The Eyes of Orson Welles

Dir: Mark Cousins

2018

****

2018 is fast becoming the year of Orson Welles as not only is his long awaited last unfinished film The Other Side of the Wind going to be released, but there are two documentaries focusing on his life and career. The first is by celebrated documentary maker Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom) who focuses his attention on the making and filming of The Other Side of the Wind, which was produced and released by Netflix who also got themselves the rites to Welles’ last film. I have no beef with Netflix, but so much has been thrown at the release of The Other Side of the Wind, that I – one of the many people who crowd-funded the great directors last film restoration – do feel a little cheated. I paid a lot of money for many perks – a copy of the film being the main one – and yet I have received nothing (except five rubbish updates in four years). I was in danger of becoming sick of Orsen Welles before seeing any of the touted films. So thank goodness for Mark Cousins’ The Eyes of Orsen Welles. I am now looking forward to seeing The Other Side of the Wind and Morgan Neville’s You Will Love Me When I’m Dead more than ever. I like Mark Cousins’ films a lot, although I know many find them hard to digest. Cousins is a passionate film maker, always throwing himself into his projects and this film is certainly no exception. It is extremely engaging but very indulgent but his deeply felt love letter to Welles is very easy to flow with. This very open and honest love letter looks at Welles’ huge body of drawings and paintings in particular, examining them, rhapsodising about them, free-associating from them. Welles’ third daughter allowed Cousins access to her father’s archive of painting and drawings, some of which had never been seen before and many of them came as a revelation. Welles painted and drew indefatigably from his teen years and into later life. His paintings are fiercely energetic,  with muscular lines of charcoal, pencil and paint, which were ideas for set design, movie storyboards, sketches of faces, and just visions. Cousins makes a convincing case that his movies were an extension of his unrecognised brilliance as a graphic artist. Cousins talks to Welles as if he knew him and admits that he feels as if he does. The film often feels dreamlike, thanks to the editing of Welles’ drawings and films together mixed with personal film footage and of course Cousins’ soothing and gentle voice. Cousins returns to a photo of Welles that fascinates him: Welles sprawled on a bed, probably in his early 20s, staring into the camera with a frank challenge and those great big soulful eyes. Cousins looks into his eyes and then tries to look through them. Welles’ film clips are chosen well and aren’t at all predictable and there are many comparisons to his sketches, including an intriguing moment when he shows how drawings for a Julius Caesar project show up in his film of Kafka’s The Trial. Cousins also shows us his own video-diary moments of travelling to the places in Welles’s life, showing us their comparative ruin or obliteration by modernity, and speaking to his third daughter Beatrice Welles, who welcomes him into her father’s world. He talks about Welles taking his pencil for a walk and that is exactly what Cousins does with his camera his camera. Cousins’ asks Welles many questions that would seemingly go unanswered, and it works, but then there is a chapter where, thanks to a voice over from an Orson Welles impersonator (Jack Klaff), the great director/writer/sketcher answers in a letter. It avoids some rather obvious subjects and is rather open in its reply, I’m sure it must have needed the approval of Beatrice Welles and other family members so I wouldn’t anything too provocative but I’m not sure the whimsical piece really works or is Wellesian enough. It is a complete contrast to Peter Bogdanovich’s book about Welles, where he wrote about the difficulty and complexity involved in really talking to Welles when he was alive and in a position to answer back. Still, only a cinephile as knowledgeable or as passionate as Mark Cousins could make a film such as this. It’s a somewhat hypnotic love letter to a film-fan’s hero and shows that, as well as having certain faults, Welles was a great film makers and a great artist who was on the right side of history. I just wish more biopics and exposès would be this original and this engaging.