CINE 508.01: ORSON WELLES

Fall Semester 2013, Wednesdays, 4:10-6:55 P.M., Fine Arts 101 (Coppola Theater)INSTRUCTOR: Joseph McBride, Professor, Cinema Department, San Francisco State University

Contact information: Office: Burk Hall 265, advising hours, Wednesdays, 2-4 p.m. (appointments recommended but not required); email: mac809@earthlink.net; home telephone/voicemail: 510-883-0360; c a m p u s p h o n e , 4 1 5 - 4 0 5 - 2 1 6 9 ; i n s t r u c t o r ’ s w e b s i t e , josephmcbridefilm.com; Cinema Department office with instructor’s mailbox, FA 245.

Teaching Assistants: Stephanie Eisenberg, Giovanni Zuniga

Orson Welles directing the recently rediscovered film Too Much Johnson (1938)

ORSON WELLES

Orson Welles (1915-1985) revolutionized the art of filmmaking with his first feature, Citizen Kane, made when he was only twenty-five. The British film magazine Sight and Sound's poll of international critics, conducted every ten years, named Kane the greatest film ever made in every tally from 1962 until 2012, when it came in second behind Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. In the magazine’s 2012 poll of internationl directors, Kane tied for second with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, behind Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story. This course traces Welles's development from his playful beginnings as an amateur filmmaker in the early 1930s and an innovative radio and stage director to his masterly artistic summation in such late film works as Chimes at Midnight, The Immortal Story, and F for Fake. Examining the

Welles and Jeanne Moreau in his 1966 film Chimes at Midnight

style and themes of Welles's rich body of work, the course will challenge the conventional wisdom that regards his career after Kane as a long decline from that early peak. Utilizing both celebrated and little-seen film and video footage, the course will show that Welles continued to create audacious, profoundly moving, and richly varied films throughout his tumultuous life. Welles blended American and European styles and influences throughout his career. He spent many years in Europe following the collapse of his Hollywood studio career in the late 1940s. Accepting the finality of his break with Hollywood studio filmmaking after Touch of Evil in 1958, Welles left the country again and made films and television programs drawing from European avant-garde traditions of both literature and cinema. After his return to the U.S. in 1970, he spent the last fifteen years of his life making independent films that continued to break new ground aesthetically. Although Welles has been dead for more than a quarter of a century now, his career is still thriving. His unfinished films are being restored, “lost” Welles films keep being rediscovered, and other directors are making films from his screenplays or films about him and his work. Ironically, Welles is more “bankable” now than he was when he was struggling to find financing in his later years. His films and influence are central to our cinematic culture in a way that is true of very few other filmmakers from his era.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

UNIVERSITY ATTENDANCE POLICIESThe university attendance policies are contained in the "Class Attendance" section of the SFSU Bulletin for 2013/14, which states, “Students are expected to attend classes regularly because classroom work is one of the necessary and important means of learning and of attaining the educational objectives of the institution. “Students should not miss classes except for valid reasons, such as illness, accidents, or participation in officially approved university activities. When a student is absent from classes, it is his/her responsibility to inform his/her instructors of the reason for the absence and to arrange to make up missed assignments and class work insofar as this is possible.

“Instructors make reasonable accommodation for students to observe religious holidays when such observances require students to be absent from class activities. The policy is available at www.sfsu.edu/~senate/documents/policies/F00-212.html. It is the responsibility of the student to inform the instructor, in writing, about such holidays during the first two weeks of the class each semester. If such holidays occur during the first two weeks of the semester, the student must notify the instructor, in writing, at least three days before the date that he/she will be absent.” NOTE: Attendance at the first two class sessions is mandatory; anyone missing the first or second of those sessions will be dropped from the course unless an acceptable written excuse, with documentation, is provided beforehand.

READING ASSIGNMENTS/NOTETAKINGRequired reading assignments must be read in timely fashion. Additional required reading material will be given out in class or assigned in class for reading online or distributed to the class by the instructor via email. It is important to keep up with the reading material, because questions from it will be included on the midterm and final exams, and your papers should include references to the reading material. Papers without such references will be penalized. Notetaking during lectures, discussions, and film and video screenings is essential to success in the course.

