Thecentennial of Orson Welles’ birth has produced many tributes to the theatricalgenius who reinvented cinema with Citizen Kane. Welles might agree that a goodfilm would be the best way to honor his contributions.
Neverless than fascinating, the new documentary Magician: The Astonishing Life &Work of Orson Welles (out on Blu-ray and DVD) is one of the best tributesWelles will receive this year. Director Chuck Workman summarizes his life andtitanic aesthetic struggles with insight. Workman also knows who to talk to,interviewing a cast of knowledgeable authorities, including director-historianPeter Bogdanovich, film historian Joseph McBride, director William Friedkin andWelles’ biographer Simon Callow. Richard Linklater cites Welles as the fatherof indie filmmaking. George Lucas adds that he was “definitely way ahead of allthe rest of us.
Welleswas born in Kenosha, but if the Midwest was formative, the most important placevisited by Magician is Woodstock, Illinois. Welles attended a progressiveboarding school in Woodstock where he made his directorial debut stagingstudent productions of Shakespeare. He was a child prodigy, a 20thcentury Mozart for his youthful facility with everything he touched. By age 20he was a bright light in New York theater, mounting an African-AmericanMacbeth; he went on to radio drama, panicking listeners at age 23 with hisbroadcast of War of the Worlds. He was 25 when he directed Citizen Kane, whichshifted the direction of cinema and remains one of the greatest films evermade.
Magiciangathers together some exceptional archival material, including filmed segmentsof Macbeth, a surreal short film he made as a lark as a teenager and intriguingglimpses from the several movies he left unfinished at his death in 1985. Thegreatest source of material is Welles himself, who seems to have never turneddown an interview and was a genial fixture on daytime talk shows in the ‘70s.
