O

ver the last hundred years or so the world of cinema has been illuminated by a myriad of visionary artists who revolutionized the medium by reinventing it from time to time: be it Georges Méliès, D. W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, Charles Chaplin, F. W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Roberto Rossellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Yasujirô Ozu,

, Vittorio De Sica,

,

,

,

,

, Jean-Luc Godard,

, Lars von Trier, or Quentin Tarantino. But, if ever there has been a master of cinema so diverse and versatile in talent and abilities to be truly worthy of being called the consummate artist, it is the great American filmmaker Orson Welles. Prodigiously gifted, Welles was a radio jockey, playwright, theater director, film producer, actor, screenwriter, but most importantly an auteur par-excellence. Welles worked extensively in theater (

), radio (

) and film, and is ubiquitously renowned for his indelible contribution to all the three media.

But, it is his contribution to cinema that remains most notable. During a career that spanned over four decades, Welles produced many groundbreaking masterpieces like Citizen Kane (Welles' controversial debut film, a commercial disaster which is now widely considered as one of the greatest films ever made, for which Welles won his first and only Oscar),

The Lady from Shanghai (a fascinating film noir starring Welles and the ravishing Rita Hayworth, his then wife),

Touch of Evil (an eerie crime thriller in the vein of early Hitchcock films), The Trial (a Kafkaesque extravaganza), Chimes at Midnight (a film adaptation of a play based on William Shakespeare's recurring character Sir John Falstaff), F for Fake (a genre-transcending documentary film underlining Welles' multifaceted genius), etc. One essential attribute of Welles' multifaceted genius that's often overlooked (especially in comparison to his stellar stature as a master filmmaker) by scholars is his acting. Most of his greatest works invariably featured a singular performance from Welles that remained permanently etched in the minds of his viewers. Even in the movies that Welles didn't direct himself, his performances usually stood out. Take, for example, the case of

The Third Man:

Welles' portrayal of Harry Lime in

Carol Reed's 1949 masterpiece

is still considered to be one of the most remarkable cameo performances of all time.





If cinema were to write its own tale of glory then one filmmaker whose name would be engraved in golden letters for having suffered the most in order to make his art see the light of the day would definitely be Orson Welles. Throughout his career, Welles suffered miserably at the hands of supererogatory Production Studios, but he fought till his last breath to keep his works free from commercial sabotage and cheap shenanigans. Welles leveraged upon his ‘The War of the Worlds’ infamy to gain the trust of his studio boss at RKO as he made full use of the carte blanche granted to him for the filming of Citizen Kane, a privilege that Welles would never enjoy again. With every new movie that Welles made, the unsolicited interference of Production Studios became more and more intolerable. His second motion picture, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) was brutally sabotaged to almost half its length by RKO Pictures without him being even apprised. RKO Pictures justified the sabotage as a business decision taken to give the movie a happy ending. Much to Welles’ chagrin, another of his masterpieces, Touch of Evil (1958) was made to suffer a similar fate.