cahiers du cinema 11
TRANSCRIPT
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No
cahiers du
in english
Orson
Weller
lngtn r
Bergman
Alain
essua
Robert Flaherty
8 6 1 25
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The
27-minute French
short Grand
Prize-winner
at
Cannes
and winner
of
the Academy Award.
Based
on
the
short
story by Ambrose Bierce,
it
re-creates
the tense atmosphere of the War of Secession.
A spell-binding drama of a condemned man-
with an
incredible denouement.
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267 WEST 25TH STREET
NEW YORK,
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c hiers u
Luis
Bunutl: Belle tit
j our
Hhtrine Qe.
ntU\
t
Grnevirve Page.
in nglish
Number
11
September 1967
ORSON
WELLES
AND JACK
FALSTAFF
Welles
on
Falstaff, Interview
by
Juan
Cobos
and
Miguel Rubio
(
CdC 179, June
1
966
) .
5
Welles in Power,
by
Serge
Daney
(CdC 181, Aug
1966
)
16
The Other Side,
by
Pierre Duboeuf (CdC 181, Aug 1966)
18
Jack le Fataliste,
by
Jean-Louis Comolli (CdC 181, Aug
1966
)
20
Sacher
and
Mosoch,
by
Jean
Narboni
(CdC 181, Aug
1966
)
22
lNGMAR
BERGMAN (
CdC
188, Mar
1967
)
The
Serpent s
Skin,
by
lngmor Be r
gman
24
The P
ha
ntom
of
Personality,
by Jean
-
Louis
Comolli
30
ALAIN
JESSUA (CdC
188
,
Mar 1967
)
Meeting with Aloin Jessuo,
by
Michel
Delahoye
36
SADOUL-FLAHERTY
A
Flaherty
Mystery,
by Georges
Sodoul
46
CAHI
ERS
CRITIQUES
Bresson: Balthazor,
by
Rene Gilson (CdC 182, Sept 1966) 54
Lewis: Three on a Couch,
by Jeo
n-Louis Comolli (CdC 186, Jon
1967
)
57
Groulx:
Cat
in the Sock,
by Jacques
Levy (CdC
187
, Feb
1967
)
59
Goldman: Echoes
of
Silence,
by
Jean-Claude Biette (CdC
11?8
, Mar 1967) 60
ODDS AND ENDS
Council
of
Ten (C
dC 185,
Dec
1966
)
4
Luis
Bunuel's 'Belle
de Jour
'
4
Editor's Eyrie,
by
Andrew
Sarris 62
CAHI ERS DU
CINEMA IN ENGLISH,
PRINTED
MONTHLY
Administrative ond
Subscription
Office: 635 Madison Ave., N. Y., N.
Y.
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Editorial Office: 303
West 42nd
St.,
N.
Y.,
N. Y.
10036
Publisher: JOSEPH WEILL
Ed itor-in-Chief: ANDREW SARRIS
Monoging Editor: JAMES STO LLER
Contributing
Editor:
RA
LPH
BLASI
Tran
slator:
JANE P
EASE ROBERT STEELE
P
hoto
Acknowledgement: French Film
Office
, Museum of
Modern
Art
Porent
Pub lication: CAHIERS
DU
CINEMA. Revue
mensuelle du Cinema. Administrotion·Publicit6
8
rue
Marbeuf, Paris 8 Redaction: 5. Clement·Marot, Paris 8. Comiti de redaction: Jacques Donioi-Volcroze,
Daniel Filipocci, Jean·luc Godard,
Pierre
Kosi, Jacques Rivette, Roger
Therond,
Francois
Truffout.
Redacteurs en
chef:
Jean-louis Comol li,
Jean·louis
Ginibre. Mise en pages: Andrea Bureau. Secretariat:
o c ~ u e s
Bontemps, Joon·Andri fi e
schi. Documentation: Jean-Pierre Biesse.
Sicnitoire
general:
Jean
Hohman
Space Soles
R
epresen
ta tive:
C·l
A
ssociates, 9
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., N. Y.
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AL S 4n1
U.S. i s t r i b u t i o n ~
Eastern
News Distributors, Inc.,
155
West 15th St., N. Y., N.
Y.
10011. All
rights
reserved. Copyri
g ht 1967 by
Cohiers
Publishing Company.
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LE
CO
NSElL DES DIX ouncil of ten
)
COTATIONS (Ratings) Inutile
de se
d eranger (No use bothering)
*a voir a Ia rigueur (see if necessary)
a
voir (see)
*** a voir absolume
nt
(see absolutely)
****
chef-d'oeuvre (masterpiece)
Michel Jacques
Jean-Lou
is Albert
Jean M
chel
Jean-
Andre
Michel
Jean
Georges
Aubriant
Bontemp
s Bory
Cervon
l
Collet
Delahaye
Flesch
Mardore
Narbon
i
Sadoul
(Candide)
(Cahie
r
s)
(Arts)
Fra nce
(Telerama) (Cahiers)
Ca
hiers)
(
Pari
scope)
(Cahiers)
(les Lettres
Nouvelle
)
Francaises
)
La Prise de pouvoir par Louis
XIV (Rossellini)
***
***
*** ****
**** ****
***
***
**
Le
Chat
dans
le
sac
Cat
in
the Sack) (Gi lle
s Grou
lx)
***
*
*** **** ***
***
**
***
**
Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock)
** ****
* *
***
****
***
***
~
*
Cul-de-sac {Roman
Polanski)
** ****
***
• ***
*
**
*
***
Du courage pour chaque jour (Kazdy
den
odvahu)
(
Eva ld
Schorm)
* **
**
*** **
***
*
**
*
Le
Deuxieme Souffle (Jean
-P
ierre
Melville)
***
•
¥¥**
¥¥**
*
'
•
• ***
•
*
Les
Coeu
rs verts (Edoua rd
Luntz)
*
**
** * **
*
*
* **
War
and Peace II (Natacha) (Serge Bondartchouk)
* * *
*
•
*
The Bible (John Huston)
• • * ** • **
*
• **
Le
Voleuse (Jean Chapot)
•
• • ***
**
• •
** *
Alvarez Kelly (Edward Dmy tryk)
*
• •
**
•
*
•
•
*
L Esp
i
on (The
Defector) (R
ao
ul Levy)
*
• * * *
* • •
•
•
One
Million
BC (Don
Chaffey)
** • • • *
•
*
•
Hitler (S
tuart
Heisler)
• • •
*
**
• * •
•
The Russians Are Coming (Norman Jewison)
•
• *
•
•
•
Tonnerre sur 'Ocean lndien (Sergio Bergonzelli)
•
•
•
Les
Enquiquineurs (Roland Quignon)
•
•
•
•
La Nuit des adieux (Je an Dreville)
•
•
• •
Othello (Stuart Burge)
•
• • • • •
•
Soleil Noir (Denys
de La
Patelliere)
•
•
• • • • •
•
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Welles on ~ a s t a f f
nterview rvith
Orson
lles
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Orson Welles: Falstaff Orson Welles
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QUESTION-In the
reading,
the
sce-
nario
of
alstaff
seemed
much
Jess trag.ic
than
the film
that it
bas become •
ORSON WELLES-Yes, oow ir
is a
very
s
ad
story.
Perhaps that
is a mis-
take on
my
part. Moreover
I find
the
film
funnier
in
English
than
io
Spanish.
The Spanish version is
very
well done,
but there were
difficulties io
translating
the
jokes. In any case my character is
less
funny than
I had hoped.
But
the
more
I
srudied the pan, the l e ~ s
funny
it appeared to me. This problem pre
occupied me
during
the entire
shooting.
I
played the role three
times
on
the
stage
before
filming
it,
and Falstaff
appeared to me
more witty
than fun-
ny. I
don t
th ink very highly
of
those
moments in
which I am
only
amusing. t seems
t
me that Falstaff
is a man
of
wit
rather than
a clown.
