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Orson Welles |
The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
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George Orson Welles was born in Wisconsin, USA, on the 6 May, 1915. He was an actor, director, scriptwriter and producer. He became an orphan at the age of 15 , and in 1931 when he was 18, Welles began to work in a theatre in Dublin, Ireland. Soon he moved to New York, where he debuted the following year in Broadway with the Shakespearean play of Romeo and Juliet. After that, he started a theatre company called Mercury Theatre and he obtained a great success.
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In 1938, together with several colleagues of his company, he presented for the radio, an adaptation of a novel by H. G. Wells The war of the worlds. The realism was such that the broadcast caused authentic panic in New Jersey, where many people believed that martians were actually invading the land. This gave him world fame, which led RKO Pictures to hire him in 1939 with full freedom to write and direct.
Later on, Welles convinced the scriptwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz to write a story based on press magnate William Randolph Hearst's life, the proprietor of two important newspapers. Welles directed the movie with the title of Citizen Kane. Hearst tried to prevent the release but the film was premiered in 1941 with great critical success. Welles based the script of his second movie, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) on a novel by Booth Tarkington. The movie showed the life of a North American family at the beginning of the twentieth century. The lady from Shanghai (1948), with its thriller feel, and similar in several aspects to the film Vertigo by Hitchcock (1958) transcended the limits of the gender and of an intricate plot, to become a spider web which catches the audience with a strange fascination. The scene in the gallery of mirrors is especially remembered. Touch of Evil (1958) is his second masterpiece after citizen Kane. In this thriller Welles plays the role of an obese police inspector who uses methods which are doubtfully ethical. The movie travels a dream world which resembles Shakespearean drama.
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Citizen Kane (1941)
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Welles offered a very personal and intense vision of Shakespeare's world in three movies: Macbeth (1948), Othello (1952) and Chimes at Midnight (1966). Among his works as an actor, one should mention The Third Man, a film directed by Carol Reed. Welles died from a heart attack in Los Angeles in 1985. The following year, his ashes were buried in Ronda (Spain).
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