Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part13

JM (Jeanne Moreau)
...there was no chair. And what did I see? Orson's make-up kit, hidden. I said, "Look!" So I jumped around and said, "Don't say it! It's been hidden for days!" So in fact, as an actor he had stage-fright, and he was hiding himself and he said that he didn't have his make-up. So finally after 2 hours of shooting I said, "You know Orson, I've discovered everything. I know where the make-up is." He said, "You! So what I'm going to do, you know it takes 2 hours to do my make up!" I said, "We got times. Why don't you do it, the first scene the two of us?" It's the famous scene where Doll Tearsheet was jumping on top of Falstaff. So finally we get to that scene. And we rehearse. But it was not on the couch, was somebody else's. And finally we said, "Shoot!" And I jumped on him and he was squeezed and said, "You've hit hit my nose! Cut! We can't do it today!"

v.o.
Welles played against the traditional Falstaff, the lying drunken clown. He's created a character who's flawed and over indulgent, but also intelligent and humane. And his final rejection becomes more interesting because of it.

(Chimes at Midnight's playing)

OW
Falstaff I think is the most unusual figure in fiction. He is almost entirely a good man. He is gloriously life-affirming good man. And there are very few gigantic silhouette on the horizon of fiction were good. They are always flawed, always interesting because of their what is wrong with them. And Falstaff is, I don't... somebody once said that Falstaff was Hamlet who stayed in England and got fat, which is amusing to think of. But I don't think it's true because Hamlet is not a good man. There's hardly a good man in dramatic literature, who dominates the whole scene. I think Shakespeare was greatly preoccupied as I am in my humble way with the lost of innocence. There's always been an England, an older England, which was sweeter and purer where the haze smelt better, and weather was always spring time and duffy dills blue and gentle warm breezes. You feel that nostalgia in all Shakespeare's. And I think he was profoundly against the modern age, as I am. I'm against my modern age, he was against his. And I think his villain was modern-people, just as they are likely to be continental. I would see the villain in Lear are none Anglo-Saxons, they are from over there and they represent the modern world which includes Sons being ungrateful to their fathers, and all the rest of it. I think he was a typically English writer, arch-typically the perfect English writer, and that very thing with the preoccupation with that Camelot, which is the great English legend. And innocence is what Falstaff is. He is a kind of refugee from that world. And he has to live by his wits, he has to be funny. He doesn't have place to sleep if he doesn't get a laugh out of his patron. So it's a rough modern world that he's living in. But you must to see in his eyes, that's why I was also very glad to be doing it in black and white because if it was in color he must have blue eyes. You got to see that look that comes out of the age of the memory existed but exist in the heart of all English poetry.

LM
Then that modern world exploded into one of the most violent, I think, battle...

OW
Terrible battle scene, yes. Which is supposed to show the end of chivalric idea, to show the way it's gonna be from now on.

LM
Even the funny tin-can running about, which is Falstaff in his armor, but it's funny pathetic, it's not funny in good way...

OW
Yeah.

(Chimes at Midnight's playing)

OW
The real fact is Hotspur another refugee from Camelot is dead. And the other man is getting ready to be the English hero. And to build that establishment, under what Shakespeare must have struggled because it was a very real establishment.

LM
Seems that the Chimes of Midnight give you a particular pleasure?

OW
It is my favorite picture. If I want to go to heaven in basis of one movie, that's the one I'd offer up. Because for me it is the least flawed, let me put it that way. It's the most successful for what I tried to do. I succeeded more, in my view, completely with that than anything else.

v.o.
Two years after Chimes of Midnight, Jeanne Moreau appeared in another Welles's film, The Immortal Story, playing a women tried to bring a fiction to life. Welles played Mr. Clay, a wealthy but friendless old-man obsessed with a piece of sailor's folklore, story of a penniless young man who's paid 5 guineas to sleep for one night with a woman he's never met. Mr. Clay can't accept that the story never really happened. And he commit the foley of trying to bring it to life.

(The Immortal's Story is playing)

LM
It's very tempting to see Mr.Clay almost ...

(end of part13)

Scorsese Screens

Martin Scorsese berkontribusi menuliskan artikel bulanan, Scorsese Screens, untuk TCM.com, berkomentar mengenai film-film klasik yang akan diputar di channel kabel yang khusus memutarkan film klasik tersebut. Artikel bulanan ini baru dimulai bulan Oktober ini, dimana dia membahas tentang Nicholas Ray (Sutradara Rebel without Case).

Siapa itu Martin Scorsese? Bagi yang belum tahu, mungkin lebih banyak yang pernah mendengar nama Robert de Niro, dengan film-film legendarisnya seperti Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, dan Goodfellas. Martin Scorsese adalah sutradara dari film-film tersebut, dan dia adalah salah satu sutradara yang paling dihormati saat ini. Hingga dekade inipun Martin Scorsese masih berkarya, berkolaborasi dengan pemain-pemain generasi baru, seperti dengan Matt Damon dan Leonardo diCaprio dalam film The Departed, Gangs of New York, dan The Aviator.

Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part12

OW
...because if I had been, there never would have been Joe McCarthy. He was the candidate who ran on the Republican. So I have that on my conscience. Maybe I could have run, and beat him and there would never been a McCarthy.

LM
What happened to that political activity?

OW
The political activity stopped when I had to go to Europe. And earned my money to pay the taxes.

(The Trial's playing)

v.o.
In 1962 Welles was offered his own choice of subject for filming in Europe. He picked the novel by Kafka, The Trial. Anthony Perkins play Josef K., the faceless clerk, prosecuted by incomprehensible legal system. The film was seen by many critics as a kind of contest between Welles and Kafka, with Kafka coming off second best.

(The Trial's playing)

AP (Anthony Perkins)
It wasn't very long into the project before I realized that Orson's view of Josef K. was far from being the innocent victim of bureaucracy that Kafka had written. In Orson version, I can hear his thundering voice, "He is guilty as hell!!" I said, "Why?" He said, "He's guilty because of everything." Well this is certainly a revolutionary view of Josef K. and made it rather difficult to play. Then I said, "I don't it is gonna be a popular concept of Josef K." But it was certainly not one that he's gonna be shaking. So I decided in deference to Orson's judgement I would get right behind it and play it that way.

OW
If you make an opera of Othello, if you are Verde to make a great one, or if you are Bellini to make a good one, or if you are Jack (something) to make a bad one. But you can make your own opera out of that play. And the same thing goes for movies. I don't believe in essential reference for the original material. It's simply part of the collaboration. I felt no need to be true to Kafka in every essence. I thought it was necessary to capture what I felt to be the Kafka's atmosphere which was combination of modern-horror creeping up on the Austro-Hungarian empire. I saw it as a European story,full of European stuffs, with IBM machine lurking in the background. That was the way I want to present the picture.


(The Trial's playing)

PB (Peter Bogdanovich)
It was a strange picture. It was an uncomfortable movie to watch. The most interesting screening I've ever experienced was when I was sitting with Orson, I don't know what year was it in the early 70's, he's in Paris and they gave him some awards. Jeanne Moreau was there, she gave me award. And then they ran the picture, they started, you know it was terribly respectable audience too, like sitting in the museum of modern-art, you know, cinephile, upper-class kind of wealthy people who want to appreciate the finer thing in art. And Orson sitting next to me roaring with laughter! The movie started, he starts screaming! He always told me that he thought it was kind of funny, but I...sitting next to him I started to laugh too. The other man was also laughing, we are all laughing. Then the entire audience kind...you know. We are laughing at this movie that he made. And they think, "Oh, these people don't have appreciation of art." (laughing). It was perfect.

(The Trial's playing)

LM
The humor in the word play, which happen early on, is I don't know ...

OW
That was entirely mine. There's nothing like that in Kafka. It's very solemn. Maybe funny in German, but certainly not in English.

Interviewer
The open sequence for example, is all one long-take. Did that take enormous amount of rehearsal?

AP
Orson coming up at 3 o'clock in the morning in the back of the car where you've been sitting, we have no dressing room or anything like that. He says, "Look, there is only enough film for 2 takes. It's got to be right. You gotta do it perfectly. And let's ..." He has a field-marshal, affection for the troops, in this case the crews, the actors, the extras. He's a wonderful manipulator, and I mean that in the best sense of people, and their soft-spots, the way he get them behind his vision.

LM
You were talking about making love to actors, I think, from what I hear of you from actors you do it far more than any other directors to the extent that you'll came to you actors...really quite unusual. Are we run out of film?

(Chimes at Midnight's playing)

v.o.
Welles as Falstaff, perhaps his greatest performance, certainly one of his finest film, Chimes at Midnight.