EXAMSThere will be two exams, a midterm (October 23) and a final (December 11). These exams will include multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, and essay questions and will deal with the films and videos we have watched in class, the class lectures and discussions, and the assigned readings from the textbooks, including The Elements of Style, as well as any materials handed out in class or assigned in class for reading online 0r distributed to the class by the instructor via email. Do not use books, papers, notes, computers, cellphones, or other electronic devices during the exams. Anyone found cheating by talking, consulting notes or other written material, or using an electronic device will receive an “F” for the exam. A student who has to miss an exam will be allowed to take a different makeup (essay) exam only at the discretion of the instructor and only with a valid excuse and written documentation provided well in advance.

PAPERS

To quote the SFSU Bulletin, “Good writing skills are necessary for success in the Cinema major”; the same applies to other majors. Correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation are important in all university writing assignments. Your grades in this class will be seriously affected if your writing is not clear, coherent, and grammatically correct, and if it contains spelling and punctuation errors. So it is recommended that you not submit uncorrected first drafts but carefully revise and correct all assignments before submission, as well as carefully studying the instructor's corrections on your assignments so that you will not repeat the same mistakes. To help remedy problems students may have with English composition, this course will use the Strunk & White book The Elements of Style as a text, and its lessons will be discussed in class. The instructor will discuss methods of improving your writing of term papers. To fulfill assignments, papers must be typed (12-point type), doublespaced, with standard margins, and submitted in hard-copy format in class on the date indicated. Emailed papers will not be accepted. Each paper must include the student's name, the date of the paper, course data (“Cine 508.01: Orson Welles, Fall 2013”), the instructor's first and last names, page numbers, and source citations. To ensure clarity of reading, all material in papers directly quoted from sources must be properly attributed in the text of the paper, preferably before the quotation (in this order: author, title of book or article or other source); more abbreviated methods of citation in the text will be penalized; citations that are placed in parentheses at the ends of quotations will be penalized. Footnotes are not acceptable. Also, full source citations must appear at the end of the paper, alphabetized and in the standard citation format (in this order: author, title, publisher or publication, city of publisher if the citation is from a book, date of publication; do not include page numbers). Film, book, and journal titles must be correctly italicized; article titles must be in quotation marks. Each paper must include a bibliography listing at least three outside printed sources used for that paper (i.e., sources not including the textbooks and not appearing only on the Internet; a source found on the Internet may be used if it appeared first in print and the original publication is cited); these sources must also be cited or quoted in the text of the paper. Do not include films or television programs in a bibliography, which is a list of printed sources. A handout will be distributed as a further guide to listing bibliographical references and quoting within the text of your paper.

Facts such as titles and dates of films and the names of people who wrote, directed, and appear in them, etc., must be carefully checked against such reference sources as Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide and the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com), although these sources should also be doublechecked against the films themselves. There is no excuse for misspelling names of people involved in the film or names of characters. It is important to credit actors, writers, cinematographers, producers, and other collaborators as well as directors; don't automatically attribute everything in a film to its director. There will be no repeat screenings, but to avoid errors in quoting dialogue and describing a film, it is recommended that you watch a film or video more than once before writing about it (some of the films or videos shown in class are available on homevideo or can be seen by going to the Media Distribution Center, Room: Library 85 of the J. Paul Leonard Library). And you should take careful notes during your class viewing. Two term papers will be required. The first paper (four full doublespaced pages, plus a one-page doublespaced bibliography) will be due on October 9, and the final paper (nine full doublespaced pages, plus a one-page doublespaced bibliography) will be due on December 4. NOTE WELL: Papers shorter or longer than the required length will be downgraded accordingly; it is important to follow the assignments carefully and, for the sake of fairness, for all students to be writing papers of the same length. Each paper must address in detail a Welles-directed film or video shown in class in whole or in part, with reference to the relevant assigned reading material; papers must be literate, knowledgeable, analytical, and include library research, including a bibliography of printed sources. SEE FURTHER DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PAPER REQUIREMENTS IN THE CLASS SCHEDULE BELOW FOR THE DUE DATES. ASSIGNMENTS ARE DUE AT THE START OF CLASS ON THE DATE INDICATED. Assignments submitted after the due date but by the next scheduled class meeting will be reduced by one full grade: For example, an “A” becomes a “B.” Assignments more than one full week late will not be accepted and will be graded “F.” Waiving a late penalty for a paper because of a student's illness or injury or because of the serious illness or death of a student's close family member will require written documentation to be submitted to the instructor by the student. If possible in such cases, it is suggested that the student notify the teacher of the special circumstances by email or telephone before the assignment is due;

