Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles

Still from The Third Man

Making a documentary about a man as complex and unpredictable as Orson Welles always has the potential to be a thankless task.  The man’s personal and professional exploits could comfortably fill a twelve-part television series, so, when condensing it all down into ninety minutes, do you focus on a particular chapter of his life, or an episodic overview of it all?  Director Chuck Workman chooses the latter in his new film, Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles, and the result is a highly commendable and hugely moving documentary. 

The broad strokes of Welles’ life are covered as well as in any of his other biographical works: the child prodigy that became the pioneer of modern theatre and radio.  Then evolving into the masterful filmmaker who, after creating one indisputable masterpiece, spent the rest of his life struggling through varying levels of lesser success and disappointment.              

Workman breaks these episodes down methodically, splitting the film into five clear sections.  It is neither an overly sentimental praising of his life, nor a smear campaign.  His revolutionising of radio, theatre and film feature as prevalently as his arrogance, ego, failings as a father and husband and his struggles with his weight and alcohol later in life. 

The greatest success of Workman’s film is portraying a real sense of the incessant tragedy of Welles’ life.  Whether of his own doing, or the failings of the industry itself, his was an existence of wasted potential, his journey littered with countless unfinished projects.  And almost all of the projects he did finish were then wrestled away from him and butchered.  This fact provides two of the finest moments of the film; the first in which the brilliance of his original opening to A Touch of Evil is compared to the studio’s substandard version.  And secondly, where Oja Kodar, Welles’ partner for the final 24 years of his life, tells a story of finding him watching The Magnificent Ambersons on television.  Alone, and unaware Kodar was watching, Welles sat silently crying at how the studio had ruined his otherwise brilliant film. 

Welles knew he was brilliant, everyone else seemed to know he was brilliant, and the work he produced when left alone was undoubtedly brilliant – but Hollywood doesn’t like those that it cannot control.  So Welles remains one of the more tragic figures in the history of film, the archetypal what-could-have-been.  His life, particularly the final twenty years, was an undignified, depressing descent into parody that threatened to spoil what was left of his legacy.  But for his contribution to independent film alone he deserves much more. 

Workman’s film takes the traditional view of Welles as the maverick; his overview is comprehensive, and his conclusion utterly heartbreaking.  As one contributor says, “He was a destitute king.  On this earth, there was no kingdom fit for Orson Welles.” 

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles will be showing at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 9 July 2015.

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles official website