DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Larger Than Life: Orson Welles
A pair of two-part retrospectives on heavy-hitting directors get underway this weekend at the AFI, one a look back at the work of Italian cinema giant Federico Fellini, and the other on Orson Welles. The latter was by far the more prolific of the two, though not for lack of trying. After being heralded as a wunderkind of the stage and the airwaves and achieving unprecedented, unimaginable artistic success with his first stab at filmmaking with the still rightly revered Citizen Kane, Welles’ career never quite fired on all cylinders. This owed largely to the fact that he had the spirit of an independent filmmaker at a time in film history when that didn’t really exist.
In that, he was ahead of his time, as he was in the content and style of much of his work. The shots he developed with Gregg Toland for Kane were nothing short of revolutionary. If one then fast forwards to his final film, F for Fake, it quickly becomes apparent that he perfected the staccato, rapid fire editing that would eventually become associated with much of contemporary television. It’s a shame that studio and investor short-sightedness left so many of his films — even including some that were released — unfinished.
The AFI’s series is a nearly complete collection of Welles’ released feature directorial works, and includes a few well-programmed extras as well. The retrospective begins with two of those right off the bat, first the Richard Linklater historical drama Me & Orson Welles (which we reviewed at the end of last year), the main attraction of which is Christian McKay’s dead-on portrayal of Welles. The documentary One Man Band is also on tap, a fascinating film assembled with the help of Welles’ longtime partner and muse Oja Kodar. It includes clips and perspectives on a number of half-finished projects and homemade films from the director.
View a clip from the Welles documentary, One Man Band.
Starts this weekend at the AFI with screenings of Me and Orson Welles and One Man Band and continues through April 15. See the full schedule for films and showtimes.
