2018 is something of a watershed year for Orson Welles, as most all of the facets of his work have been thrown in relief.
As a writer, the typed manuscript to the English version of his novel VIP has been rediscovered: it was misfiled as a 'film treatment' in the Turin film Museo Nationale del Cinema. The misfile is understandable, since what the book actually is (a novel? a novelization? a treatement?) remains an open question. Maurice Bessy's 1953 French translation is presented as just that: a direct translation of Welles' original text.
While following up on the find by the museum's curators, Matthew Asprey Gear, the scholar who found the novel, also dug up a number of other goodies: an incomplete play, two finished scripts to films that were never produced as well as subsequent drafts to the film Treasure Island. Matthew Gear reported his findings for both VIP and the screenplays on the wellesnet website. As with much of Welles' work, who actually holds the rights to these manuscripts is uncertain, so it will take a while before they see the light of day.
As an artist, Welles is the subject of a documentary directed by Marc Cousins and executive-produced by Michael Moore, The Eyes of Orson Welles. The distributor's official trailer
offers a tantalizing glimpse of Welles' work as painter, graphic
artist and set designer. The film was also the impetus for a
retrospective of his works at the Summerhall Gallery in Scotland.
Finally, this year saw the completion and release of his fabled last film, The Other Side of the Wind. Welles began shooting the film upon his return to Hollywood in 1971, but it took him nearly five years to complete principal photography. The film, like many other projects was never completed. There are financial and political reasons for this, but it might be safe to say that it was an idea that daunted even the Master himself, as it was shot in a variety of stocks and gages, from Super-8 to 35mm. There are 2 or 3 final post-production shots that Welles had not done either, but that's a detail. Practically speaking, splicing various film gauges required blowing up the diverse stocks, a complicated and expensive task before computers revolutionized editing. In the companion 'making-of' film, A Final Cut for Orson Welles, editor Bob Murawski noted that if Welles had had acces to an Avid computer program, he would have had all his footage at his fingertips and would have easily been able to complete the film. Avids, however, became available only in the late 1980's.
People tend to ask out loud if this is the film Welles would have wanted to see, but considering that he has been dead for over thirty years (and is probably beyond caring), the question is somewhat moot. What is interesting is that everyone involved at least tried to respect Welles' project, which is saying that this is more of a Welles film than are The Magnificent Ambersons or The Lady from Shanghai, for example. The first was trashed by a bunch of vindicative baboons while the second was seriously (albeit intellegently) rethought by Harry Cohn at Columbia. Yet no one would question Welles' guiding personality over those two pictures.
Whether these new arrivals are worthwhile or not is another question. Marc Cousin's film has yet to be released in France, and it will take a while for the manuscripts to be published (if ever). But Welles still seems to have quite a future ahead of him. There are, after all, at least four films that are close enough to completion to be released as features. The only aspect of his career which wasn't highlighted this year was his work in radio.
