distinguished enough to guide the listener. His energetic pacing keeps Lebo's prose lively-there is never a dull moment. A St. Martin's/Dunne hardcover. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Hot on the heels of Orson Welles's centenary in 2015, we have the 75th anniversary of Citizen Kane. Numerous accounts have been published about what many consider the greatest film ever made, but the last comprehensive book devoted specifically to the film's creation was James Naremore's Orson Welles's Citizen Kane: A Casebook. In this, Lebo's second book on the film (after Citizen Kane: The Fiftieth Anniversary Album), the author gives as full a view of Kane and its origins as has ever been written. With access to "previously unpublished material," he begins with Welles's arrival in Hollywood, moves through every stage of production-featuring all of the key collaborators, of which there were many-and concludes with the eventual yet belated recognition of the production's greatness in the 1950s and its now -established place in film history. Aside from this thorough study, it's Lobe's engaging writing style that is the chief feature of this volume. VERDICT Devotees of Welles or Citizen Kane will love this work, and all libraries should have it on their shelves.-Peter Thornell, Hingham P.L., MA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