the documentation must be submitted with the late paper. Computer problems will not be considered valid excuses for late papers; computers are available on campus, at Kinko's, etc.

GRADING COMPONENTSThe final grade will be calculated from the results of the midterm and the final exams (counting for 20 and 25 percent, respectively) and the first and the final papers (counting for 20 and 35 percent, respectively).

TUTORING HELPTutoring help is available on campus free of charge at the Learning Assistance Center (LAC), HSS 348, M-Thu 9 A.M-4 P.M., 415-338-1993, lac@sfsu.edu. LAC tutoring is provided by SF State graduate and undergraduate students who are supervised by SF State faculty members. The LAC website (http://www.sfsu.edu/~lac/tutoring.html) states: “The LAC provides skills-based tutoring. This means that tutors help you develop specific skills and strategies during each tutoring session. They do this by asking you questions, helping you figure out what you know and what you need to work on. They teach you specific strategies to get your work done effectively, give you opportunities to practice the strategies during tutoring sessions, and suggest ways for you to use them on your own. “You can come when you receive an assignment and work with a tutor to brainstorm your next steps. You can come for help when you can’t complete a problem set. You can come with a draft to get feedback on organization and development. . . . The LAC has weekly, same-day and one-time appointments for tutoring. You need to fill out a student intake form for the current semester before making an appointment.”

PLAGIARISMTo quote the SFSU College of Arts and Humanities website, “Plagiarism is a form of cheating or fraud; it occurs when a student misrepresents the work of another as his or her own. Plagiarism may consist of using the ideas, sentences, paragraphs, or the whole text of another without appropriate acknowledgment, but it also includes employing or allowing another person to write or substantially alter work that a student then submits as his or her own.” Any assignment that is plagiarized will receive an “F”; however, an instance of plagiarism will not, in itself, result in a student failing the course. Instances of plagiarism will be reported to the university's Judicial Affairs Office.

COURTESY Do not use laptops or cellphones (for reading, calling, or texting) or other electronic devices during screenings, because they are distracting and disruptive for your fellow students. If they are used during screenings or if they are being used in ways that are otherwise disruptive in class, such devices will be confiscated and returned at the end of class. Talking during lectures and screenings is disruptive to your concentration and the concentration of others, so please refrain from doing so. When an entire film is run in class, you are expected to remain seated during the end credits, which are an integral part of the film. Watching the end credits provides an invaluable source of information for the informed moviegoer, as well as showing respect for the people who made the film and for your fellow students.

COURSE WITHDRAWAL POLICIES AND DEADLINESThe SFSU Registrar’s Office states that September 9 is the last day to drop a Fall 2013 course without receiving a “W” grade. The SFSU 2013-14 Bulletin states: “During the first two weeks of instruction, dropping a course(s) is permitted without restriction or academic penalty. No symbol is recorded on the student's permanent record. The procedure for dropping a course during this period is described in detail by the Registrar's Office. At SF State, dropping a course is the student's responsibility. . . . “After the first two weeks but before the thirteenth week of instruction, withdrawal from a course is permissible, only for serious and compelling reasons, by consulting the instructor and obtaining the approval of the instructor, department chair/program director, and college dean. The student should submit the appropriate petition and supporting documents (including unofficial transcripts) to the instructor. The instructor will review, approve, or deny the petition. . . . Departments will review [withdrawal requests] and either approve or deny. If the withdrawal is approved, the student will submit the signed petition to the department or college office for review. . . . “Withdrawals are not permitted after the twelfth week of instruction except in cases, such as accident or serious illness, where the cause of withdrawal is due to circumstances clearly beyond the student's control and the assignment of an Incomplete grade is not practicable. Under these circumstances, a student may elect to withdraw from a course or from the university. The procedure to withdraw from a course under these circumstances is as described above, except that such requests must also be