(Chimes at Midnight's playing)

JM (Jeanne Moreau)
I was supposed to have scene with Orson. I will wait him one day, two day, three day, and each time Orson would apologize and would come to the hotel and take me out for dinner, then we would talk about all sort of things but the film. So I finally said, "What was going on, Orson?" He said, "Well, I'm sorry my darling. We can't do our scenes yet. I don't have my make-up. My little suitcase. You know my little suitcase with all my make-up has been lost." I said, "You sure?" "Of course, I'm sure! So maybe we'll shoot tomorrow, that we do the shot, reverse-shot, on you without me." I said, "Well, Orson, it's quite difficult. We haven't started, and you are going to start with close-up on me." He said, "What can I do, you'll manage. You'll manage." So, I arrived at the studio, and in one of those little boxes where they were supposed to put cars, that was the make-up room. And then Orson secretary calls me because he want to give me some new line. So I go into this little shabby room. I was looking for the papers Orson had left me, I sat on the floor.

(end of part12)

Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part11

CH (Charlton Heston)
...shooting that shot. Indeed if you look at the printed tape you can see the touches of dawn breaking on the horizon, that was the lost shot you were going to get.

Interviewer
And he used the last take?

CH
Yes.

(Touch of Evil's playing)

CH
The hard thing about that shot was the small part of the man who play the custome-inspector at the end of the shot, kept blowing his line. But one can understand because he see this vast set bearing down on him from two-blocks away. And finally Orson said to him, "Look, I don't care if you forget the line, just move your lips. I'm begging you. Just don't say Oh gee Mr.Welles, I'm sorry!" But it's one of many remarkable strokes in that film.

(Touch of Evil's playing)

OW
Yes. All reviewers know because this is on film, their conversation read between reloading. And somebody said that Touch of Evil seem unreal yet real. I correct that statement that what I was trying to do was to make something which was unreal but true. And I think that's the definition of the highest kind of theatricality, the best kind, and that's the kind of theatricality that can exist in film too, as well as theater. What is more unreal and stylized than Cagney. He was totally stylized unreal performance, no human being ever behave the way he does. And every moment in Cagney, entire life in film is truth. He never had a second that wasn't truth. He certainly was larger than life. He did everything dangerously as the way we were playing in Madison Square Garden, and it was always cinematicaly true but unreal. That's the difference I guess, I think.

LM
They say, for the viewer anyway, that there's a kind of moral ambiguity about the character, the Quinlan, although he ...

OW
Yes. Well, you know what Renoir said? He said everyone have his reasons. And that's really sums it up. There's no villain who doesn't have reason. And the bigger the villain, the more interesting it become if you further explain his habit, not psychiatrycaly, not because Mama didn't love him, but because you humanize him. The more human you make the monster, the more interesting the story must be.

LM
And also Quinlan's instinct turn out to be right, even though the method is wrong.

OW
That's right. His method is totally wrong. And my position in political and moral sense is completely anti-Quinlan. I'm absolutely in Heston's side. Myself personally. But playing Quinlan and having a character like that I had to make him a real person. I've been trapped into a troopers! What I hope is a troopers. A true monster because he was a successful cop using means which do work, which was simply against every good instinct we have in a democratic world. He's everything we hate. But he isn't what we hate. This is method. And yet he would never get those people behind bars if he hadn't done it. And it's that ambiguity that gives tension to the story. That ambivalent.

LM
You also allow him to have this fantastic epitaph at the end of the picture.

OW
Yes. Well, she was pretty good casting for that.

LM
She was some kind of a women.

OW
Yes. (laughing). It's her last great performance. No doubt about that.

(Touch of Evil's playing)

OW
Got another flawed masterpiece?

v.o.
Since 1949 when he created the character Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man, Welles has always felt at home with European cinema. And for the last 25 years of his life his films he directed were all made outside the Hollywood system. Including one Welles himself regarded as his masterpiece, Chimes at Midnight. Welles spoke to us about these and other films from the European years, about his discovery of the documentary and his unfinished project. But leaving America was also meant the end of one other activity that's close to his heart.

(political clip about Welles)

v.o
Orson Welles always resisted attempt to find autobiographical references in his work. But there's one major theme in Citizen Kane that was a lifelong obsession with Welles himself. During his Hollywood years, he was actively involved in politics. Speaking at anti-fascist rallies, broadcasting political commentary on the radio, writing his own daily column to the New York Post, and actively campaigning for Roosevelt.

OW
I didn't run for the senate for several reasons. The main reason is the fact, see if you run for the senate, everybody who does, in their hearts hopes they might possibly get to the top. I have to admit, if you run for the senate you have your eyes on that big building. I didn't think anybody could get elected for the president who had been divorced and who had been an actor. I made a terrible mistake both directions (laughing). The thing on my conscience is ,Roosevelt was so anxious for me to run, there's a study made in California I had a the southern California, Beverly Hills communist division was against me. I only had the north. And my advisor in California, was Allan(something), who later became the senator so I don't think he was totally disinterested. So we find that the best place I could run was Wisconsin, where I was born. We made a study of that and discovered that the man who I had to fight was so powerful that I'd certainly be beaten unless I was the greatest campaigner ever known. But unsupposing I was...

(end of part11)

Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part10

v.o.
His secret purpose is to cover up his track simply by disposing every contact the investigator make. Welles played the mysterious Arkadin.

OW
But that film was taken away from me completely. And was totally destroyed in the cutting. That is the real disaster of my life. Flawed masterpiece, how are you, there's you flawed masterpiece. Mr. Arkadin, I hate to think about it.

v.o.
The beginning of one of Welles most spectacular opening sequences, it develops into a 3 minutes 20 seconds crane-shot. Welles had been living and working in exile in Europe for 10 years, when he returned to Hollywood in 1958 to create almost by accident, one of his most unforgettable screen performances, and one of the finest crime film ever made. The script had been originally sent by Universal to Charlton Heston under the title Badge of Evil.

CH (Charlton Heston)
It was a fairly routine police story. But even if it had been a better script, as I point it out to them, with the exception of western they've been making police stories longer and oftener than any other single-zoner. Therefore it's extremely difficult to come up with a script, as a script will survive on its own, I said the director is even more important than this. I said, "who's gonna direct it?" They said, "We haven't picked out a director yet. But we'll have Orson Welles to play a part, though" This was on a long-distance phone. After a static-filled pause I said, "Why don't you have him direct it? He's a pretty good director, you know." The reaction at first was a prolonged silence as if I'd suggested my mother to direct the film. And after a while they said, "Yeah, that's right! We'll get back to you."

OW
They quickly called me back again and said, "Will you direct this picture? We can't pay you anymore." I said I'll direct it, but if also I get to write it, every word of it, an entirely new script. They said, "Yes!" So I had 3 weeks before we start. I have about 12 secretaries round the clock and made entirely new script.

CH
Orson then proceeded to write the entire script in about 10 days by himself, which I knew he would. Vastly improved the script and his part, which I knew he would. Touch of Evil is really about the decline and fall of Captain Quinlan, Orson's part. My part, the Mexican lawyer, Vargas, serves as a witness.

(Touch of Evil's playing)

LM
It must be physically the most grotesque character...

OW
Yes, it was pretty grotesque. And I gave a dinner-party, not long after I started the picture for all my old producers, friends, big-stars, all the Hollywood brigades. I came a little late. So they were all there drinking before I sit down. In order to arrive in time in my make up and costume. And they all said, "How are you, Orson? You looking great." You know I was absolute monster.

(Touch of Evil's playing)

OW
They didn't know they had Marlene Dietrich. She turned up in Russia they said, "That's Marlene Dietrich." I call her up and said, "You're in this picture?" She said, "Yes." I said, "What's your salary?" She says, "You don't put my name on the picture, that's the minimum. You put my name on, see Mitch." So they saw their agent, they were delighted. It was roses all the way, until the gate closed on me. It's still a mystery I have no idea what that was about.

v.o.
Once again, Welles was barred from post-production of his own film and cuts were made in it.

LM
Why again in this case were you shut out from...

OW
I have no idea it's never been explained. Because they love the rushes. Every day the head of the studio came to me wanted me to come to their office and sign it, deal for several pictures and all that great stuffs. Then they saw the rough-cut of it and they were so horrified and they wouldn't let me into the studio. And nobody ever explained what horrified them. Heston had won an Oscar, and he was a great star, and they released it without press-release, without the press showing that it was a B-picture in America. And it was shown in Brussels right afterward at World Fair and got the prize of Best Picture of the Year. And the Belgian distributor who had put it in the contest against the will of the studio and had worked for Universal for 20 years was fired. And then open a small theatre, Publicist, for grand 2 years. It had made a lot of money, even for America. To their tremendous rage, the last the want is success. And they never explained it to me. Chuck Heston doesn't know, they never told him, they certainly never told me. They don't know what it is. It's too dark for them, too strange, I think. I don't think we would have that reaction now. A little too tough, a little too black, but that's a guess, I just don't know.