I directed
everything, played
eve
ry
·
thing,
in
the perspective of the
last
scene.
So that the
relationship berween
Falstaff
and
the
Prince
is
no longer the
s
impl
e comic
one that one
finds
in
Shakespeare s
Hettry
V Part I
t
is a
foretelling, a
preparation for th
e tragic
ending. The
farewell
scene is. foretold
four
times in
the film
The
death
of
the Prin
ce,
the
King
in his castle,
the
death of Hotspur, which
is
that of
Ch
ivalry,
the poverty and
illness of Fal-
staff,
are presented
throughout
the
en
tire
film and must darken
it. I
do not
beli
eve that
comedy
should dominate
in
such a film.
Yet
Falstaff representS a
positive spirit, io many respeCtS cour-
ageous,
aod even when be
makes
fun
of
his cowardice. He is a man
who
representS a vi rtue in the process
of
di
s .
appearing. He wage
s a struggJe
lost
in
advance. I
don t
believe be is
~ k i n g
anything.
He
represents
a va
lu
e;
he
is
goodnes;.
He
is
the character
in
whom
I believe
the
most,
the most entirely
good man
in all
drama.
His faults
are
trivial
and
he makes the
most
enor-
mous jokes from
them
. . . His good
ne
ss
is
like bread
,
like wine. That
is
why
I
lost th
e comic
side
of
his char-
acter
a
littl
e;
the more
I
played him,
the more
I felt
that
I represented good-
ness,
purity.
The film speaks
too of the terrible
price
that
the
Princ
e
must
pay
in
ex-
change
for
power. In the historical
writ
ings, there is that
balancing
berween the
triangle
(
th
e
king
,
his son, and
Falstaff,
who
is a
kind of
foster
father)
aod
the other plot, that
of
Horspur
,
which
is
much
longer and intricately con-
structed, and
very
interesting. I t keeps
the triangle from dominating the sima
cion.
But in the
film,
which was made
essentially in
order to tell the
srory
of
that
triangle, there
are
necessarily ele-
ments that cannot have the same exist-
ence as in the original
works.
In the
face
of
Falstaff,
the
king
repr
ese
nt
s
re
spo
nsibility. The
interesting
thing,
in
the
story is
that the old king
is a
murderer, he has usurped
the
thron
e,
and yet be
represents
legitimacy. The
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Story is extraordinary because Hal,
the
le gitimate prince, must betray the good
man co become a
hero
, a heroic
and
renowned Englishman. . . •
QUESTION - The film becomes a
kind
of lament
for Falstaff.
WELLES-Yes,
perhaps
that s true.
I
would lik
e
peopl
e
to
see
it
that wvy.
Although it was not made to be that
alone, but alro, a lament for the death
of Merrie
England
-
which
is a con
cept
, a
myth
chat was very
real for all
who speak English, and which,
to
a
certain exte
nt
was prese
nt
in other
countries in the Midd le Ages. In a gen
eral way, it was
the
age of chivalry,
of
i m p l i i t y and on on. That
which
dies is mo re than Falstaff,
th
e old Eng
land
, betrayed.
QUESTION
- The Magnificent
Am -
berson
s
too,
was
a lament for a va n
ished age
WELLES-Yes.
Not
so much for
an
age as for the sense of moral values.
that has
been
destroyed. In
the
case
of The i\ aguificeut Am bersom, they
we re destroy
ed
by
the
automobile.
In
the
case
of Falstaff there are other
s that
ar e becrayed in
th
e of power,
of
duty
, of responsibility, of national
grandeur
,
and
so on. I put a
mor
e per
sonal feeling, a deep emotion, into these
two films
than
into
the
ochers. People
think that my films are violent and
often cold; but I believe chat The Mag-
tli/ice
llf
Am bersons and Falstaff repre
sent more than
anything,
what
I
would
like to do in cinema. Whether I
have
succeeded
or
not, I
do not
know ; but
that is
the
closest
to
what I have always
wanted
to say.
QUESTION-Do you think that
there
is a difference in style between Falstaff
and your earlier .films?
WELLES - People
have
always at·
tributed a
great
deal of importance
to
the
sryle
of
my films.
Yet
I
do not
think that they are dominated by s.cyle.
I have one, I hope, or several, but I
am nor essentially a formalise. I am
most
concerned with
rendering
a mus i
cal impression. Music and
poetry, more
than merely visual imaginati
on.
The
visual aspect
of
my films is that
which
is dictated
to
me by poe
tic and
musical
forms. I
do
not
start
from forms to
try to
find a poecry or a musical rhythm
and
try to
plate
them
on to
the
film.
The
film ought on the contrary to
follow that rhythm effordessly. People
tend to think that
my first preoccupa
tion is with the visual, that only
the
visual effects
interest
me. With me
all
that comes from an inn er rhythm.
Ther
e
are
many beautiful things that I see
every day
in
this film and tbat I had
nor even tried
to do
because they bad
nothing to
do with it. I do not stroll
about like
a collector choosing lJeauti
ful images and pa>ring them together.
I consider a film as a poetic means. J
do
noc believe
that it
comperes
with
painting or choreogq•phy, bur that its
visual aspect is only -a ' ke} giving access
to
irs poetry. It does not justify itself
in itself. No film justifies itself in itself,
no matter
whether it
be
beautiful
, strik
ing, terrifying,
tender
. . . I t signifies
nothing, unless it makes poetry possible.
But
the
difficulty comes from
the
fact
that poetry
suggests things that are ab
sent, evokes more than what
you
see.
Orson Welles: The Magnificent A mbersons
8
And the d
anger in
CtDema is that,
in
using
a camera, you see everything,
everything is there.
Wh a
t one must
do
is succeed
in
evoking, in
making
things
emerge
that are not in
fact, visible,
in
br
inging about a spell. I
do
not know
whether I attained that in
Falstaff.
I
ho pe so. f so, I have reached my artis
tic maturity. f not, I
am
in decline,
believe me.
Now, I
try
co
bring about
an effect
in
films,
not
by technical
surp
r ises,
shocks, but by a ve
ry
great
unity
of
form;
th
e
true form of
cinema,
inner
form, musical form. I believe
that
one
ought to be
able to
enjoy a
ilm
with
on
e's eyes closed ; a
blind
man ought
to
be capable of enjoying a film
We
all
say The only
true
films are the silents.
But, in fact, cinema has been talking
for forty years;
ro
we ought
to
say
something in it,
and
when something
is said,
when
there is sound and music,
that ought to have re
chnically-I
speak
now,
not
of poetry, but of technique
an absolutely recognizable form, so that
one sees that everything subjects itself
co
that
form. The idea,
the per
ronal
view of
the
auteur of
the
film, ought
co rend co a unique, total form.
QUESTION-During
th
e filming of
the
battle in
Falstaff
you made shots
of
considerable
duration
and
then
you
shortened them in editing. . . .
WELLES-Yes. f you remember,
at
first I
want
ed to make brief shots, bur
I
had to
extend
them
because I realized
that the
actors
would not
give a good
performance
i f
they did not
have
some
thin
g connected
to
do . . .
One would
not have had
the
impression that they
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Orson Welles:
Falstaff
Welles,
Margaret Ru
therford,
Jeanne
Moreau.
were really in the midst of fighting, i
they
had not had the tim
e
to
warm
up;
that is
why
the shots were very ex·
tended. But I
knew that
I was
going
tO
use them only in short fragments.
For example, I filmed the battle 5::enes
with a
crane that
shifted position very
quickly at g.round level, as quickly as
poss.ible,
to follow the
action.
And
I
knew exactly what I was doing to do
after
that- to cut and
edit
the
frag
ments so that
each
shot would show
a blow, a counterblow, a
blow
received ,
a
blow
s
truck
,
and
w
on
. . .