approved by the Board of Appeals and Review (BOAR). Requests for permission to withdraw from the university under these circumstances are submitted by the student directly to the Registrar for review by BOAR. . . . “The student may receive a grade of 'W,' which will appear on his/her permanent record. However, a 'W' grade shall not be counted toward the student's GPA. The student may appeal an instructor, chair/director, or dean's denial of a withdrawal request to the Board of Appeals and Review (BOAR). “The symbol 'W' indicates that the student was permitted to withdraw from the course after the second week of instruction with the approval of the instructor and appropriate campus officials. It carries no connotation of quality of student performance and is not used in calculating grade point average or progress points.” NOTE the requirement of “serious and compelling reasons” which must be documented in writing for the instructor to give his written approval of a request for withdrawal after September 9. A busy course load and the demands of other courses do not constitute “serious and compelling reasons” for the instructor to approve your dropping this course after that add/drop deadline; if you think your course load is too demanding for you to take this course, which involves a considerable amount of writing and reading, you should drop the course by September 9. ALSO NOTE WELL: The Bulletin states, “Withdrawals are not permitted after the twelfth week of instruction except in cases, such as accident or serious illness, where the cause of withdrawal is due to circumstances clearly beyond the student's control and the assignment of an Incomplete grade is not practicable.” ALSO NOTE WELL: The Bulletin states, “Withdrawals are not permitted after the twelfth week of instruction except in cases, such as accident or serious illness, where the cause of withdrawal is due to circumstances clearly beyond the student's control and the assignment of an Incomplete grade is not practicable.”

CREDIT/NO CREDIT GRADINGOctober 21 is the last day to request CR/NC grading. As the SFSU Bulletin states, “Students who select CR/NC grading should be informed that CR grades may be interpreted as a C and NC grades may be changed to an F when considered by other institutions.”

DISABILITY ACCESS STATEMENT

Students with disabilities who need reasonable accommodations are encouraged to contact the instructor. The Disability Programs and Resource Center (DPRC) is available to facilitate the reasonable accommodations process. The DPRC is located in the Student Service Building, Room 110, and can be reached by telephone (voice/TTY 415-338-2472) or by email (dprc@sfsu.edu).

A NOTE ON SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTENTSome of the films and videos to be shown include controversial sociopolitical content. The course will also involve lecturing, discussions, and readings on sociopolitical issues. The instructor will discuss different sides of the issues raised by these films and related issues. A free exchange of ideas and a critical/analytical attitude toward controversial issues are among the purposes of this course. Students are encouraged to express their own views in class discussions and in their papers; disagreement with views expressed in the films and readings or with the views expressed during class is also encouraged. No one will be penalized in the grading process for such disagreement per se. However, it is always important to back up one's views with facts rather than simply expressing an unsupported opinion; papers expressing unsupported opinions or making errors of fact will be penalized in the grading process. It is also important to discuss issues in class with civility and respect for those who may disagree.

“[I]f there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought -- not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.” -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1929

REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS

Joseph McBride, What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career, University Press of Kentucky, 2006 (“McBride”)William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White, foreword by Roger Angell, The Elements of Style, Longman, fourth edition, 1999 (“Strunk & White”)Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, ed. Jonathan Rosenbaum,

This Is Orson Welles (1998 revised second edition, Da Capo Press; original edition published in 1992 by HarperCollins) (“Welles- Bogdanovich”)

These books are available for purchase at the campus bookstore and elsewhere. They must be purchased during the first week of class. BRING ALL YOUR TEXTBOOKS TO CLASS EACH WEEK. Reading assignments for each week are listed in the class schedule below. Assignments are to be read by the class session following their listing in the syllabus. You will be tested on reading assignments. If you neglect these assignments, it will affect your grade for the course. Some film selections may vary from the schedule due to lack of availability and other factors.