CH
Orson really, it seems to me, just want to work. At the same time, there's something in him that drives him to alienate the people with the money. Perhaps, there's a subconscious treat that makes him resent, that unlike painter who if he had to could work in a supermarket bagging groceries and earned the money to buy a paints, that as a director he cannot do that. He must somehow persuade the studio to give him money. And perhaps on some subconscious level has never been able to accept this. I cannot believe that he would not had been more successful than he has been at getting them ti giving him the money to make a film. There's a myth in the film community, for example, that Orson is an unreliable director, with no disrespect to directors like Mike Nichols, Michael Cimino, Spielberg, Coppola, Orson hasn't spent as much in all his films in his life as they have wasted only in one film. And this is a simple statement of fact, and I dare say they'd subscribe to it. Touch of Evil not a great film but certainly one that's marked with touches of brilliance, were shot on the shortest schedule I've ever worked on, and it came in unscheduled and slightly over-budget. The budget was less than a million dollars.

Interviewer
It was so much of it there's little room for maneuver, I mean, the opening shot was just one shot. Did he cover himself?

CH
Nope. We spent all night...

(end of part10)

Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part9

v.o.
Another project that Hollywood wasn't ecstatic about was Welles' 1948 version of Macbeth. Republic Pictures accepted it, but they only gave him 21 days to shoot it and a tiny budget.

OW
I thought I had a great success with it, and then I'll be allowed to do all kind of difficult things as long as they are cheap. But Life Magazine came out that day, Margaret always hated me anyway, she came out that week writing that I've murdered Macbeth. It was a big critical failure. It was the biggest critical failure I've ever had.

LM
You've said that it posses a great problem when you appeared in your film because of your presence or your personality?

OW
Yes, much more than in the theatre. I have the personality which requires me to play certain part. It was a kind of handicap. There used to be a form of division of actors, there are who are called king actors. They weren't necessarily the best actor, they were the actor who played the king. And I'm a king actor, maybe a bad one, but that's what I am. I have to play authoritative role. But Truffaut was quite right when he says about me that I always show the fragility of great authority and that that's the thing I do. I think it would be intolerable if I didn't.

v.o.
If making Macbeth in a very short time was some kind of a minor miracle, Welles next venture into Shakespeare was to prove the most torturous journey he ever undertook.

OW
A large company, the biggest company I've ever had as a director on location, about 70 people I think it was besides the actors and everything, came to Mogador on the west coast of Africa to shoot Othello. And we arrived and got a telegram, the day after we arrived, that Scalera, the biggest Italian movie studio, with whom I had the contract to make the picture, had gone bankrupt. We had no money, we were in Africa, and we had no costumes, nothing.

v.o.
But Welles refuse to give up. He began to pool his own money into Othello, and he gathered his cast and crew from all over Europe, Suzanne Cloutier from Paris, and his old boss, Micheal MacLiammore from Dublin. Welles got into the habit of suddenly leaving his crew on location, flying off to star in someone else's movie and rushing back weeks later with the money to shoot a bit more.

LM
The story has grown up that these unfortunate actors were left stranded while Orson Welles went off... I don't know what ... and joins...

OW
The actors love to tell that story because, of course they were stranded, but what they forget is that they were stranded in a four-star luxury hotel of Europe. They were stranded in Grand Hotel and the Europa in Venice, and in the Colon d'Or in Provence and so on. And they were stranded only to the extent that I didn't want to send them home. I want to keep them together, and I went off to get money and left them, at great expense, eating and sleeping in luxurious condition.

v.o.
During the 2 years it took to make Othello, Welles had plenty of opportunity to use what he called divine-accidents. The first sequence to be shot was the murder of Rodrigo. It's a brilliantly cinematic idea to set it in a steam bath. But in fact only Lago customus had arrived, others had been impounded when the Italian studio went bankrupt. So Welles decided to shoot the scene in a bath house, where the actors didn't need any clothes at all.

OW
I had a very good art director for that picture, Trauner, one of the best in movie history. But because of lack of funds we ended up shooting mostly in real places, and there wasn't much for him to do. But he designed a wonderful Othello which somebody should do someday.

v.o.
The invention continued all over Europe, with Welles art directing on the run and creating marvelous set pieces like the fight scene filmed in a sewer in Portugal. The long filming schedule cost other problems. Welles often has to shoot his pick-up shots on different location. This fight started in the street in Morocco. The final punches was shot two-thousand miles away in Italy.

OW
We were in about, I don't know, at least seven or eight different cities in Italy, just where there would be a little piece that would be right, you know. Didn't need something added to it. And that of course determined the kind of cutting, which I wouldn't have done otherwise. I would have played a longer scenes, but I had to, it had to be done in cuts because...

LM
I find the cutting early on a bit confusing.

OW
Yes, so do I. I don't like several bits there in Venice. I think the weakest thing in the picture is Venice. Some of it is quite weak indeed.

LM
Do you accept the label people have put on it? They called a flawed masterpiece because they've drawn attention to that and to the dialogue sound, which they find poor. That against these brilliant images...

OW
Yes, well, I don't know what happened to the sound. It was alright when we were done with it but something happened in making distribution copies or something. That did hurt it, so flawed to the extent that we were not able to control the quality of the release print. It was actually all rights as we did it. With awfully good music, wonderful music. I don't know flawed masterpiece, I don't know masterpiece either. I can tell you things I don't like in all my movies and if that makes it flawed, then it's flawed; and I don't think I've ever made a masterpiece.

v.o.
But there are wonderful things in Othello, in its marriage of film and theatre, in Welles' use of real life film set, and in his own performance.

(Othello's playing)

OW
I see that Othello is not one of your favorite movies. After one of those questions, "Would you agree that it's a flawed masterpiece?" We then, after a slight pause, say could we go on.

LM
Could we go on to something else?

OW
I think we'd better.

LM
Mr. Arkadin?

OW
That's the real flawed one. That's a disaster.

v.o.
Mr. Arkadin is another story of an investigation into a man's past. A mysterious and powerful stranger has hired a small-time investigator to inquire into his past.

(end of part9)

After Hours (1985) - Exposition analysis

After Hours, director: Martin Scorsese,penulis: Joseph Minion, produser: Amy Robinson-Griffin Dune – Robert Colesberry, Cinematographer:Michael Balhauss , Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker .

Film bercerita tentang seorang pegawai kantoran biasa yang mengalami pengalaman terlalu luar-biasa baginya.

Entah kenapa saya menulis analisis ini. Awalnya saya ingin menulis untuk keseluruhan film. Namun melihat panjangnya film, dan banyaknya film yang ada di luar sana, saya mencoba membahasnya hanya bagian tertentu. Untuk saat ini, berhubung saya juga sedang menyusun sebuah skenario dan saya merasa saya lemah dalam eksposisi, saya mau bahas eksposisi story yang dilakukan Scorsese dalam filmnya After Hours yang keluar tahun 1985.

Di perkenalkan penampilan tokoh utama dan lingkungan tokoh utama lewat shot pertama. Dalam shot itu diperlihatkan lingkungan kantor, lalu kamera bergerak ke wajah seorang pria yang sedang menjelaskan cara mengoperasikan komputer pada seorang karyawan baru. Dari shot ini bisa dilihat si pria bekerja di kantor tersebut, dan penonton akan menebak kemungkinan bahwa sang pria adalah si tokoh utama. Pada momen ini kita belum mengetahui nama dari si pria.

Setelah shot pertama, diperlihatkan bagaimana si pria menjelaskan sistem kerja komputer pada koleganya, dengan style Scorsese, adegan yang sebenarnya biasa, ritme biasa, ukurang penting pun biasa, namun disajikan Scorsese dengan caranya lewat editing yang cepat dan shooting kombinasi medium dan Extreme closeup sehingga terasa lebih dinamis. (Editing cepat yang dilakukan Scorsese juga saya sebut city-worker’s pace editing, karena saya merasa pace-nya sesuai dengan pace pekerja-pekerja kota metropolitan yang serba cepat dan dinamis, ...)


Lalu sang kolega mulai ‘curhat’ pada si pria bahwa pekerjaan yang akan ia lakukan bukanlah pekerjaan yang ia inginkan dengan polosnya. Si pria tersinggung, kamera fokus pada dirinya, ia menghela nafas sedikit, lalu memalingkan wajahnya dari si kolega, menatap teman-teman kantornya yang lain yang berlalu-lalang dengan ekspresi sedih, dialuni lagu klasik yang cukup ternama sebagai background music (tapi saya tidak tahu namanya...haha) menambah kesan muram, sendu pada si pria. Lalu kamera beralih pada lensa lebar, memperlihatkan si pria dan si kolega dalam satu frame. Di perlihatkan melalui dialog dan gerak tubuh bahwa si pria tidak tertarik dengan mimpi-mimpi si kolega dan meninggalkannya sendiri. Durasi shot bertahan sebentar memperlihatkan si kolega yang ditinggalkan sendirian. Dan lagu klasik nan sendu itu masih terus mengalun.