But
I
nev er thought
to
use
more
than a
short portion
of
the
field
covered by
the camera.
Now
the battle
lasts
about
two
minutes
longer
than I
had
thought
beforehand. Maybe it is
too extended;
I
do
not
know.
QUESTION-The
fi
lm was
to
begin
with the murder of Richard
II
. . .
WELLES-We had shot the scene,
bur then that did not
seem clear
enough
tO
me. Instead of explaining
the
politi
cal context, it ran the ri£.k of
con
fusing it.
Then too,
in
order tO
finish
it,
it
would
have
been necessary
to
work
on
it
for four or Jive days and
I did
not want tO
involve
the producer
in that kind of expense. It was that way
with the
debarkation of
Henry
Boling
broke, which I had also begun
tO
shoot.
It was an interesting thing, and I was
p l e ~
with that
scene,
but
I believe
that
a director
ought absolutely to
be
able co reject
some
of his shots, even
the most beautiful. To my mind, an
autettr who cannot
bear
the
idea
of
ridding himself of something, under
the pretext that
it
is beautiful, can ruin
a film.
That
a
shot
is
beautiful
is
not
enough tO
keep it.
You
remember .the
two old men walking in the snow?
.i\1arvelous
image
s
but
I
took th
em
out.
I could have been self-indulgent
and
let
the
audience see
tho
se shots. Every cine
club in
the world would
have said
How
beautiful that is " But th ey would
have
compromised the internal rhythm
of the film. One ought to be implacable
with one's own material A film is
made as much with
what
one takes
away as with
what
one joins to . it.
QUESTION-Does
it
often happen
th t
you have to sacrifice scenes?
WELLES- During the shooting I
sacrifice
what
in my opm10n will
not
work out,
because it is roo difficult,
or unnecessary
tO
the film a5 a whole,
or
boring.
I
am
very easily
bored, and
I
think that the audience may
be too.
You
cinephiles do not feel that bore
dom.
f
I were
to make
films for
those
who
love cinema essentially,
might
be
too long drawn
out. To
my
mind,
one
should
be able to tell a stOry by
cinema
more
quickly
than
by any other
means. The tendency in th ese las.c
twenty
years, especially
in the
last
ten
years,
bas
been to
go more and more
slowly, and, for the director, to
delight
in
what people
call visual ideas. For
me
one of the
strengths
of cinema is its
speed and its concentration. For ex
ample,
at the
end
of the
film,
th
ere is
a scene that is not quite the same in
Shakespeare,
when Henry
V gjves
orders
that Falstaff be s.et free,
with,
at his
back,
the two
traitOrs,
the
most relent·
less opponents of clemency. In Shake
speare the scene does
not happen
with
Falstaff, nor are the
two
men there.
Their attitude
is typical; they are poliri-
9
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8/18/2019 Cahiers du cinema 11
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cal
connive
rs of
th
e
palac
e, the
et
e
rnal
palace schemers. I do not
know whether
the au
di
ence
notices this detail,
which
I
th
in k
important.
I do
not like ve
rbiage
or lose time; I
lik
e what is
concent
rated
and swift.
I
know that
I lose a gr
eat deal
that
way,
and th
at
th
e
audience
risks letting
som thin
gs pass
unob
se
rved. 1
hope
that some will see those details, and
o
ch
ers, d ifferent ones.
f
eve
rything
is
clear, precise,
th
e
fi
lm ri ks
being ve
ry
thin. 1 do
not want
to criticize
certain
con
te
mp
orary directors
wh
om people
consider
very grea
t,
but often
they
ilm
one
effect and only one. You
can
see
th e
lilm
teo
time
s; you wilL
admire
ex
actly the same thing, without discover
ing
anything
else.
I think that a film oug,ht to be
full of
things
details
that
one
does
oot
see
the
firs
.t
time.
I t
o
ught not
be
entire
ly
obvious. I
do not
Jike thin films
QUESTION
- Some
time
s
you shoot
the same scene se
veral
times, on several
days,
and
yer
yo
u scarcely
look at your
.rushes.
WELLES-Ru
shes
are no
t
important
for
me.
And
1
do not
r eally s
hoot
a n
ew
ta ke in
th
e sense in
which one und
er
stands
that in Am
erica; that s to say a
s
hot
that does not
work
for primarily
tech nical reasons.
ln
America
one doe
s
ir
most
of the tim e
for that
reason;
as
for
me, I do it because
perhap
s my
purel
y
personal work
is
not good
enou
gh. f
I r emake a scene,
that s
because
it
does nor
appear
p
erfect to
me,
and 1
can
do that only when I work in
th
e
sa
me
se
tting. I never come back co
a se
tting where 1 hav
e finished s
hooting.
T h
at
is a
lu xur
y
that
I
cannot permit
my
se
lf. But
wh
en I
hav
e
th
e same
actors
and
1
realize that
somethi
ng
does
not
come off,
it
is ben er
to
s
tart again. t
Cardona, we
did not do many
takes. be
cause I had
John
Gielgud
for only two
weeks. I kn ew wh en we felt that a
grea
t deal of
work
re
mained-which,
mo r
eover , we
did
Iacer
in
Madrid.
I
knew that
I
would
use stand-ins because
John Giclgud
played a role
that
last
ed
almost
as l
ong
as mine.
Moreov
er, Fal
srnff is
th
e
o ~ c
difficult
ro l
e
that
I
have
ever
played, and l a m still not convinced
that
I
rendered
it wd l. As an actor, I
should like tO redo th r
ee
scenes
at
least.
One must be se,•
ere with
onese
lf
,
when
one is
at
the s.ame time actor and direc
tor of a film. And as I sa id, falsraff s
a
role
char
demands an
e
normou
s
amount of
work, a very difficult role.
QUEST
I
ON-When
you
work, on
the
set
th
ere is
what one
can call a
kind of
"o rdered disorder, for exa
mple
when
yo u pass from
one
scene to another in
the same clay
of
shooting.
WELLES-There are se
ve
ral
reasons
for thar. fi rst, what seems disordered
h as in fa
ce
so
metimes a perfect logic.
For one to
ex
plain everything to the
assi
stant and to
th e
oth
ers
would
r e
quire
ten
minut
es each
time-to
say
why
one
must
move a floodlight, w hy I do th is or
Orson Welles:
lstaff
Beatrice
and
Orson Welles.
1
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that. I do nor do so, and
that
is why
I seem capricious. Bur
there
are many
other reasons. Out of
doors, for
ex
ample, the position of the suo deter
mines everything, so that pass
suddenly
from one sequence co another, or
even
to a sequence char was not planned for
char day,
if
the light seems suitable co
me.
You
see, I
do not
begin co
work
saying ro
myself
Today we
will
posi
tively
make
this
or
that ~ , e q u e n c e , be
cause
if
suddenly the sunlig,ht is suit·
able
for another, and if
it
is
the
most
beautiful light in the world, rhe
only
way ro make my sequences beautiful roo,
is ro shoot at that exact moment. There
are the two technical reasons for that
ordered disorder.
On rbe other hand, it happens that
the
actors are nor at their best on
the
day planned.
You
feel
that
they
would
be anot
her
day, in another atmosphere.
Things
are nor coming off.
Then you
muse change; chat is
co
everyone's ad
vantage. When all the
lighting
is in
posicion,
co
change everything in
order
to pass to the next scene causes con
siderable Joss
of
rime, and you know
that
I
like
to
work
fast.
Therefore
I
jump about
in
the work schedule, and
I sow confusion. In the end I lose less
time;
the
disorder does nor necessarily
mean that I work slowly. I believe on
the
contrary
that
it
is desperately neces
sary to work
quickly.
QUESTI
ON-What
place do you give
to improvisation?
