‘Heart of Darkness’: the Orson Welles movie that never happened
One of cinema’s most brilliant and innovative minds making their final performance as a planet-eating alien robot in an animated movie isn’t how any esteemed performer would envision themselves bowing out. However, it also stands as a testament to the singular mystique of Orson Welles.
The most mercurial of rises began in staggering fashion, with Citizen Kane marking his feature-length debut as an actor, never mind a writer, director, and producer. From there, Welles would rack up a string of classics from either side of the camera, including The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, The Third Man, Chimes at Midnight, and A Man for All Seasons, but his later career paled in comparison.
The last role he ever played before his demise was that of Unicron in The Transformers: The Movie, although the 1987 comedy Someone to Love was his final release. It arrived in cinemas two years after Welles’ death at the age of 70 in 1985, even if it was filmed before he lent his vocal talents to a robot in disguise.
Throughout his career, Welles would toy with the idea of taking on a multitude of projects that never ended up happening. Even some of the ones he did make were heavily compromised, re-edited, and, in the case of The Other Side of the Wind, not released until decades after his passing.
No stranger to butting heads with studio executives whenever their opinion of how his productions were different from his own, one scrapped Welles film, in particular, could have realistically altered the course of cinematic history. Unfortunately, it never saw the light of day.
His very first narrative feature in any capacity may have become an indelible example of the medium and one of the most celebrated movies ever committed to celluloid. However, Welles never planned to have Citizen Kane serve as his maiden foray into the industry. Instead, he’d envisioned an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as the perfect way to make his mark.
Already displaying a habit of deviating from the established norms, Welles intended to shoot the entire thing from the perspective and point of view of narrator Charles Marlow, a role he would inhabit himself. The only times his face would appear on-screen would occur when his visage was captured in a window while his boat sailed downriver, but budgetary issues arose in what would end up a recurring theme of his career.
Enlisting research assistants to craft not just a faithful adaptation but a searing indictment on the rising threat of fascism, Welles and his team spent months poring over every detail of the screenplay before the costs ultimately proved too prohibitive for studio RKO Pictures. Location scouts, set designers, and effects teams were tasked to figure out a way of realising his ambitious vision, with test footage being shot ahead of the Heart of Darkness production.
When RKO discovered how much it was going to hit them in the pocket, the company decided against the prospect entirely, leaving Welles to settle on something else as his first feature. Of course, that turned out to be Citizen Kane in a situation that worked out in the best interests of both parties, but it’s fascinating to imagine how the trajectory of Hollywood could have turned out were he to debut with Heart of Darkness instead.