Lalu gambar beralih ke para pekerja yang pulang kantor. Gerbang besar ditutup oleh 2 orang penjaga, seolah gerbang itu memagari para pekerja yang sudah seharian bekerja dalam gedung, membuat kesan seolah tempat si pria bekerja seharian adalah tempat yang asing, bukan bagian dari dirinya atau hidupnya, dan para pekerja itu hanyalah dimanfaatkan, dan ketika tidak dibutuhkan gerbang tertutup bagi mereka.(wow, this is something that I just realized! Cool!) Lalu si pria keluar menuju satu arah, dan angin berhembus menerpa wajah si pria, postur si pria layaknya man with no name pada film The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly melewati gurun dalam kesendirian (apalah...) menguatkan kesan kesepian, dingin, dari si pria. Lagu klasik nan sendu itupun masih mengalun, dan terus mengalun hingga si pria sampai di rumahnya.

shot gerbang 1

shot gerbang 2

shot gerbang 3

Kamarnya gelap, kamera fokus pada dirinya, lalu bergerak menjauh memperlihatkan situasi kamar. Sementara si pria hanya berdiri kosong. Kamarnya terlihat rapih, dan kosong, lampunya datar dan tidak ceria, si pria berdiri membatu/terpaku/kosong di tengah ruangan, lagu sendu yang mengalun, membuat kesan hampa yang kuat dalam shot. Lalu si pria kembali menunjukkan kekosongan hatinya ketika ia menonton TV, mengganti channel maju-mundur tanpa menunjukkan ketertarikan dari acara di TV.

Ok, sebagai kesimpulan sejauh ini, jadi sejauh ini sudah diperlihatkan bahwa si pria adalah seorang pekerja kantoran, yang mengalami krisis jiwa merasa kosong dengan pekerjaannya.

Apakah benar pada shot ini keberadaan wanita

 lebih kuat?

Buku Tropic of Cancer. Kamera fokus di buku tersebut. Terlihat buku tersebut sedang dibaca oleh seorang pria, namun kita belum tahu siapa dia. Lalu kamera mundur, memperlihatkan pria yang sama, lalu mulai terlihat ia berada di sebuah cafe/restoran, dan seorang wanita yang kemungkinan sedang memperhatikan dirinya. Kehadiran si wanita terasa kuat, bahkan lebih mendominasi pada shot ini, dengan keberadaannya yang lebih mendekati kamera, dan pijar lampu-merah yang jatuh di rambut si wanita (Saya lampirkan frame shotnya, ada komentar? Karena saya sendiri tidak terlalu yakin dengan pendapat saya). Lalu si wanita mengambil inisiatif berbicara dengan si pria. Lalu si wanita mengutip sesuatu dari buku yang dibaca si pria, kamera bergerak menyamping mendekati si wanita, membentuk imej yang berkesan dari si wanita, mungkin ini adalah refleksi pandangan si pria pada si wanita. Yang jelas, si wanita adalah karakter penting dalam film. Lalu kamera berganti pada si pria, namun kamera tidak bergerak, memberi kesan bahwa adegan ini didominasi oleh si wanita. Namun setelah kamera kembali kepada si wanita, kamera bergerak persis seperti ketika mereka si wanita dengan dramatis sebelumnya, si pria menjelaskan kenapa ia menyukai buku itu dan kamera bergerak menyaping namun berlawanan dengan arah kamera ketika mengambil si wanita, seperti pasangan yang sedang berdansa, atau lebih otak-kirinya, berinteraksi. Mulai dari momen itu, mereka berdua berkesan setara. Sementara si pria berbicara, terlihat kasir di background (blurred) sedang melakukan gerakan-gerakan balet (atau semacamnya). Dan gerakan-gerakan itu menyita perhatian si wanita.

Lalu si wanita memiliki alasan(bagi pembuat cerita) untuk mendekat pada si pria. Si wanita tidak mendekat begitu saja seperti seorang wanita penggoda. Namun ia melihat kasir dari restoran tersebut yang terlihat seperti sedang berlatih menari. Karena alasan itu yang dipilih, si wanita memberi kesan, daripada seorang flirter, seorang yang bersemangat dan antusias tentang hal sekelilingnya, lebih positif.

Lalu mereka berdua mulai membicarakan tentang perilaku si kasir yang aneh. Overshoulder shot digunakan untuk sekuens ini. Namun yang bisa lebih diperdalam adalah alasan ada apa dengan kasih yang melakukan balet, kenapa? Buat saya, balet hanyalah pilihan untuk menunjukkan sesuatu yang berbeda dari lingkungannya(alias aneh), dimana nantinya kejadian aneh bukanlah lagi sesuatu yang minor bagi si pria, ia akan memasuki dunia aneh itu sendiri, sehingga ialah sang minor(dialah yang aneh). Namun itu nanti ketika cerita mulai pada babak rising-action. Alasan lain buat saya adalah mengimplikasikan ending. Pada awal film diperlihatkan si pria yang merasa kosong tentang hidup dan pekerjaannya, seolah pekerjaan itu tak layak diperjuangkan dan si pria sendiri tidak memiliki apapun yang penting baginya. Si kasir memiliki hal yang tidak dimiliki oleh sang pria, keinginan untuk memperjuangkan sesuatu yang dianggap penting baginya, dan ia melakukan apa saja untuk itu(termasuk berlatih dalam part-time job-nya). Namun si pria terlihat tidak bisa menghargai hal itu. Alhasil, iapun kembali pada rutinitas hampanya, seperti halnya yang terjadi di akhir film.

Dalam adegan pertemuan wanita dan si pria di restoran, ditunjukkan bagaimana si wanita meninggalkan si pria dengan perasaan ‘khusus’. Bagaimana prosesnya? Ketika pertama kali si wanita menyapa si pria, si pria bahkan tidak mendengar sapaan itu. Jelas berarti bahwa belum tumbuh ketertarikan dalam diri si pria. Lalu ketika mereka mulai berdialog, ada hubungan antar keduanya, secara psikologis karena keduanya penggemar buku yang sedang dibaca sang pria si pria begitu terbuka menceritakan kesukaannya pada novel itu, secara teknis pergerakan kamera yang mengambil gambar pria dan wanita yang berkesan seperti 2 pergerakan kamera yang berdansa (apalagi ditambah lagu klasik yang masih berputar di background). Lalu mereka berdua mulai membicarakan kasir yang aneh. Si pria mulai tertarik dengan si wanita, bertanya hal ini-itu pada si wanita (sementara si wanita bersiap-siap pulang). Pada akhirnya terkesan jelas bahwa si pria tertarik pada si wanita (dipaku ketika si pria buru-buru menuju kasir hanya untuk meminjam pulpen untuk mencatat nomor telepon si wanita).

shot jam

Si pria dan si wanita sampai momen ini belum juga kita ketahui nama mereka. Sesampai di rumah, ia langsung menelpon nomor yang tadi si pria catat. Teman si wanita yang mengangkat telepon, lalu ketika akhirnya si wanita dan pria kembali terhubung, kamera berganti shot, menjadi shot yang lebih dekat, dan kamera itu bergerak semakin mendekat pada si pria. Dalam percakapan itu juga diberikan informasi bahwa si wanita bernama Marcy, dan si pria bernama Paul Hackett, namun kedua informasi itu tidak terkesan ditekankan sama sekali. Percakapan semakin intim, dan kamera akhirnya berhenti bergerak, memframing kepala dari Paul. Lalu sekuens disela shot jam yang juga diiringi sfx bunyi jam berdetik, memberikan kesan sesuatu yang dimulai, semacam bom waktu yang telah ditriggered, dan takkan bisa dihentikan lagi. Ada perasaan surreal juga di shot itu. Lalu adegan ditutup dengan shot close up pendek telepon yang ditutup(another city worker’s pace editing). Adegan selanjutnya adalah jembatan antara eksposisi dan rising-action.

Paul menyetop sebuah taksi. Taksi mengebut,di edit fast-motion, lalu disertai semacam lagu voodoo africa (membentuk atmosfir surreal lagi, seperti kesurupan, semacamnya, imej-imej yang keluar ketika kita mendengar lagu voodoo). Yang jelas, adegan taksi ini adalah sebuah perjalanan, dari satu tempat ke tempat lain, dari satu babak ke babak selanjutnya, suatu perjalanan inter-dimensi, seperti halnya adegan surreal time-warping di film Space Odyssey dari Kubrick. Namun dalam film ini perjalanan itu lebih mendunia (“yes, of course”, kata Mark) dan ada unsur komedi.

Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part8

v.o.
Welles' delight in subverting the classic scene of melodrama runs right through Lady from Shanghai. And in one of his most stunning set pieces he turns inside-out the traditional B-picture finale, the shootout.

(The shootout scene's playing)

v.o.
And this, by the way, was the film that Hollywood, the studios, and even Welles' friends, was probably the worst thing that he'd ever done. His reputation as a rebel, as a kind of uncontrolable anarchist who didn't fit within the system had grown so big that seem no one would ever touch Welles' project again, and that reputation never left him.

LM
I've never heard you or read you being bitter about Hollywood.