WELLES-In films we are always
beggars, in a way; we stand, hands out
stretched, hoping that manna will fall
from heaven. At
times
one
shoots
tbink
ipg that God will
put
something into
ope s plate; rometimes
He
does
and
then
one seizes it.
Sometimes
things
are
not
in perfect
working state
and
I shoot all rhe same.
I
do
not
think that that
makes a
great
difference. As you know I
am
in a cer
tain way a maniac, a perfectionist, but
in
many other
aspects,
not
at
all.
I al
ways leave some
things uoelaborared;
I
do not
believe chat a .film is to be
made like those
pictures
in
which people
paint the leaves
of
a tree one by one.
I can
work and work
still
more
on an
actor's playing, wair
until
everything is
perfect. Bur in general I shoot
more
quickly
and
I
am
satisfied with it. I
work much more
crudely
than
many
directors. It may be that an assistant
is still running about. That is all the
same
to
·me. I
go
ahead
. I
be
li
eve
that
that
cont
r ibutes toward keeping irs liv
i ng aspect for the film. The terrible
danger
for
a .film is co Very w -
silence-long
pause-
with all those
gesrures, - all
that
ceremony. I
try to
keep a little
of
the feel ing
of
improvisa
. tion;
of
conversation.
Ordinarily,
I have
· music on
the
set. Not here, because
I had difficulties with the technical
aspect of
the
organization, on account of
1
the
dimensions of
the
film
and the
dif
. fieulties of
my
own ro le, of
the
' costumes,
· _ and
so
on.
I
had
to be
much more
2
austere than
usual. Bur almost always,
when
I am on the set, there is music,
to
try
to make people
forget
that
they
are in the process
of
making a .film.
During the
shooting
I eliminate every
thing that
could
slow
it. On
my
films,
the sound engineer does nor have the
right
ro ask that a shot be remade.
T he
only
thing that he is
co
do, is to
catch the sound.
No
script girl,
however
good
she may be, has che r ight to speak.
If,
without speaking, she wants
to
shift
something, all
right,
but she
mus 1
never
speak. Sound,
makeup, take
an hour
every day.
f
one does
not
Jet
people
speak, one gains an hour
of
shooting.
I warn my collaborators
at
the start that
they are
not
going
to
like
the
film be
cause the>• will nor be able to do their
work
on it,
that
I will
not
lee
them
do
it. I say to rhero- Scay, but you know
that you are going to be 'second
clas.s
citizens' and that
nobody
wi
ll
ever
ask
you 'Is that all
right with
you?'
There
is
almost
no makeup in my
Jil.ms;
I do not
give
it a thing. I use it
only to change the appearance of a face
or
someone's age; otherwise, no
makeup.
In
fact, I believe chat I
was
the
firs.t
director
not to
use it.
There
is
none
in
Citizen Kane, except
for
the character
that
play. That was
the
first time,
I believe.
Perhaps
too in
The
Grapes of
W1·ath. I
think
that makeup is bad for
films. That is
what
rhe cameramen
think, roo.
f
you take a referen
dum
among all the good cameramen in the
world asking them whar they think of
makeup, I
promise
you that ninety-eight
percent
of
them will be against it. But
the
cameramen
do nor want to
cake
the
responsibiliy
of
attacking the occupation
of the makeup man. That is
why
they
do
nor
go
find
the director and
ask
him: Why all that makeup? They Jet
people go on smearing. themselves,
which is pointless.
QUESTION-Did
you
work a
long
time on your project before shooting
Falstaff?
WELLES-Yes, I did a stack
of
re
search. Besides, I
had already worked
on
that period
earlier. So I know
that
period rather well. But when you
have
done that research,
then
. . . The ele
ments
of
the research are
only a
pre
paration. You
muse nor make
museum
pieces; you must create a
new
period.
You
muse invent your own England,
your own
period,
starting from what
you have learned. The drama itself
fixes rhe
universe
in which
it is
going
to
unroll.
QUESTION-What impor
tance
do
you
give
to the
setting in
your
films?
WE L
LES-Very
much, obviously. But
a setting ought noc to appear perfectly
and
solely real. In
other terms, one
of
the
enemies of
the
.film s
the
simple
banal fact. A tree, a rock, you know,
are the same
for
the roan who takes a
family photograph on Sundays and for
us. So we must be able, thanks to the
photography,
to the lighting, and to all
chat can transform the real, to charge
it
witlt a ''charact
er,
sometimes
with
a
glamour, sometimes w ith an aruac·
tion, a myscery, that it does not possess.
In this sense, the real must be treated
like a setting. There is, too, an aesthetic
problem that
is almost never resolved in
period films. I do not know why say
a l m o ~ . t ;
I {)ught to say never in the
history of cinema,
wit
h
the
exception
of some Jilros of Eisenstein. Films
that
I do not admire particularly in them
selves but which resolved that problem.
The
external
world, the
sky with
its
clouds, the trees,
and
so
on,
have
nothing
to do
with
the
settings;
therefore it mat·
rers little whether the Jaccer are convinc·
ing, papier-mache or magnificent,
whether the
actors
are
in
period
cos
tume or nor, because then they mount
on horseback, go off coward a place dis·
closed to view and suddenly everything
is banal, modern. Sudden ly you feel
that
at
wme moment a jec p lane can
cross the sky. I do nor
know
why, but
I am always aware of the inautbenticiry
of a period,
from the
fact
that
the actors
are
in costumes
and
have a false look,
when they are in a
natural
setting. But
I believe
that that
can
be resolved,
and
I resolved it, I think, in a way in
Othello, and still more here. \Vhat I tr}'
to do is
co
see with the same eyes rhe
external
real
world
and chat
which
is
fabricated. To create a kind of unity.
You see an actor correctly wearing a
perfect costume; everyth ing is ri
ght;
he
goes out and
suddenly
it becomes a
rented cosruroe.
The
on ly films in which
that comes off are westerns and Japanes.e
films, which are like westerns because
they belong to a tradition. A thousand
samura
i films are made every year, and
a thousand westerns,
but
they are found
ed on a tradition in which costumes and
nature have
learned
to live in juxtaposi
tion, and one
can
believe them.
Bur
see,
on the contrary, in H e t ~ r y V people
leave the castle on horseback and sud
denly they meet again on a golf course
somewhere
charging
one
another; you
cannot escape it, they have entered
an·
ocher world.
QUESTION- Ten years ago, in Edin
burgh
you
said
chat
perhaps
a happr
marriage between Shakespeare and
the
screen
was possible . . .
WELLES-
When
I made that
remark.
1 was
trying
to please my audience.
That
was surely demagogy. I
had
to
give
a two-hour lecture to an
audience
that had not
liked
my
Macbeth. So one
had to make
friends
with it
and
the
first thing that I could do was to admit
chat I
agreed with
them in pare
about
Macbeth,
and
in a
way, that
was true.
That is
because, besides the period
reconstruction,
there s another
problem
'ith Shakespeare,
that
of the text, of
course. When he wrote as one did in
the time of Lope de Vega, or
rather
in
the time of
Shakespeare-because
Eng
lish s richer
from
that
point
of view
than a Latin language-he did so
for
an audience which did not see, but
which was ab le
to hear. Just
as
the
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the real u t be treated like a setting. Orson Welles: FalstafF Keith Baxte r, John
Gielgud Baxter, Welles.
3
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Falstaff,
Orson Welles.
cinema audience today sees everyth
ing,
bur hears nothing.
Shakespeare w
ro t
e
in that
sense,
and there
is in
what he
says a close cexrure
that
one
cannot
change.
That
is
what
can
make
him
difficult
for ch
e audience
of
coday
For example,
one
cannot expect that a
popular audienc
e
will
appreciate
in
a
ilm
the
King s
speech on sleep, unless
one is d
ealin
g with an English audience
n
English, the cexr
p o s s e s ~ e s
a
power
, a
magic
ab le to tr ansfix cwo
thousand
G.I. s
in
Vietnam. But
trans
lated into
French or
Spanish
it can
fail
irs effect completely.
