Martin Scorsese’s favourite Orson Welles performance: “Beyond belief”
Getting praise from Martin Scorsese must feel like having every single birthday all at once. And Christmas. And New Year’s. And every other holiday you can think of rolled into one. He features on many a Mount Rushmore of great directors, and even as he charges into his 80s, his work is still turning heads.
One of the many benefits of Scorsese’s long career is that he can provide a set of reference points that few others can. He grew up in the 1940s and ’50s, so his early works were inspired by what he saw at the time. As a result, he is able to speak firsthand about an era that, for many, is merely confined to textbooks.
During an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the icon spoke of his love for actors of that generation. “I simply saw East of Eden over and over again,” he said. “Or On the Waterfront – that’s the acting school I went to. Topped off by Olivier in Richard III or Orson Welles. Welles in Touch of Evil is beyond belief; his enjoyment of expressing himself on screen is so strong you can feel it.”
Welles directed Touch of Evil as his eighth feature film in 1958. He stars as Hank Quinlan, an alcoholic police captain investigating a bomb attack on the US-Mexico border. The filmmaker features opposite Charlton Heston, who appears as a Mexican prosecutor (different time) who comes into conflict with the unstable Quinlan. The cast also includes Janet Leigh, Joseph Calleia, and Marlene Dietrich. Critical reception was mixed at the time of the movie’s release, but it has since undergone a massive re-evaluation and is now regularly cited as one of the greats.
Speaking on his own experiences as an actor, Scorsese admitted he wasn’t all that bothered about being in front of the camera. “It’s very complimentary that friends of mine keep wanting to put me in their films,” he humbly bragged. “I don’t like it, but you learn what it’s like to wait on a set, to be in front of a lens, to hear nothing from the director and the cameraman and see them talking over in the corner. You find yourself looking with expectancy and saying, ‘Was it good? Gee, maybe it wasn’t good.’”
Scorsese has made several cameo appearances in his movies, including Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, The King of Comedy, and Taxi Driver. He even turns up at the end of Killers of the Flower Moon, playing a radio producer narrating a dramatised version of the film’s events. He once played Vincent van Gogh in the Akira Kurosawa anthology Dreams – which is either genius or insane (or both) – and has appeared as himself in everything from Curb Your Enthusiasm and 30 Rock to One Direction: This Is Us. Everyone is in agreement, though, that his best work was obviously as the voice of a puffer fish in the classic DreamWorks animation Shark Tale. Where was his Oscar for that?
Welles passed away in 1985 without having ever worked with the director who admired him so much. Even so, Scorsese continues to carry the torch for the Citizen Kane star, admitting in one interview that he “changed my life” with his revolutionary approach to filmmaking.