OW
No, I'm not. It's ridiculous to be bitter about Hollywood. Anybody who goes to Hollywood can see right away what the set-up is, in my early days it was much more fun to outwit the 'dinosaurs'. But Hollywood is Hollywood. There's nothing you can say about that isn't true, good or bad. And if you get into it, you have no right to be bitter. You're the one who sat down and join the game. But the people who've done well with the system are the people whose instinct, whose desire, who want to make the kind of movie which the producers want to produce. Not what the public wants but what the producers want to produce. People who don't succeed, the people who've had long bad-times, such as Renoir for example who I think the best director ever, are people who didn't want to make the kind of movies that the producers want to make. Producers didn't want to make a Renoir pictures even if it was a success. People don't realize that nobody in Hollywood is interested in money. Everybody thinks Hollywood is interested in money because they talk about money all the time. Well they talk about sex all the time but they don't do much of that. It's all an ego trick. They are interested in having produced this picture and power, status, all sort of things. Money is only the counters of the game. Nobody is interested in money. Nobody would really go into movies if they are really interested in money. If you are interested in money you go to industry where you get bigger sums easier. So that's the trouble with Hollywood. It isn't money, you speak of the clash of temperament, not at all. The pictures I like to make are not the pictures Hollywood producers and particularly modern Hollywood producers want to make.

(end of part8)

Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part7

OW
We had one shot that we would put John Russell on a flag-pole hanging on to his camera. And there's one shot where I fall could never be duplicated because the stuntman and all that, we paid him so much for doing it. The next day at the studio, we put in all the sound effect over a black film in order to make Russell think that he had forgot to rack over (laughing) That was the sort of cruelty that was common on the set in those days. And we were all very forgiving. It doesn't matter, we would do it again tomorrow night. He gets so scared. (laughing)

v.o
In 1943 Welles and Joseph Cotten had co-written and starred a thriller, Journey into Fear. There were rumors that Welles had taken more than passing-interest in the direction.

OW
The books about me which give me credit for that picture are wrong because it's really Norman Foster's picture. And he deserves any credit that's going. And if you've seen the picture before they cut out what didn't advance the action, you'd realize what a good movie he made, in spite of my performance, but it was supposed to be that way. It wasn't unconsciously.

(Lady from Shanghai's played)

v.o.
In 1947 Welles went tropical with the exotic thriller called Lady from Shanghai. Travelogue scenery, luxury living, but shot through with Welles own sense of parody and the bizarre.

(Lady from Shanghai's played)

v.o.
And from his supporting players, Glen Anders, he cook performances that go right to the edge.

(Lady from Shanghai's played)

v.o.
When he first viewed Lady from Shanghai, producer Harry Cohn offered any one in the room $1000 to explain the plot to him. Not even Welles took him up for it. The gossip column try to make rumor that it's because the co-star was Welles recently divorced wife, Rita Hayworth. And the circumstances of making the film in the first place was almost as bizarre as the story. Welles had actually left the movie for year, and returned to the theater to lose a lot of money to put in on a new musical. It was called Around the World in 80 Days.

OW
I put all my money into it. Before the opening in Boston, the costumes were sitting in the railway station, and there's $55,000 to pay for them or they wouldn't go to the theater for the opening night. I was sitting in the box-office, trying to think who can send me the $55,000 in the next 3 hours. I thought Harry Cohn, only the one with the courage to do it. I called him up and I said, "Harry, I've got the greatest story that you've ever read!" And I turn a paperback around that a girl was reading in the box office, it was called The Man I Killed. I said to him, "It's called The Man I Killed. You send me $55,000 in two hours and I'll make the picture, and I will write it, I will direct it, and I will act in it." $55,000 came. I did Around the World in 80 Days. Lost a fortune on it. But we had a musical and some people went to see it 7 times. I think it was the best thing I've ever did in the theatre. But it was fan actual disaster. And I had divorced from Rita. She came to me and said she wants to make my picture. I want you to came back with me. And Harry said to me, "I want you to do that with Rita, for her sake." That turned from 5 weeks to a big super movie. The plot was essentially the plot from the book, which I've never read. So the theory which have been printed a thousand times that this was an act of vengeance against Rita, that it was a great device which I was going to degrade her is non-sense because all that was in the book. She's read the book and wanted to play this character, so she was an actress.

LM
You build her up...

OW
Yes, of course. And put her in the gutter at the end.

(Rita Hayworth's scene)

LM
You do seem to me kind of want a balancing act between drama, melodrama, and parody...

OW
And I am bored with story that don't seem to me balance things, like you walk in a highway with a story, instead of on a tight-rope. I'm bored with it.

LM
Were you to some extent setting out to make a critic the very kind of film that the studio wouldn't like because you have the leading man who was stupid enough to get himself into the situation, the part you played you had a sort of sex-goddess playing a parody almost.

OW
Yes. Yes of course there's that element.

(end of part7)

Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part6

(Peter Bogdanovich's interview)
PB
I held a preview card in my hand. And there's a terrible reaction that said that everybody that make the picture ought to be hanged, and the other 5 to 10 to 20 that said that it was only the greatest film ever made, that they've ever seen. I think they were probably closer to the truth. Probably it's among the 5 most important films made in America, ever. And I think it was the greatest tragedy in the movies was that particular film was so mutilated because you're barely get the sense of Welles' work.

Interviewer
Was that kind of cutting, re-ordering, and even remaking a film was taken in granted in those days? Because you wonder Joseph Cotten and Robert Wise was very close to Orson Welles?

PB
Cotten, I know, felt very bad about doing it, and yet he wrote Orson in which he tried to explain why it was the best. You feel sorry when you read it because he was betraying Orson but he doesn't really realize it. It was very sad. Nobody came out of it very good.

(Robert Wise's interview)

RW
I'd have to say this, from purely artistic point of view the film was better film before, I don't think there's any question there. But we face with the other part of reality that (...)

OW
It's gone. The actual plot was changed. In other words it's, about the time Major Ambersons was going to die the picture starts to become another picture.

LM
Do you ever get over something like that?

OW
Not really, you don't. I was sent to South America by Nelson Rockefeller and Jack Whitney. I was told that it was my patriotic duty to go and spent a million dollar shooting the carnival in Rio. I don't like carnival and all that, but they said to me that it'd be a real contribution to inter-American affair and latin-American world and so. Without a salary but with a budget of a million dollar I was sent to Rio to make up a movie about the carnival. But in the mean time comes a new government, RKO is installing a new government. They ask to see the rushes of what I'm doing in South America. And they see a lot of black people, and the reaction was that I was just shooting 'jiggaboo' jumping up and down. They even didn't hear the sound of music because it has not been synced up.

v.o.
The RKO's bosses has been hoping a public relations job, something morally uplifting. What they got was thousand feet of films showing people dancing in the street, black people and white dancing together embracing, dangerous stuff for the American studio in the early 40's. They felt their control over Welles was slipping. And his other role of good will of US government, he had complete freedom in Brazil, filming as he pleases, ignoring their cables and phone calls, but still expecting them to pay the bills.

OW
So I was fired from RKO. They made a great publicity of their point that the fact that I've gone to South America without the script and throwing all their money away. I never recovered from that attack. The fact that they had also promise me when I went to South America that they will sent a moviola and the film to me and I'd finish the cutting of Ambersons there, they never did. They cut them themselves. So they destroyed Ambersons. The picture itself destroyed be. I didn't get a job as director years afterward. So then I did Jane Eyre.

v.o.
Joan Fountaine started with Orson Welles in Robert Stevenson's film, Jane Eyre, in 1944. It was the first time in his Hollywood career that Welles had been forced to work as an actor under someone else' direction.

(Jane Eyre's playing)

LM
Did you look at that stage as if people were breathing a sigh of relief?

OW
Oh yes! RKO had a station that year. And its slogan for that year in every piece of paper that went out from RKO was "Showmanship instead of a genius". In other words, the reason you should buy an RKO pictures was that you didn't get Orson Welles. The Genius came from, I've never said I was a genius. nobody ever calls me a genius seriously, certainly not in those days, but somebody called me 'a would be genius'. She was Hearst columnist. And she called me that so often that this terrible words got stuck to me. So, "Showmanship instead of a genius." That was their biggest selling point that they didn't have me anymore. The next picture I did do was The Stranger, and I did that to show people that I didn't glow in the dark. That I said action and cut just like all the other fellas.

v.o.
The Stranger directed by Welles in 1946 starred Edward G. Robinsons as a Nazi hunter who search an escaped war-criminal leads him to America in a small mid-western town. Welles is the Nazi, Kindler, sheltering under a false identity of a teacher, and Loretta Young played his unsuspecting wife. Robinsons mingles into the social life of the town waiting for Welles break in his impeccable act.

(The Stranger's played)

v.o.
Welles originally told the studio that he wanted a women for Robinsons' part, Agnes Moorehead.

OW
I thought it would have been much more interesting, but they wouldn't agree to it.

LM
And Robinsons was not one of your crony at all?