Nothing can be
done about
it.
WE
LLES--What is fine, in
the
character of the
prince, is
that he is
always Falstaff s friend,
but
char
at
every
Falstaff, Jeanne Moreau , Margaret Rutherford .
moment
somet
hing ecs
one
foresee his
disgrace
WELLES--
That is
where the
funda
mental idea lies, and I have
sho
w n
it
more
clearly
than
in the theatre. :Many
theatre
cr
itics find
that
the
banishment
scene, at rhe
end of
Henry
V
part 2
is roo
much
, a
littl
e
abrupt and im p
rob
able. That is merely because the pl ay
is often badly
performed.
I hope that
in
che fi lm
people
will understand better
what the
prince
is
going
to
do, that
he
muse
betray
Falscalf . . . I
do
nor
believe
that
his speech
will
affront
th
e
audience. Of cours.e che
problem
of
th
e
language
as a
whole rema
.ios, bur hap
pi ly
the
film includes
only one
speech
of
chat kind.
One cannot
cue it
merely
on
cbe
pretext
chat
it
will nor
be effec-
rive
other than in
English. E
ven if it
is
not
a
high moment
of the film, it is
indispensable
fo
r
understanding what
is
happening
in
the mind
of
th
e prince
Perhaps
one should cut
it
in
versi
ons
other chan the English. I do nor chink
char
the rest
of
the film poses sim
ilar
problems, ac lease I h
ope
nor.
The
Spanish version is very good, the tran
s
lation and the dubbin
g are exce
ll
ent
I am
sat
isfied with it. To
return
to th e
famous speech, perhaps
i t
would be
mo re effective in
German
or in
Russian
or i n Swedish. Shakespeare translates
badly into
the L
atin
languages,
and
when one
comes to
that
speech, wha
to
do
? (
In t
erview
taped by Juan
Cobos
and Miguel Rubi
o.
With the
aurhociza
rion
of the
review
riffith
Orson Welles: Falstaff, Tony Beckley, Jeanne Moreau, Keith Baxter.
4
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Orson Welles:
Falstaff
eanne Moreau Orson Welles.
5
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6
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1
Of
Falstaff,
\\7elles said
th
at
"He
wages a struggle lost in advance." And,
too,
"I don't
believe he is seeking
somethin
g.
H e r
ep resent
s a value;
he is goodness." That strength
and
ge
n ius
unanimously
recognized ele
brate only hopeless causes
or
majestic
downfalls, that a man
like
\\7elles,
exert·
iog an undeniable
influence
on
those
arou nd him, incarnates only the defeat
ed (disappearing, certrunly,
at
th
e
heart
of
an
impres-'\ive
machin
er
y,
but
still
worn by
li fe, betrayed
by
th eir own -
tbat
is a
very
surprisin,g thing.
Strange
malediction- that a man coo strong
can
on
ly
end badl
y.
And
yet, from Kane to
Falstaff,
from proud di
s
pla
y co bareness,
fr
om
a corpse
that
one
do
es
nor
see
to
a coffin
that
is carried, it is really the
same
s
to ry, that
of
a
mao wh
o makes
ill use
of
his
power.
Cinema tends to
recount bow
this
or
that character
(a
nd
behi
nd
him, often,
the do easte) bas
obtained
some po wer,
that
of
speaking, or
acting
, of making
a choice, and so
on.
Tho se are
perhaps
the
nobl
est films (
lik
e Le Heros
sacrilege, Le Caporal epbzgle,
or
l.e
Coe
tlr
d mze
mere), the
s
trang
e roads
on which the d oeastes
lead
the
ir
char
aCters, because
th
e
simp
lest
road
is
not
a
lwa
ys the
mo
st
natural,
because there
ace
detour
s
more
rich
than
s
traight
Hoes,
d
ef
eats
mo r
e noble than v iccories, and
so on.
The
winning
of
one's
power
aiming
at
it. me
riting it
,
sna
tching it-
is
preci
sely what Welles speaks of least.
It
is
the witches
who shape
Macbeth,
ad intuition that pushes Quinlan
forward . T he
fi
lms
of
Welles begin
where th
e
oth
ers end;
when
everything
is
wo n
,
nothin
g
more
remains
but
to
unlearn
everythi
ng
,
unto
dea
th
,
once
Quinlan, today
Falstaff.
2.
The
work of Welles, in that way
fru thful
to Shakes
pear
e, is a reflection
on the very idea of
Po w
er,
that
exces
sive freedom
that no one can follow
without
seeing in
it
, in the end, degnlda
tion and derision. Power is an evil
that
b
eing
s
l on
ly co those who do not yet
have
ir. Theirs the bold enterprises, the
efficaci
ous
and astonishing actions, the
well
contrived
plots
- men
of the
future, born
to
trample
on king.s,
to
whom it
is given, at least
once
in
their
lives, to rock
the world.
Kings
have
Welles
•
ower
y Se
rg
e Daney
o
ther
cares;
their
vicrory
is
automatically
without
prestige,
like
a repression, a
useless recall
of
the past.
Defeat
is the
on
ly
adventure which
r ema ins
for
them.
Abso
lu t
e power destr oys rea l
power,
condemns
it
co futility.
If
there is a
sense
of
the real," Musil sa id, " there
muse be also a sense
of
the possible."
And
a
little further, ' 'No doubt
God
Himself prefers to s
peak of
His creation
as
po
tentinl." In c
oo
extensive a
po
wer,
th
e
po
ssibl e
gnaws away the
real, con
demos it in advance;
one
action is never
more
necessary than
anoth
er;
good
and
evil,
in t
erchan
gea
ble, are equally
in
different. He
who
is master of the pos
sible
at
twenty,
lik
e Citizen Kane, ends
as slave ro his caprices,
surrendered
g
raduall
y to a power with
out
object or
e
cho
to an ar b
itrary
and mad activity,
u s e l e
a
nd
expensive,
which never
in
volves him completely,
but whic
h sep
arate
s him always more
and
mo re from
ochers (like
th
e career
of
a sing
er with
out a voice, or the
coll
ections heaped
up in
Xanadu). Who can do the most,
does th e leasr, or aces at
the margin
of
his
power.
Comed
y
demands
then
that
from a
prodigious
exp
endit
ur e of
power th ere results a rigorously useless
life
.
From
film
to
film,
to th
e exte
nt that
his
work
proceeds,
that
W elles ages,
the
sense of the derisory
grows stronger,
ro
the
point of
becoming th e
very
subjeCt
of th
e film
Ihe
Trial)
that
Welles
considers his best. Always,
eve
rywhere,
power
is in bad
hands.
T hose
who
possess
it
do not
know
enough
about
it
(Othe
ll
o
who
believes, ago, Macbe th
victim
of
a
play
or
words)-or
know
much
c
oo much
(
Arkadin
,
Quinlan
,
Hastier th
e l
awyer),
each
commit t
ed ro
purely
destructive actions by an excess
of
nai vete as
of
intelligence.
3. The life of
John a l ~ t a f f
is a
comme
rcial failure.
Shortly before
dy
ing,
be
observes
that his
friend-the
feeble
but prud
e
nt Robert Shal low
has been
more
successful,
and
be
prom
ises
himse
lf
co
cultivate his friendship.
No
doubt only
his
sud
den
death, which
no
one
had foreseen, spa res him the
last disillusion. Falstaff was born , not
to
receive,
but co give-without
dis
crimination
or h
ope of
return-or,
if
he
has
nothing, to
give himself
as an
corer-
truomeor. \Vel es calls
th i
s waste
the
goodness
of
Falstaff
(and
rbe l
atter· him
self remarks, "Not o
nl
y do
have
wit,
but give
i t
to ochers." Which is a
good d
efi
nition
of
genius.)
