The movies Orson Welles hated but was glad they existed: “It doesn’t matter that I don’t like them”
There’s a lot to be said for a filmmaker who can appreciate the importance of a movie without actively enjoying it, especially when the praise comes from an auteur as opinionated as Orson Welles.
Once the shine had worn off his own career and he was no longer known as the wunderkind behind Citizen Kane, Welles ended up becoming locked in a decades-long power struggle with the industry. His debut feature was proof enough that he could deliver staggering work with unlimited creative freedom, but few were willing to bow to his desire for complete control.
As a result, the bulk of his career reeks of missed opportunities, with Welles developing a number of exciting projects that never saw the light of day. By his twilight years, he was slumming it with thankless cameos and cash-grab voice roles, an alarming fall from grace for a talent who promised so much.
That being said, Welles was so gifted that he’s undoubtedly one of the most influential and important auteurs in the history of American cinema, but it stands to reason he could have had that plinth all to himself if he didn’t keep getting in his own way, or aggrieve so many people in the corridors of power.
Still, in the early 1960s, he was more than capable of showcasing flashes of old brilliance, even if his Franz Kafka adaptation The Trial initially bombed at the box office. The atmosphere, tension, pacing, and cinematography are all extraordinary, but it was a risky investment that backfired when the expensive production failed to recoup its budget from the big screen.
Welles at least appreciated how large-scale pictures were still being made, which placed authorship and auteurism at the forefront of a mass audience, even if he didn’t personally care for some of the films that ticked those boxes.
“I mean, there are all sorts of difficult subjects being made into mainstream pictures nowadays, and they are doing well,” he told the BBC. “People are going to see them. Hiroshima mon amour and Last Year at Marienbad. I mean, I don’t like them, but I’m so glad that they were made. It doesn’t matter that I don’t like them.”
The ‘French New Wave’ favourites were helmed by Alain Resnais in 1959 and 1961, respectively, establishing the director as one of his nation’s freshest and most vibrant new filmic voices. Each was an important moment in French, international, and world cinema, which Welles understood despite his less than enthusiastic appraisal.
“Resnais would probably hate The Trial,” he offered in defence. “But what matters is that a difficult, and on the face of it experimental, film got made and is being shown and is competing commercially. In other words, what is dying is the purely commercial film. At least, that is the great hope.”
Of course, Welles couldn’t have been more wrong about the demise of crass commercialism, which he probably realised long before he voiced a planet-eating robot in an animated Transformers flick.