OW
No, I didn't know him at all. We got into a big sulk in the first week. I couldn't understand what was it about, and he said, "You keep shooting me on my bad side." Now, can you imagine Eddy Robinsons had a bad side? I was shooting him that way because Loretta Young's side was the other side, you see. So I told her that and she said, "Alright, shoot me on my bad side. Keep him happy"(laughing) But he was immensely effective actor and he was very good in the picture.

LM
And that was the first time you kind of came up against that,...

OW
Yes! I was working with two stars, and I had to decide, you see, when you work with stars you have to make love with them. It's the business of the director is to be kind of continuing courtship with the people you stick in front of the lens. And when you deal with stars, real stars, you have to really make love. It seems natural to me to direct by attention to miss Young. So there's a little jealousy there, between Eddy and...and particularly because she allowed me to hold her arm, there's a shot where I hold her arm, and she's five stories above, she really is, and I was holding her arm. And Eddy was too scared just to put his fee over the edge. So there were a lot of unhappiness about that but nothing we could do about the fact that he was scared, except double him.

LM
That was a real clock tower?

OW
Yes, we build the clock tower, where now some sky-scrapper's stand. We were running around on that yard.

(The Stranger's playing)

(End of part6)

Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vIs9qz1KPI&feature=related

OW
...with impressive silence and all heads turned, I opened a book and sat reading it studying the book and so on. Suddenly, silence was broken by me saying, "I made Citizen Kane in 1940..." and so. I've been brooding about that for 6 years now. That I just sat and deliver a monologue to the audience over lunches on Mr. Chow's about pictures I've made. (laughing). So those guys made me brood a bit. That's the worst of them. That's my real obsession. (laughing). The picture of somebody sitting by himself at a restaurant and suddenly reciting his screen-credit.

v.o.
In fact, it wasn't John Didian who wrote the article in Esquire. The real culprit was Robert Allan.

LM
After Citizen Kane you made The Magnificent Ambersons?

OW
Oh, yes, yes.

(The Magnificent Ambersons is playing.)

v.o.
Welles doesn't appear in his second film, but the voice from the start of the story-teller was him.

(The Magnificent Ambersons is playing.)

LM
Were you deliberately looking into something you wouldn't appear?

OW
Yes.

LM
Why is that?

OW
I wouldn't want to be a... I made a mistake, I shouldn't have done it. I was obsessed with the idea that I would not be a star. That I only incidentally played great roles. Now, there's no such a thing as incidentally playing great roles. For me I wouldn't get me offered or anything, and I was in position to promote myself as a star, and I should have. I should have gone back to New York and play Hamlet, and as long as it is going I didn't. I had decided that I want to be known as a director, that was it. And I loved Ambersons and want to make a movie of it.

(The Magnificent Ambersons is playing.)

v.o.
The Magnificent Ambersons may not have the technical dazzle of Kane, but it has its own style; more subtle, no less marvelous. Welles' intention had been to create and elegy of the disappearing America, the declining fall of the great family, their mansion's life, and their way of life. A world of security and tradition, destroyed by progress and the age of the machine.

(The Magnificent Ambersons is playing.)

OW
The real point of Ambersons', everything that is any good in it is that part of it which was really just a preparation for the decay of the Ambersons.

v.o.
But you'll never see that part of the film. These stills was all that remain of the 3 or 4 missing reels, the film was cut by the studio during Welles' absence. At least 45 minutes of his version has totally disappeared.

OW
It was thought by everybody in Hollywood, while I was in South America, that it was too downbeat, famous Hollywood's word at the time. So it was all taken out. But it was the purpose of the movie, to see how they all slid downhill.

(Robert Wise Interview)
Interviewer
Welles has expressed enormous bitterness of the cut...

RW
I'm sorry about that because I wasn't involved in the cut. But it was one of those circumstances that couldn't be helped. He was in South America making a film for the government to help our war in that good neighbor policy, he had to go to Brazil to do that. He was not up here when we previewed the film, that when we had all that finished. We had some changes he wanted to make but then we took the picture out for preview. The audience just wouldn't sit still for it. They laugh at it, at some of the performances, they walked out, it was disastrous preview that you would imagine. And the studio was naturally very upset. They have use a lot of money for this film. Jack Moss, who was his man here, he was the associate producer of this film and I was kind of caught in between Orson Welles in his inability of coming up here and doing anything about it but still have a voice in it and the studio, on the other hand, who wanted to get something done with this film and that would allow to release it. We did cut about 25 - 30 minutes of the original and we had to make 2 or 3 or 4 bridge-scenes to tie it together and a new ending shot. And finally after the 4th preview, after making all the changes we finally had a preview, the audience seem to set for it, at least they didn't walk out or give a bad laugh, that the way it went. All I can say is that all of us up here did all the best we could with the problem.

v.o.
One of their solution was actually to shot a happy ending for the film, set in a hospital corridor where Agnes Moorehead and Joseph Cotten seem all set to walk into the sunset.

(The Magnificent Ambersons' playing)

v.o.
Not Welles' style, and certainly not his intention.

OW
There's no scene in a hospital, nothing like that. They never happen in the story. And the great long scene, which was the key long scene at the end where Agy Moorehead in a third-rate lodging house near where there is an elevator passing they're playing a comic record to Black crows on a gramophone and there's people in the back playing cards. Jo Cotten has come to see how she is. That was the best scene on the picture, that what the picture's about.

(end of part5)

Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part4

Marion Davis, the actress, was to Hearst as the singer, Susan Alexander, was to Kane. Except that Hearst had found a devoted life-long companion, a women admired by everyone for her talent and intelligence.

OW
I thought we were unfair to Marion Davis because we had somebody really different in the place of Marion Davis and it seems to me to something of a dirty trick, and it still strike me as a dirty trick. And I had anticipated a trouble from that.

(Citizen Kane's shown)

OW
It's in the opening night of Citizen Kane in San Francisco, and I found myself was going to the top of the mark, in the elevator with Mr. Hearst, and I think I have to introduce myself. This strange dinosaur, you know, with ice cold blue eyes, And I said, "Mr. Hearst, I'm having opening of Citizen Kane, would you like to come?" He didn't answer, and I got off the elevator thinking, as I still do, if he'd been Charles Foster Kane he'd be taken the ticket and gone.

LM
You seem more open now, perhaps with the passage of time, to talk about Hearst connection with Citizen Kane, because...

OW
Hearst, you see, launch an attack to us, particularly on me. Or his minions did it, it was kind of 'no man' to get rid of me. I was once...it was very long, but I'll try to tell you very quickly, I was lecturing in Buffalo, then we're having dinner. Somebody said that, "there's the police want to see you". The police went out to be nice, he said, "Don't go back to your hotel room, they got underage girl undressed and photographer waiting for you. It's a set up". So I didn't go back to my room that night. I just stayed up and took the plane in the morning. That was that far they're prepared to go. I could be going to jail of course. And they have the producers in Hollywood ready altogether to pay RKO to burn the negative. It was nip and tuck. Whether the negative would be burn the picture never shows.

v.o.
The controversy of Citizen Kane didn't stop in 1940's. In 1971 the American critic Pauline Kael published her account of the writing of Kane, together with the shooting script. She paid particular attention to Welles co-writer, Herman Mankiewicz, and drew some devastating conclusion based on the evidence of the couple of Mankiewicz associate. One of them is the secretary, quoted saying that Welles did not write all dictate one line of the shooting script of Citizen Kane. Another is that Welles actually try to bribe Mankiewicz to take the screen credit, so that Kane would seem to be a whole Welles' creation.

(Playing Pete Bogdanovich's clip)
PB
I thought it was a very very cruel mean spirit and essentially destructive job. I think the thing is perfectly clear attempt to assassinate Orson, trying to take away the one, where everybody says Orson Welles did make Citizen Kane, but she said he didn't.

v.o.
Bogdanovich published his response to Kael in a short essay. Detailing his evidence against the allegation of Mankiewicz secretary, that Welles wrote none of the shooting script.

PB
The point is most of Orson's writing was done with his secretary. I found his secretary, I told her that, and she said she doesn't know all that stuff that she was typing. The thing is she never met Orson, she never even bothered to that significance, she didn't even want to talk to him, here she's writing a book called Citizen Kane which include a screenplay. The presumption of not even wanting to speak to after all, let's say he didn't write it, he did certainly no question direct it, and if he didn't even do that, he's in it.

v.o.
Evidence published more recently proved conclusively that Orson Welles wrote, at least, 3 major scenes himself. Most of Welles' collaborators, including Toland, had died long since. But we found one member of the team still working in Hollywood. Welles has taken on for Citizen Kane a young filmmaker from the star of RKO. He's now the successful Hollywood director, Robert Wise.

RW
Working with him was never very long in even keel, it was either up or down. Marvelously exciting, stimulating, maddening, frustrating. He could be in one moment be guilty a piece of behavior that was so outrageous that make you want to tell him to go to hell and walk out of the picture before he came up with some idea that was brilliant and would literally have your mouth keeping open. So you never walked, you stayed.

