The films of Orson Welles inhabit the spaces of cities—from America's industrializing midland to its noirish borderlands, from Europe's medieval fortresses to its Kafkaesque labyrinths and postwar rubblescapes. His movies take us through dark streets to confront nightmarish struggles for power, the carnivalesque and bizarre, and the shadows and light of human character.
This ambitious new study explores Welles's vision of cities by following recurring themes across his work, including urban transformation, race relations and fascism, the utopian promise of cosmopolitanism, and romantic nostalgia for archaic forms of urban culture. It focuses on the personal and political foundation of Welles's cinematic cities—the way he invents urban spaces on film to serve his dramatic, thematic, and ideological purposes.
The book's critical scope draws on extensive research in international archives and builds on the work of previous scholars. Viewing Welles as a radical filmmaker whose innovative methods were only occasionally compatible with the commercial film industry, this volume examines the filmmaker's original vision for butchered films, such as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and Mr. Arkadin (1955), and considers many projects the filmmaker never completed—an immense "shadow oeuvre" ranging from unfinished and unreleased films to unrealized treatments and screenplays.
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Prelude. A Nuisance in a Factory: Hollywood: 1939–48, 1956–58
- Welles’s U.S.A
- 1. The Decline and Fall of the Lincoln Republic
- 2. An Empire Upon an Empire: Citizen Kane (1941)
- 3. The Darkening Midland: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
- Pan-America
- 4. Darkness and Fear: The Early Anti-fascist Thrillers
- 5. The Raucous Raggle-Taggle Jamboree of the Streets: It’s All True (unfinished, 1942)
- 6. Ratline to Main Street: The Stranger (1946)
- 7. Port to Port: The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
- 8. The Border: Touch of Evil (1958)
- 9. Return to the Periphery: The Other Man (unproduced, 1977)
- Interlude. A Free Man Is Everywhere: Europe & Beyond: 1947–55, 1958–85
- Postwar Europe
- 10. Skies and Rubblescape: Mr. Arkadin/Confidential Report (1955)
- 11. Lost in a Labyrinth: The Trial (1962)
- Immortal Stories
- 12. To Adore the Impossible
- 13. In the Land of Don Quixote
- Index
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