That
Fal
staff-whom
Shakespeare
bad ior
e
oded
mostly ridiculous
h
as be
co
me, imagin
ed, then inca
rnated
,
by
W e
ll
es, a mov
ing
·
characte
r is
no
t
very
s
urpri
sin
g. His
death
is not the disappearance--mysteri
ous
and legendary-of
a
Kan
e,
but th
e
drab
naked
eve
nt
in
which
one
must
read ,
although nothing
is
und
erlined ,
the end of a world. I f on e
amus
ed
one
se
lf
a
ll
th e year," says
th
e young
prince, "amu
sing
oneself would be fore·
ed labor." Of
what
is Falstaff guilty?
Nor
mu ch
of
having
i l l
used his
power, for he has scarcely any,
being
a
character
of
comedy, moreover
with
out
r
eal courage or authority.
P
er
hap
s
of having
used
without
r
estraint
speech ,
that power of parody, of ha
v
ing mad
e
from it
an
in t
errilioable histrionics, use
less and tedious, in which talent, i f
there
is any, asserts icseH
for nothing. More
certain ly s till of
having so
long survived
so
scanda
lous a
waste
of
his
energ
y (his
pu n
s
on ''was
te"
and
"wrust").
And
what
is sti
ll
more serious, victim
more
than culprit, i f he makes
i l l
use
of
his
affections roo,
when
he
c
hoo
ses as his
friend
the
very
person
who
will betray
him .
4
The work
of W e
ll
es is
singula
rl y
rich in
abuses
of tr ust The Lady from
Shanghai)
or in friendships
be t
rayed
(
Ot
hello).
T
he
s
trang.e and
scanda
lo u
s
complicity
that for some
time
links
Falstaff and the
young
prince makes
more
and
more
evident what it passes
over
in
silence, the difference
in
their
natures. Bur there
would
be no fascina
tion
between them
if each did not pre
cisely feel
th
at
they
are radically
dif
ferent, symbols of two
comp
lementary
and inimical
worlds, lik
e face
and
re
verse
of
the same coin. On
one
s
id
e,
Falstaff who lives
on
his
past
,
on
what
be
is already,
in
the
e
ntropy
of
a
fr
eedom deliberately
ruined.
On the
other, th
e f
utur
e H
enry V, who
is
nothing still, who will pe
rhap
s be a
gr
eat
king,
i f
be discovers that exact
re
lation
between
th
e
eifort
to
sup
pl
y
and the
end
co attain, th
e austerity a
nd
th e
rigor that ma k
es
po wer utilizabl
e.
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rson
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The
almost
monstrous egocentnclty
of th
e characters
whom
Welles,
has
in
carnated
in his past Jilms fascinated
only
because
it was accompanied by
a
more or
less
perceptible proportion of
vu ln erability.
Beyond
self-assertion, a
few scattered but
explicit signs be
trayed uneasiness and weakness; a
cer
tain
irritation
in
the movement
of his
eyebrows,
the
somedmes
extreme
ten
sion
of
his gaze, or
some
hesJtarion
in
the character s behavior,
gave
him a
pathetic
dimension
and aroused that
sense
of
fragility
that
the most instinc
tive
Strength
gives. The .flaw,
the
sensi
tive
part,
once
perceived,
the
fascina
tion was as irresistible as the first re
pulsion bad been strong.
Of
this
moral image
chat
Welles
has
bent
his
mind
to retOuch
from i lm to
film,
alstaff
offers us
the inverted
re
flection. Not chat
the
film witnesses a
change in the proceedings of Welles
or a new
orientation of
his arc, but
rather
because,
through the
same
mode
of iovesdgadon,
he makes a
kind of
moral discovery. The
primitive
s.trength
that stirr
ed
him has
lost its
cutting edge;
that
is
eno
ugh to
change
the
compon-
ents
of
his
portrait,
not
s
much
in their
respective natures as in their apportion-
meat. In the past, strength by
it
s
ob-
tuse pres.ence
crushed the underlying
virtues
of
the character;
today
devalor
ize
d, made
ridiculous, by age it lets
appear more
clearly
what was latent
and
scarcely perceptible- vulnerability
and
a ce
rtain
goodness,
the ultimate
form
chat
strength
or weakness assumes,
and which
decides
the emotional
ton-
ality
of
the Jilm.
From that, to sa
lute
in alstaff the
most accomplished Shakespearean work
of
Welles, is nor to envisage it
in
irs
specific character,
in
this special posi
tion
that the
film occupies
in
relation
t his
entire
work- a kind of corrigen
dum,
or
.rather,
of
complement, in the
sense
in
which
one
says that
two
colors
are comp
lementary, a
marginal
film
in
which
values
are
reversed as
i to make
more
explicit the rest
of
his
work
by
shedding
a new li
ght
on it.
For
ther
e is a great dist
ance between
chat
sombre shot in thello where th
e
convulsed face of Welles emerges
and
the pure
milky
whiteness
of
Falstaff,
between the wilful impetuous,
forehead
of
Kane
or of
Arkadin
and
the
full
features and the
unreserve
ting
ed
w ith melancholy
of Jack
Falstaff. In
th
e
exchange Welles has
lost his vi
sual
aggressiveness,
and
i
a
violent low-
angle shot
reapp
ears from
time
to time,
it
is
rather
as a
nosta
l
gic
recollection
of
the
past
. But he broods with a dis
quiet
like
Rembrandt s
over
his own
face,
and it
is
not
inconsequential
that
be finds th
ere
other acruoements, ac
cents. less
brilliant but more human,
which
be s
ub
s
titut
es for the dazzling
flashes
of the
past, so
that the
icy
imag
,e
of th
e
old
Kane, infinitely reflected in
the mirrors of Xaoadu,
recedes
before
th at
of
a king:s Fool, n
earer
co life.
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Orson Welles:
Falstaff
Welles Keith Baxter.
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Words. L
ike DidHot
's Jacques le
fataliste but
with
less naivete and inso
lence
than
he,
Welles'
Falstaff appears
ac firSt entirely given to the mania for
speech, actually mad with words build
ing his
dreams
on them,
mixing
li fe and
dream,
trusting enough
in
th
eir
pow
ers,
a nd certain enough of th
eir
fascinations,
to
leave to t
hem
the care
of
repairing
hi s blunders
and
his evasions.
That
is
because this Falstaff,
in
spi te
of
the
breadth
of
his waist, and
of
the space
that
he takes up on
the
screen, is as
much i not
mo r
e a being
of
air than
of flesh.
His
body is heavy but not his
wir,
and
that
bod
y had to be the
mou
cum
bersome, disabled,
ponderous
pos
sible, in order co
count
erbalance
and
sec
off to beSt advantage the agility of th e
wit, the fluidity ana the plasticity
of
speech.
I n Falstaff there
are
as it were two
orders clearly dist
inct
from each other
and
which complete each other, like
cwo Jines that cross each
other,
oppose
e
ach
other, and pu
rsue
each other, rhe
sec
tor
of
words
and
the
sector of actions.
On
one hand the heaviness, the en
cumbrance, of bodies, with
or without
armour, whose awkwardness
and
slow
ness of
motion,
at the same time as the
ir
enormous
strength,
are emphasized still
more
by a choice
of
short, cho
pp
y edit
in
g,
so that often
it
seems that Welles
has cur into the image co make the
gestures and rhe movements more jerky,
more clashing, an d by a see-sawing of
high
and low angle shots. The
battle
se
quence,
a lready famou
s
but
just
as
well chose of the ambush,
of
the dance
in th e tavern ,
or
the
strolls
of
FalStaff
and Justice Shallow, witness this concern
ro bring
our at
the
sa
me time rhe coo
fused haSte and the inertia
of
bodies,
their
resistance. That is the first space
of
the film, restricted, constraining, firm
ly anchored
at
its o n i i n limited .