Interviewer
Did the film kind of fall-together as some films appears to be or did you really have to work at it?

RW
Well, no films really fall-together, I tell you that, but it was very well planned. The continuity, so many of those effective long dissolve, those were all planned in the camera. Not shot with the camera, but was planned to go that way. But I think it was very well laid, very well planned.

(Citizen Kane's played)

Interviewer
Does that include the structure as well?

RW
Yes, very much so. I don't think we changed one bit in term of the continuity. Not as far as I can remember, it's almost been 40 years now. But I believe it was all I don't think we've changed any.

LM
There's another legend that seems to attach itself to you was that you are a big-spender, that you go way over on your budget and on your schedule.

OW
I've never gone over-schedule or over-budget.

LM
Nor on Kane?

OW
No. In fact we're under-budget on Kane and under-schedule but we did that by a trick, because I've said that I know nothing about movies, so for about 10 days I'm just gonna shot a test. What we did was we shoot Kane. We shot for 10 days before we admittedly we were actually shooting. But we would've been under-schedule anyway.

LM
There's so much literature on you. Did you get upset by it, some of those legends, particularly ones to do with people that suggest that you behaved irresponsibly through them?

OW
Very badly. I'm much too upset about it. All my loving friends keeps telling me to stop brooding about it. But they bothers me terribly. Anything to do with my behavior, I don't mind if they criticize what I do, but they utilize about me much more than they ought to, I don't know why I'm so touchy about it. I went to Mr.Chow's restaurant in London once to have lunch alone. I like to have lunch alone or dinner alone, I brought a book. They have Italian waiter there, came and said to me , "Did you ever make a picture after Citizen Kane?" And I was just been told by Hue Weldon that I was out-of-profession in one of his famously tactful moment. So this came at the wrong moment. And I said patiently to him, "Yes, after Citizen Kane I made Magnificent Ambersons and then I listed my pictures." Now John (something) wrote a piece in Esquire few months afterward which he described me coming in to Mr.Chow's...

(end of part4)

Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwKPra45UwE&feature=related
(catatan: Maaf sekali, tapi khusus video ini user-nya mem-block video embedding) Tapi interview tetap bisa dinikmati di halaman ini dalam bentuk tulisan.)

v.o
The next morning, the name of Orson Welles was headlines all over America.

OW
The thing that gave me the idea for it was that we have a lot of real radio nuts commentators on this period. People want to keep us out of European entanglements and Fascist priest called Father Coglin...people believe everything they heard on the radio. And I said let's do something impossible! Make them believe it, and then show them that it's only a radio.That was what started it. Now of course they've passed a lot of law so they can't do it. You can't give a news broadcast says this is the news without...all that. But the people who've tried in another country were all put in jail, and I got a contract in Hollywood.

v.o.
Orson Welles arrived in Hollywood in 1940 at the age of 25. And on his own terms, a contract with RKO. It gave him a limited budget, but total artistic control.

LM
Because you are 25 and you have this amazing contract, did you sense an enormous amount of resentment from others in Hollywood?

OW
Oh, yes of course, there was a big resentment. Somebody cut my tie off in the middle of a restaurant. We went out to the parking lot and had it out, ... tremendous resentment, of course, because, nowadays every star has directed a movie. Even the TV star direct some of their segments. It's perfectly normal for actors to direct themselves. But nobody had done that since Von Stroheim, it was unheard of. Event that I should be the author and absolute producer, now of course the producer would hate me most because if I could do all those things, then what is the need for a producer.

v.o.
A year after he arrived in Hollywood, Welles began to shoot a picture called Citizen Kane. His cameramen was one of Hollywood's best, Gregg Toland.

OW
He came to me, you know. I didn't ask for him. One day in the office they said a man called Toland waiting to see you. He was one of the leading cameramen. He said 'I wanna make your picture.' I said, 'That's wonderful! Why? I don't know anything about movies' He said, 'That's exactly why I wanna do it. Because I think if you are left as alone as much as possible, we're gonna have a movie that looks different. I'm tired working with people who know too much about it.' He was the one who said that...we came to a moment in the second week of shooting, where I suddenly was told by somebody that it was not the job of a director to do all the lighting. After that I've been doing all the lighting. With Toland behind me balancing, and I'd say 'Don't tell anybody.' Then I had to apologize and everything to him.
Then another awful moment came when I didn't understand directions. That was because I had learned how to make movies by running Stagecoach every night for a month. Because if you look at Stagecoach you will see that the Indians attack left-to-right, and then they attack right-to-left, there's no directions followed, every rules is broken in the picture. And I sat watch it 45 times. Then of course when I was suddenly told in an over-shoulder's shot that I had to look camera left, instead of right, I said no standing my argument with the movies I watched. So we closed the picture down. And then about 2 in the afternoon I went back to my house and Toland showed me how that works. I said, 'Toland, there's a lot of stuffs here that I don't know. He said, 'There's nothing I can't teach you in 3 hours.' That's when I said that, which has been taken as a very pompous statement that I learned everything in 3 hours. It was Toland's idea that anybody can learn it in 3 hours. Then he taught it to me in 3 hours. Everything else is if you are any good or not.

v.o.
Welles and Toland never claimed to have invented new techniques. All they did was to combined existing ones into a virtuoso catalog of effects. Film sets with complete ceilings, overlapping sound, deep-focus photography, expressionist lighting. And if you doubt Welles own contribution to the look of Kane as some critics have, looks first at the lighting design for his 1937 theaterical production, Julius Caesar, this is 3 years before he went to Hollywood. And here's the sequence from Thatcher Library in Citizen Kane.


(Citizen Kane's played)

The story's told in dense and complicated array of technique. It's an investigation into a man's life. And Kane is seen in different stages of his life, from youth to old age, a great acting by the 25 years old Welles.

(Citizen Kane's played)

LM
You've said that Kane seem to you to be quite really close to parody as a character. You said once he was quite close to ....(somebody). I don't what you meant, is the way you played him, or the way he was seen?

OW
I don't know what I meant by that. Maybe that comes from one of those foreign languages interview where I pretend I understand the question and say, yes. There's a whole lot of things I'm supposed to say that really came to me from not hearing very well, or not as good being a linguist as I pretended to be. And there's a kind of interview, and you're not one of them, who tends to make a statement and says 'isn't that true?' and if I get very bored i'd say 'absolutely,yes!' That maybe how come the parody because I can't imagine what I had in mind.

v.o.
What most people thought what he had in his mind was a real life newspaper tycoon. The biggest of them all, William Randolph Hearst, the baron of the yellow-press, and one of the most powerful man in America.
Look first at the description of Citizen Kane's fictional palace, Xanadu, from the march of time sequence.

(Citizen Kane's played)

v.o.
And now look at these shots. This is a home-movie made at the William Randolph Hearst real-life palace, 8 years before Kane.

(end of part3)

Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part2

LM
Now, I've got here what Michael MacLiammoir wrote about you on his autobiography. It's the story when you arrived at the Gate Theater in Dublin.

OW
I know, i know that story.

(reading)
We've found a very tall young man with a very chubby face, full powerful lips, and disconcerting chinese eyes. He moved in leisurely manner from foot to foot, this is our chance to do something beautiful at last and where we're going to take it. He has some ageless, superb inner confidence that no one could blowout. That was his secret.

OW
It's wonderful description, but you can consider that the author is in London at the time thing is happening in Dublin. Michael was in London the first six weeks that I was in Gate Theatre. And I got my job only with Hilton and Michael never saw any of those stuffs that he writes about. But he could have told the story as well, he put himself as an eyewitness, that's perfectly alright.

(clip showing Michael MacmLiammoir interview)

LM
But you are saying, what, 18 years old?

OW
Yeah, it varied from 18 to 20, when I couldn't explain how I got to be that famous. I raised it up a little. That's why I got the cigar. I got cigars, smoke them that day in order to look older and kept the cigar in order to look like an older actor.
There are no part for anybody with such a baby face.

LM
There was one other thing you played about this time, also as an old man, and I think that was your very first film, The Hearts of Age.

OW
It's not a film. It's a little joke one Sunday afternoon.

v.o.
Welles' little joke with a few friends in 1934 has prompted at least one critic to see prophetic references to the images of Citizen Kane. Welles first wife, Virginia Nicholson, appears made-up as an old women. Welles himself is about to appear on film for the very first time.

OW
We all have seen somebody's surrealist film. We say let's make one. From 2 o'clock in the afternoon till 5 we shot some dumb stuffs and put it together just to amuse ourselves.

LM
You ought to write a book about it.

v.o.
When he is barely out of his teen, Orson Welles really had become a star at the New York Stage. And at the age of 23, he received the ultimate achievement, the cover of the Time Magazine.
He joined forces with the producers John Housemen to create one of the legendary theatre company of America, the Mercury theatre. The first production was the modern version of Julius Caesar, with Welles as Brutus. It was a spectacular success. And then Welles astonished New York with the lavish production of Macbeth, that broke all the convention of Broadway stages, and use them all black cast.

