Portrait: Orson Welles

Enough snippets to make it always interesting (especially if you would like to know how Orson Welles makes a salad), although some of the interview questions are pretty weak and the whole thing is fairly unstructured and messy. Welles's criticism of Cahiers du cinéma for looking for things that aren't there (which he says after they apparently criticised his superb CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT for taking cues from Dreyer "and a whole bunch of other movies I haven't seen") seems valid.

Not an ambitious documentary, so for what it is, entirely adequate. I might prefer this sort of study, which feels intimate and contains minor but interesting tidbits, the like of which you don't find in a large-scale biographical project.

Welles' dig against Cahiers was probably well deserved, but they were also instrumental in forcing others to reconsider his mid to late period films after they had been casually dismissed, especially in the Anglosphere. He had an 'ambivalent' relationship with critics and academics of his work, and that, along with Satre's observations regarding his career trajectory, might have provided a sturdier foundation for this 'documentary'. For admirers though, it is not without interest.