On the
other
hand the treache
rous
freedom
of
words
. Falstaff owes a ll
h i ~
power to them, by them he wards off
the fury of the P rin ce,
reve
rses the
obvious, corrects the true. He is an
obstinate sophist, putting
int
o play, like
Shakespeare's fools, the entire range
of
plays
on
words, witticisms, puns, to get
the
better of the
other,
by
laughter or
by weariness.
Words
a re his
w e p o n ~
the sna res that he passes his rime setting
around him. Fal staff pu ts himse
lf
on
stage
with the minimum of gestures and
the maximum of words.
Thealt
·e. Bur it is within the film that
J ck le ataliste
y Jean Louis Comolli
one
must seek tb e th e
at
.re, and not
in
Shakespeare's theatre that
one
muse seek
FalstaO. That tavern , with its long tables
and its benches, irs common
room,
the
gallery that runs along the upper floor,
where from time
to
time
so
me curious
women
, scantily dressed, come to lean
over, to dominate the scene, is a
kind
of theat
re
in
th
e round, in
which
rhe
act
ors
are not far from spectatOrs when
t hey are nor both
at
once.
Ot
h
er
places,
an othe r scene, counterpart
of
the tavern,
with other actors and other speCtators
th e throne room, cleverly tiered,
lighted
from the side by beams of light that
could
be
tho
se of
spo
tl
ig
ht
s. On the one
hand th
e tragedy
of power, on th
e
o ~ e r itS comedy.
The parallel b
et
ween court and hovel
affecrs nor
on
ly th e settings and arrange
ment
of
the places; the King finds in
Falstaff his doub le and his reversed
image; Prince Henry has two fat hers,
the noble and the common, two masters,
one of mire and one of honor. Divided
between both worlds, between these two
tyrantS
who are
jealous
of
each other
and hate each
other,
he rehearses with
the
one what
he
plays with
the
other,
all
the m
ore proud in
the tavern be
cause he s ash
amed
in the palace. In
which
di rection docs one's charaCter in
cline?
Wher
e does since
rity
bide
? Fal
staff, the King, the Prince all three are
equally histrionic, and
oft
en with the
same
e m p b a ~ . i s th
e same holl
ow
maxims,
the same prom ises and the same abjura
tions. T he King, th e Fool, and he
who
has something
of both contrast with one
another
Je
ss than th ey resemble
on
e an
other.
In
this stra n
ge
Trinity, each s
the aetor playing himself mo re
or
Jess
well, and the differences are
only
those
of
technique and
of
talent. All three
rival one another in pride as in coward
ice, and this
rivalry
leads
them to
humiliate themselves
through
one
an
other
and towa rd one another. Every
thing happens
as
if
t f f
on
rbe
one
hand,
the King
on
th
e other, each facing
the
princ
e wh o is an image of th em
selves, were ceaselessly bent
on
exchang
ing th
eir
roks
with
hi s
never
reco
gniz
ing
themselves en
ou g
h in him,
and
try
ing to discharge him, so as to super
charge themselves with it, of
the
noble
side and
of
the impure side that be
assumes, both equ a lly badly.
Falstaff is not the dance
of
vice and
virtue chang ing places with each other
that one can believe
at
first. Falstaff
i
s.
not goodness itself in the midst of
his shame, nor the
King
purity
in
the
midst of his hates. Each is the same lie,
the same iiJusion; t
here
is neither re
dempt i
on
nor mercy. This obsession
with
humiliation is
in
every Welles film.
Pals
ta
D is the film
of
masochism.
Education. The relations between
Falstaff and Henry
are
those
of
master
ro pupil. Falstaff is the st
ory
of an
ed ucation, but ra ther in
th
e
direction
of Faust and the demonic initiation
than t h
at of
the roman
d appr
e11tissa1Je.
For
here again
the
roles
are
transposed.
Guid
e
in
debauchery, sovereign at
orgies, Falstaff is nevertheless full
of
discreti
on with
h
is
pupil. Is he n
ot
rath
er
th
e
accommodating servant,
and
is it nor to satisfy the pri nce that be
reaches
him
to debase
himself an
d him
self debases
him
self? It seems th
at
the
pupil und
ertakes
the
master 's
game and
def
eats
him
on his own g round. Hen ry's
ruses, his, machinations - pr e
lu
des to
other
pl
ots- to su
rpr ise Fal staff in
th
e
very act of lying
compel
him to lend
himse
lf
to the role.
Here
is Falstaff as
object. He lets himself be
led in
every
sense, mindful
at
the same time to
be
guilty and to pretend innocence. Double
masosc
hi
sm, s
trange
satisfaction, to yield
to
the other while appearing to want
to escape him. This pe rverse du el be
tw
een
master
and
slave
goes
furthe
r
sti ll in parody.
To th e nob le sequence
of
th e death
of
the King, in which for a
mo m
ent
Hen ry, believing his father dead,
has
possessed himself of the crown and
t r i u m p h already, before the
King
revives to be
humiliated
and
th
en to
humiliate, corresponds the farce of the
coronation in th e tavern. Pr essed by
Henry,
Fal
staff installs hims
elf
on a
grotesque thron
e
and crown
s
himself
with
a 5aucepan. And Henry plays
the
humiliated son with a malicious Falstaff.
But
very
quickly-effeet
of
psychodrama
a st range rage seizes the prince, be
drive
s
away
Falstaff
and
takes
th
e
royal
crown from hiq1
into
his
own band
s.
It is for him
to
rake the role of his
father
with
a r
epe
ntant Falstaff. Each
bas what pleases him, and more than
the
ot
hers, Henry;
the
so
n humiliates
the father whether the latter is absent
or present,
whether
be speaks to him or
aces a performance of him, as
th
e
fathe
r
humil
iates himself in his son.
Only one
pe
r
so
n is
duped
, Falstaff.
But th
at
is
pr
ecisely where one finds
W elles' imperious obs,tinacy at
car
r ying
his cross.
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Sacher nd asoch
by
ean
Narboni
Having dropped down
from the
sky,
as
one
said,
Arkadin
's
airplane
was
empty.
Van
Stratten,
uninteresting
ad
venturer,
established
for
a
moment a£
an
illusory
justiciary, covered
with the
col
ors of
scorn by the g lance
of Raina,
the daughter,
goes off, deceived by the
last stratagem to join the numberless
roster of
witnesses. Let
us
risk the hypo
thesis that Arkadin is not dead, too
many
witnesses seeming still
dangerous
for him-among them, to
begin
w i t h
the srud Van
Stiatten. Under
the
pre
text of
an
English television
~ . c r i e s
armed with deadly
cameras,
which,
like
a magician, he makes
appear from
his
coat as weapons,
which he
leaves scat
tered
about without
a
cameraman
in
the corners of sho
es
the better to
mis,
lead
the
adve
rsary, he traverses the
whole earth.
"Around
the
World"
this
new
diabolical
enterprise
titles itself,
reassuringly.
The
investigator
is
en
chanted
at first
with
his
own
lucidity
in managing to find innocuous images
of
himself, here, there arid everywhere,
voluntary ex
il
es, ambassadors and her
al ds
of
an independent America, - a
woman and
her
son
in
the
Basque
coun·
try, some musicians
in
Saint-Germrun,
Raymond Duncan ·ue de Seine.
