6 nov 09 3 dec 09 3 cinemas cafe bar - Filmhouse Cinema Edinburgh

10 O for Orson (continued)
THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI
CONFIDENTIAL REPORT
TOUCH OF EVIL
F FOR FAKE
The Lady From Shanghai
Sat 21 & Sun 22 Nov at 6.30pm
Orson Welles • USA 1947 • 1h31m • 35mm • PG
Cast: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders.
Don’t attempt to follow the plot too closely (studio boss
Harry Cohn offered a reward to anyone who could explain
it to him), just revel in Welles’ tongue-in-cheek approach to
storytelling. Welles plays an Irish sailor who accompanies
a beautiful woman (Hayworth, then Mrs Welles) and her
husband on a sea cruise, and becomes a pawn in a game
of murder. One intriguing reading of the movie is that it’s
a commentary on Welles’ marriage to Hayworth – the
impossibility of the ‘boy genius’ maintaining a relationship
with a mature woman – and the scene in the hall of mirrors,
where the temptress’ face is endlessly reflected back at
him, stands as a brilliant expressionist metaphor for sexual
unease and its accompanying loss of identity. Complex,
courageous, and utterly compelling.
Macbeth
Mon 23 Nov at 6.00pm & Thu 26 Nov at 8.30pm
Orson Welles • USA 1948 • 1h47m • 35mm • PG
Cast: Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O’Herlihy, Roddy
McDowall, Edgar Barrier.
Unlike so many adaptations of the Bard, Welles’ Macbeth
is pure cinema: moodily magnificent photography by
John L Russell reinforces the sense of a nightmarish world
before time, where primitive emotions hold sway with
absolute, compelling simplicity. Adventurous filmmaking
that takes risks, and is full of imaginative flourishes.
Print courtesy of the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Preservation Funded by the Film Foundation.
Confidential Report aka Mr Arkadin
Wed 25 Nov at 3.15pm + 6.15pm &
Sun 29 Nov at 6.15pm
Orson Welles • France/Spain/Switzerland 1955 • 1h42m • Beta SP • PG
Cast: Orson Welles, Robert Arden, Michael Redgrave, Patricia Medina.
Welles’ flawed but fascinating noir, in which he also stars,
centres on young smuggler Guy (Robert Arden) who,
fresh out of jail, finds himself working for the mysterious
Arkadin (Welles), an amnesiac who wants him to find out
everything he can about his past life. However, when all
those associated with the man begin dying in mysterious
circumstances, Guy begins to question the true purpose
of his task... Of the thirteen finished, released films that
Orson Welles directed, only two were written directly for
the screen and not based on other material, Citizen Kane
and Confidential Report. Many critics have noticed the
connection between the two: a flashback structure, a third
party snooping around in the past life of a great figure.
But the two are markedly different: Confidential Report is
pulpier and more deliberately flashy, and technically less
brilliant. Nonetheless it’s still completely and utterly an
Orson Welles film, with his unique fingerprints all over it.
Touch of Evil
Fri 4 Dec at 8.45pm & Sat 5 Dec at 5.45pm
Orson Welles • USA 1958 • 1h51m • 35mm • 12
Cast: Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich.
Self-righteous Mexican narcotics cop Vargas (Charlton
Heston) hits the border hell-hole of Los Robles, and goes
up against Welles’ local colossus of law enforcement,
Hank Quinlan – a cop who won’t stop short of fabricating
evidence to back up his (invariably correct) intuition.
Morally ambiguous, flawed, and quite, quite brilliant.
The Trial
Sat 5 Dec at 8.45pm & Sun 6 Dec at 5.45pm
Orson Welles • France/Italy/West Germany/Yugoslavia 1962
1h58m • 35mm • PG
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Orson Welles.
The blackest of Welles’ comedies, an apocalyptic version
of Kafka that renders the grisly farce of K’s labyrinthine
entrapment in the mechanisms of guilt and responsibility as
the most fragmented of expressionist films noirs. Perkins’
twitchy ‘defendant’ shifts haplessly through the discrete
dark spaces of Welles’ ad hoc locations (Zagreb and Paris,
including the deserted Gare d’Orsay), taking no comfort
from Welles’ fable-spinning Advocate, before contriving the
most damning of all responses to the chaos around him.
F for Fake
Tue 8 & Thu 10 Dec at 6.15pm
Orson Welles • France/Iran/West Germany 1973 • 1h29m
35mm • PG
Part essay, part prank, and one of the most inventive and
invigorating non-fiction features ever made. At its heart are
two of the world’s great fakers – Elmyr De Hory, a man who
could dash off a Picasso in the time it takes to finish a cup
of tea, and Clifford Irving, the crime author who claimed
he’d been hired to write the biography of Howard Hughes.
Rather than looking down his nose at the forgers, Welles
dares to wonder whether what they do isn’t itself a form
of art. He also contemplates the less noble moments of his
career – principally the infamous ‘War Of The Worlds’ radio
broadcast. As cheerfully subversive as Welles’ film is, it’s not
a glib statement for the sake of irony itself, but a personal
meditation on the nature of art and art’s audience, and the
capricious nature of fame and fortune. Simply dazzling.