The only director who made Orson Welles “believe in his films”
Although he was under no obligation to fawn over his colleagues and contemporaries, the fact Orson Welles was a lot more likely to throw a movie or actor under the bus than sing its praises ensured it meant a great deal more when he did.
The acerbic auteur was famous for his verbose eviscerations of countless industry figures he didn’t care for, placing the great and the good of Hollywood in the firing line. He wasn’t an easy man to impress, and he wasn’t shy in letting it known when he wasn’t.
As the meticulous mastermind behind Citizen Kane, Welles set out an early stall as a perfectionist, something that repeatedly came back to bite him in the arse. He was known for going over-schedule, spending more money than he should, taking a great deal more time than he should, and leaving countless projects either half-completed or unfinished.
That was the mark of a maverick, though, with Welles refusing to put out anything he didn’t view as being entirely reflective of his creative vision. He didn’t think cinema, in general, had a knack for producing top-tier talents, even if there was one major exception to tick every box he was looking for in a master of the art form.
In wide-ranging conversations with Juan Cobos, Miguel Rubio, and JA Pruneda, Welles cast his eye far and wide across the landscape of Tinseltown, and in his estimation, there was only one filmmaker in the entire business who epitomised the magic of cinema to make him completely buy into and believe his work.
“The only director who does not move either his camera or his actors very much, and in whom I believe, is John Ford,” he said. “He succeeds in making me believe in his films even though there is little movement in them.”
From Welles’ perspective, what set him apart is that other directors gave him the impression “they are desperately trying to make art,” something that couldn’t be manufactured. To him, he wanted to see more than that. “They should be making drama and drama should be full of life,” he explained. “The cinema, for me, is essentially a dramatic medium, not a literary one.”
As one of the greatest directors there’s ever been, Ford made populist pictures that appealed to audiences from all walks of life but also contained enough narrative and thematic merit to win over the critics. Welles viewed the industry as devolving into a clear delineation between the two, whereas the master of the western genre and John Wayne’s go-to guy presented the best of both worlds.
Welles was a straight shooter who didn’t mind pissing people off to get the point across, and his adoration of Ford placed him in the very rare company on the Citizen Kane creator’s good side.