Others
marked
themselves
more
disturbingly,
Dominici in
mid-affair,
old
English sol
dierF,
buried
alive in a London museum,
six decrepit intangible
old widows
ready to
tell everything. Little by little
in
the play
of identity
and
of
resem
blances,
the investigator
becomes un
easy; Duncan,
with
his
old
Sioux's face,
draped
in his cel
ebrated
tatters,
could
be ago
in a
Turkish bath;
the
widows recall or
prefigure
such-and
such
a
blind shopkeeper
of
Touch of
Evil; the old wldiers
cou ld
dangerously
reveal,
ouc
does not
know, that Arkadin
built
his
fortune
in
part by stealing
the
identity of
a
very
rich English
officer
whom
he
had struck down
from
behind,
profiting
by
the
disorder
in
th e
tr enches.
Moreover are th
e
other tat·
ders
all
dead? The Bernsteins Lelands,
O
'H
aras,
who
did
not bring to
its
end
a .fine
old
age,
Vargas
become
in
his
turn detective
of invented
proofs., and
yonder
Joseph
K
who
pretends to un
derstand nothing.
Everything
becomes a
proof,
things, people,
everything
sends
back
to Welles the infinitely reflected
images
of
himself (it
is
not the
.first
time,
but
today
no more "play" of
look
ing glas
ses
nor
necessary
mirrors)
Rosebud, Quinlan's
cave, Sanchez' dyna
mite,
the
cafes, of
the
celebrated Sacher
in
Vien
na where
Franz-Jose f
had
re
freshment
s before Sarajevo, the
chocolate Himalayas
and
bombes
glacees
whose dramatic
e
numeration
by
Welles
links
them with
ocher
bombs
as disquieting, let us say, as those
of
Tbe
Trial.
To take upon oneself
with impunity
to play
the "bigger chao life, is, liter
ally, tO accept
taking everything
into
oneself,
the living
·
and the inanimate,
thing,s, objects,
a n t ~ .
atoms, machines,
the armour of
English
knights and the
end of
rhe world.
Between
the "my
name
is
Orson Welles" of The Mag-
nificent Ambersous and th
e
same
sen
tence in
The
Trial
there
is a
world of
distance,
"the" world
- passage
from
the proud
assertion
of
oneself,
of one's
identity,
to th
e fear of
no
longer
being
anyone
at all,
but everyone
and
no
one.
lo the
noise of
the
battle, Falstaff
wanders,
Pet·e Ubtt
in
Poland, thus
everyone and nowhere, th e mao from
Mars
astray
on
the
moors,
good fellow
Michelin
ready
to
de-dog
himself
in
the four winds
of
combat.
l'ar from crowning the famous "hu
manism" in a gigantic .fig.ure Welles
illustrates the h u m n i ~ r o advocated
by the genius
of
Audiberri,
supreme
ly
self-negating attempt to cosmify beings
(the promoters takin
g
upon
themselves
to be the first victims).
o r g e ~ quoting
Hazlitr,
wrote that
Shakespeare resembles everyone, except
by the
facf
of
resemblin
g everyone.
Iag.o said I
am not what
I am.
And
Falstaff-"To banish Falstaff is ro
ban
ish the
world."
Because
neither
Falstaff
nor Welles
exist, because they are
the
world, scattered,
everywhere
present. As
for
the man
Welles
, the
paunch
,
the
genius Orson Welles, be is therefore,
co
paraphrase
what Audiherri wrote
about Hugo, "o
nly
th
e
living
place in
which the presence
of
Orson
Welles con
centrates, itself
most" (an
infinitely
small
variation benveen the
skinny fascinator
Charles Fost
er and the fat
Falstaff).
23
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24/68
The
Serpent s
Skin
y
IngnUJr
erg
man
4
-
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Artistic creation has always
mani·
fes red itself
for me
like a desire
for
food. I observed that need wirh a cer·
rain pl easure, bur,
all through
my
con·
scious life, I
never
asked myself why
this hunger had arisen and called for
sa tisfaction. Now, wh en in th ese latter
days
it
rends to abate and ro transform
is
eli
into something else, I feel rbe
urgeor necessity ro seek rh e cause
of
my acrisric activity.
I
remember having
felt, from my
earliest
childhood,
rhe
need
ro show
off my
talents-a skill
at
drawing
, rhe
science of throwing
a
ball
against a wall,
my first breast strokes.
I
remember having madly
desired to
attract
th e
attention of
the grownups
ro rhese manifestations
of my
presence
in
the world. Always I considered that
I
had
nor
awakened
others
in t
erest suf
ficiently. That is why, when reality was
no longer
en
ough
, I
began to
tell imagi
nary
stories, t divecr
r h o ~
my
own
age by rhe prodigious narration
of
my
secret exploits.
They were
clumsy lies,
that were dash
ed
to
pieces against
the
prosaic s k e p t i c i ~ m of
my
listeners. Final
ly, I
gave up living
in a
community
and kept for myself
my world of
phan
tasms. The boy possessed by
imagina
tion and the desire to establish a con
tact changed rather quickly into a
wounded, dis trusrful, and
wily
day
dreamer.
But
a
daydreamer
cannot be an artist
elsewhere chan in his dreams.
The
need ro be heard, to communi
cate, to
live in the warmth
of a com
munity,
persisted. The
more
the gates
of
solitude
closed on me, th e
more the
need
grew.
So
it is
rather
obvious
that
I bad
tO
en
d by expressing myself cinemato
graphically.
This medium gave
me
the
possibility
of making
myself
und
er
stood
in
a l
anguage that
surpassed the
words
of
which I was bereft, the music
that
I did nor ma$
ter, the painting that
left
me indifferent. Sudden
ly
I could
communicate
with
another
with
the help
of
a
language that
,
literally
, ;.
peak
s
from
soul
to
sou l, in expressions that escaped
the control
of
the intellect almost volup
tuously.
With
all this.
hunger
repressed
in the course of my youth, I
threw
my
se
lf
into the cinema and for twenty
years,
without
respite and with a kind
of
frenzy, I fabricated dreams, sensory
experiences,
whims
, fits
of
hysteria,
neuroses, religious spasms, and
pure
lies.
My
hunger
r
enewed
itself
perperuaily.
Money, fame and success sruck me with
stupefaction, but esse
ntially
had no ef
fect on my work. From the preceding,
one ought
not to conclude that I
under
es
timate what,
by chance, I
have
accom
plished. The fact reassures me that I
can
see the past
under
a new and less
romantic light.
Art as self-satisfaction
lngmar Bergman:
Persona
Liv Ullmann
25
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can naturally have
its
importance,
-
fir of all for
the
artist hims
elf.
Today the situation
is Jess
complex,
Jess captivating,
and
especially Jess
allur-
ing.
Thus, i I
want
to be totally sincere,
I have the feeling
that
art
and
not
only
cinematOgraphic
art)
is
i n ~ j g o i l i ·
cant.
Literature,
painting,
music, cinema
and theatre
engender thems
elves and
are
born of
themselves.
New mutations
,
new
combinations,
are formed
and
die
out;
seen
from
outside,
the
activity ap-
pears
endowed with
intense
li f
grandi
ose obstinacy
that
the artists give
tO
projecting for
themselves
and or
an
always
more
distracted
audi
ence, the
images of a
world
that no longer even
cares
about their opinion.
On
some rare
occasions,
the anise is
punished, an
being comJdered as
dangerous and
de
se
rving
of
being
st i led or
controlled.
On
the whole, nevertheless, art is free,
insolent, irresponsible,
and,
as I was say
ing,
the movement
is intense,
almost
feverish;
it s e e m ~ to
me
that
it makes
one
think
of a serpen t's
skin
full
of
ants.
The
serpe
nt
itself
has
been
dead
a
long
time, devoured, devoid
of
its
venom,
but
the sk in moves
swollen
with
a
vital
ardor.
Now,
if
I observe
that
I lind myself
one of
these ants, I am compelled co
ask myself
if
there is any .reason for
pursuing my
act ivity. The
answe
r i;;
yes. Although I believe
that
the theatre
is a
dear
old
cocol/e
whose best da
ys
are over. Although I lin