OW
I wanted to give the black actors a chance to play classic, without being funny, or even exotic. So there it is. I directed Macbeth without ever giving them a reading and none of them ever seen a Shakespearean play. And it was extraordinary how good Shakespeare is if it is spoken by somebody who's never heard somebody say it before. We had some marvelous effect. And of course it was a big production men. We had almost 200 people on the stage. We had voodoo drummers from West Africa. Real one, yes. By all odds,my greatest success is that play, because at the opening night, there were 5 blocks and all traffics was stopped that you couldn't get near the theater. Everybody is anybody, black or white was there. And at the end of the play, the use a lot of curtain because they find that if they left the curtain open, the audiences will come up on the stage to hug the actors. That was magic.

v.o.
But the vast scale of their ambition landing them in trouble. These are for the design of Julius Caesar. The Mercury Theatre was living from hand-to-mouth. Welles have to begin a hectic double life.

OW
I'd been contributing from my radio salary, I kept putting a thousand dollar or so every week, so we get the show on. And we got all our place on before anybody else because I was doing radio show all day long, soap operas, everything else. I used to go by ambulance from one radio station to another because I discovered there's no law in New York that you had to be sick to travel in an ambulance. So I hurried the ambulance and I'd go from CBS to NBC and they hold the elevator for me and I go up to fifth floor, go into the studio whichever I was set before. Then I say, 'what's the character?' They'd say '80 years old China-man', then I'd go and do the old China-man, and then rush-off somewhere else. I had been, for year and half, auditioning hopelessly as an actor and never get a job on radio station. Suddenly I got one part, and in about a month I was making, in those days tax-free, about $1500 to $1800 a week as an unknown radio actor without my name being mentioned.

(orson welles' radio show is played)

v.o.
Welles played, anonymously, a hugely populer hero called The Shadow for a year until one notorious Halloween 1939 when his cover was blown and his name became a household world.


(orson welles' radio show is played)

v.o.
Faced with a dull script of the War of the World, Welles came up with a brilliant idea. The invasion from Mars would be presented like real-life news flashes.


(orson welles' radio show is played)

v.o.
Not even Welles had anticipated what would happen next. Even before the broadcast was finished, the road was jammed with hundreds of cars heading for the hills. The panic spread. There were report of attempted suicide, even a rape by Martian invaders.

(end interview part2)

Orson Welles interview oleh Leslie Megahy - Stories of His Life - part1

Yang mengaku suka film, harus tahu siapa itu Orson Welles. Orang yang dikatakan sebagai sutradara terbaik dalam sejarah, paling berpengaruh di abad 21. Karya pertamanya yang ia garap ketika ia masih berumur 25 tahun disanjung sebagai film terbaik sepanjang masa. Belum lagi karya-karyanya yang lain yang tidak kalah luar-biasa seperti Touch of Evil, The Lady from Shanghai, Macbeth.

Berikut adalah interview oleh Leslie Megahy yang saya ambil dari youtube.com. Karena tidak ada subtitle, saya sertakan tulisan dari interview ini, namun masih dalam bahasa inggris. Saya harap interview ini bisa memberikan inspirasi.

Intro: And before that on we'll see Orson Welles tells his own story of his greatest achievement, and also frustration on a career extending well-beyond cinema.



v.o
In 1944 Orson Welles was 29 years old. He was to work his own particular magic for another 40 years. In Las Vegas in 1982, Orson Welles spoke to us about his life and work, his major triumph, and his biggest disappointment.

OW
I've never had a friend in my life who want to see a magic trick, you know. I don't know anybody who wants to see a magic trick. So I do it professionally. That's the only way I got a way to perform, you know. There are people in world who'll say, 'show us a trick', you know. I went once to a birthday party for Louie B Meyer, with a rabbit in my pocket, so I was gonna take it out of his hat. All came, Judy Garland, Danny K., Danny Thomason, everybody you've ever heard of, and then Al Johnson sang for 2 hours, and my rabbit was peeing all over me. And the dawn starting to rise on the Hill Chris Country Club as we said good night to Louie B Meyer, and nobody ask me to do a magic trick, with the rabbit and I went home. Unsung.


(laughing together, haha



LM
What make a good magician? You said seriously?


OW
Seriously. 
What makes a good magician? Is a man who can get that rabbit out in time.


(laughing)


(Welles' clip/radio show's shown)


OW
Is that sync? My goodness, I've never saw that before. It's wonderful. Technology is finally reached the movies, after 40 years of paralysis.


LM
I was interested in a phrase you used to (somebody), 'when you arrived in Hollywood you have the confidence of ignorance'. Can you tell me what that meant?


OW
Well, it's pretty much like my beginning in the theater. I had the confidence of ignorance. Not knowing anything about it. There's no basis for fear If  you're walking along the edge of a cliff, and you don't know it's the edge of the cliff, you have perfect confidence. I didn't discover the cliff in theater and film after I've been in it for a while.


LM
What happens then when ignorance turn to experience?


OW
Then you have to be careful not to listen to anybody. You have to remember your old ignorance and ask for the impossible with the same cheerfulness that you did when you didn't know what you're talking about.

LM
It does seem that you try recreate a sort of innocence in your approach to every single film.


OW
I like that very much. I think that's true.

v.o
Since the 1940's, Welles has been written about in more or less conflicting details. And if his biographer got it right, an expert magician and water-colorist by fall, a musical virtuoso at 3, a theatrical impresario, a scholar of Shakespeare and nature, a substitute for study by astonished child psychologist.Perhaps Welles the consummate storyteller playfully encourage the use of other legend about him. But there's no doubt that the your George Orson Welles from Wisconsin was a prodigious child.


LW
Did you play the King Lear at the age of 9?


OW
No. Certainly not. It's one of those exaggeration. I played Mary the mother of Jesus at the age of 13. But no, didn't touch King Lear until later on.


LW
How much of this whole business of child prodigy is...?


OW
The musical part of this is true. I was one of those abominable little creatures, you know, with a baton, and I played the violin. Then I played the piano. There's nothing more hateful on earth. I was one of those. My mother was a professional musician, died when I was 9, and I stopped playing immediately. It's kind of trauma, traumatic shock from her death, combined with, I think, essential laziness and delight having not have to do all those scales, and abandoned my career in music. That what I was supposed to be destined for.


LW
And all the other stuff about being studied as a child prodigy...?


OW
Yes, I was sort of. I was spoiled in a very strange way as a child. Everybody told me, from the moment I was able to hear, that I was absolutely marvelous. Never heard a discouraging words for years. I didn't know I was ahead of things. I paint then everybody said nobody ever seen such paintings! I played, anybody never played like that! It seem to me there's no limit to what I can do.


v.o.
In his early teens Welles decided to leave America and go on his travels. He took his brushed and canvasses, he decided to be an artist. In a moment of autobiography on his film F for Fake, he describes the turning point in his life.


(Welles' clip is shown)


Interview part 1 end

Filmmaker muda have nothing to lose

Raoul Coutard adalah seorang sinematografer senior Perancis. Ia diasosiasikan kuat dengan gerakan film French New Wave dan kolaborasinya dalam film-film Jean Luc Godard.

Di bawah saya lampirkan video interview Coutard menceritakan bagaimana ia akhirnya berkolaborasi dengan Godard dalam Breathless dan pengalaman bekerja dengannya.



"Since I was an apprentice, well -- I wasn't known in cinema, so I wasn't really risking anything. I could take the risk of doing something like that, it wouldn't harm -- But I can't imagine Matras or Kelber doing something like that. Or Lefevre- and definitely not Dec-e"

translasi:
"Karena saya masih pemula, tidak ada yang tahu siapa saya, jadi saya tidak bertaruh apapun. Saya bisa mengambil resiko melakukan itu, tidak akan merusak reputasi saya. Namun saya tidak bisa membayangkan Matras atau Kelber melakukan hal itu. Atau Lefevre- dan pastinya Dec-e."


Ini adalah keuntungan para pembuat film pemula yang masih merintis karirnya, termasuk saya:) Kita tidak memiliki nama atau apapun yang harus dijaga atau dipertaruhkan. Jika film kita jelek, ya kita memang masih di titik nol, titik awal. Daripada membuat sesuatu yang itu-itu saja, pesan ini terutama buat sinematografer karena memang Godard menonjol dalam aspek tersebut, sama seperti sebelum-sebelumnya (sudah jelek, ditiru pula), kenapa tidak membuat sesuatu yang seenaknya? Nyeleneh? Godard berani melakukan itu, padahal ia mengambil gambar masih menggunakan film, yang artinya tiap frame butuh duit! Kalau jaman sekarang ini sudah sangat diuntungkan dengan adanya kamera video. Mau retake 10 kali, memang ada kerugian waktu, tenaga, dan kesabaran, tapi dari stok film, tak ada biaya sama sekali, gratis!