The filmmaker Orson Welles called “the best director in the history of the cinema”
When we talk about the greatest filmmakers in the history of the medium, one name that regularly gets thrown into the mix is Orson Welles. While many still consider him to be in the pantheon of cinematic titans, the American auteur had his own set of idols who inspired him to conduct his unforgettable experiments behind the camera.
It’s not just his abilities as a director but also his unique trajectory that makes Welles’ story so unique, especially because most artists cannot even imagine having a masterpiece like Citizen Kane in their oeuvres, and that was Welles’ debut feature. Even though that is still hailed as the pinnacle of 20th-century cinema by many, the American auteur just kept on evolving.
His exciting approach to filmmaking with a highly subjective camera not only revitalised American cinema but inspired directors everywhere, including those like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, who later led the French New Wave movement. Interestingly, Welles also looked to French cinema for poetic inspiration while working on his own projects.
In a fascinating interview, the Citizen Kane director opened up about the directors he considers to be the true poets of the medium. According to Welles, the technical brilliance of a film production will always be secondary to its poetic achievements.
“It is important to recall that art surpasses reality,” Welles explained. “Film becomes another reality. Apropos, I admire Renoir’s work very much, even though mine doesn’t please him at all. We are good friends and, truthfully, one of the things I regret is that he doesn’t like his films for the same reason I do. His films appear marvellous to me because what I admire most in an auteur is authentic sensitivity… the cinema, the true cinema, is a poetic expression, and Renoir is one of the rare poets. Like Ford, it is in his style.”
Despite citing the works of Jean Renoir and John Ford as two major influences who shaped his way of conceptualising the cinematic image, there’s one figure who towered above the rest, at least in Welles’ opinion. That was none other than D.W. Griffith.
When asked about his absolute favourites, he responded: “Always the same ones; I believe that on this point, I am not very original. The one who pleases me most of all is Griffith. I think he is the best director in the history of the cinema. The best, much better than Eisenstein. And, for all that, I admire Eisenstein very much.”
Of course, for modern audiences, Griffith has become inextricably linked to the undeniable racist legacy of The Birth of a Nation. However, the technical genius of his projects has also been lauded by the likes of Welles and his contemporaries, especially when it comes to opuses such as Intolerance.