Welles with cinematographer Gregg Toland, making Citizen Kane

CLASS SCHEDULE

August 28: “IN THE NAME OF ALL THE MAVERICKS”When Orson Welles received the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1975, he said, “This honor I can only accept in the name of all the mavericks. . . . A maverick may go his own way but he doesn't think that it's the only way or ever claim that it's the best one -- except maybe for himself.” By way of introduction to Welles and his work, we will watch part of the speech he gave that night, as well as hear him defining the word “director.” And we will watch parts of two comprehensive documentaries on his life and work as we begin discussing the many fascinating issues raised by the career of Orson Welles and appreciating his many groundbreaking achievements in films, television, and other media.FILMS/VIDEOS: Excerpts from Remembering Orson . . . (documentary of Welles's November 2, 1985, memorial tribute at the Directors Guild Theater in Los Angeles); Behind the Curtain: Joseph McBride on Writing Film History (segment on Welles from 2011 documentary written and directed by Hart Perez); Orson Welles: The One-Man Band (American version, 2003, edited by Peter Bogdanovich, of 1995 documentary directed by Vassili Silovic), including Welles's acceptance speech at his American Film Institute Life Achievement Award tribute, 1975; and The Orson Welles Story (1982 BBC TV documentary, produced by Leslie Megahey and Alan Yentob) READINGS (i.e,, assigned this week to be read before the following week's class): McBride, Preface, Chapters 1-2; Welles-Bogdanovich, Introduction, 1-46; Strunk & White, ix-14

September 4: “THE FILM OF FILMS”: CITIZEN KANE“The Film of Films,” as film critic-turned-director François Truffaut called it, Citizen Kane “consecrated a great many of us to the vocation of cinéaste. . . . We loved this film because it was complete: psychological, social, poetic, dramatic, comic, baroque, strict, and demanding. It is a demonstration of the force of power and an attack on the force of power, it is a hymn to youth and a meditation on old age, an essay on the vanity of all material ambition and at the same time a poem on old age and the solitude of exceptional human beings, genius or monster or monstrous genius. It is at the same time a 'first' film by virtue of its quality of catch-all experimentation and a 'last' film by its comprehensive picture of the world.” Citizen Kane (1941) continues to exert a vast influence over filmmakers and filmgoers alike as both a technical tour de force and a

profoundly moving drama with rich social resonance. Written by Welles with veteran screenwriter and former journalist Herman J. Mankiewicz, Kane was Welles's greatest cinematic triumph, yet it also contained the seeds of all his future troubles. Provoking a furious response from the William Randolph Hearst empire, Kane almost was destroyed by anxious Hollywood moguls, and RKO had difficulty finding theaters to play the film. Not only that, but Hearst's influence caused Welles to be investigated by the FBI for the next fifteen years. Welles's days as an independent filmmaker working within the Hollywood system were numbered because of his political and aesthetic audacity, which produced a timeless classic.FILMS: Footage of the New York premiere of Citizen Kane, May 1, 1941; Citizen Kane trailer (1941, directed by Welles, 4 mins.); Citizen Kane (1941, directed by Welles, 119 mins.)READINGS: McBride, Ch. 3; Strunk & White, 15-38; Welles-Bogdanovich, 46-94WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Your first paper is due October 9 (see bel0w).

FIRST PAPER -- DUE OCTOBER 9 (four full doublespaced pages, plus a one-page doublespaced bibliography)Write an essay on Citizen Kane, concentrating on ONE of the following aspects of the film: (1) visual style; (2) acting; (3) screenwriting; or (4) the use of sound. Your essay should discuss how Welles uses that single aspect of filmmaking to convey the themes of the film. Also discuss the collaborative work of the other individual artists involved. Give your essay a clear overall thesis encompassing the various aspects of this assignment.NOTE WELL: Concentrating on a single aspect of the film is vital to this paper. Papers neglecting this aspect of the assignment will be penalized. Papers that do not discuss the collaborative work of the other artists with Welles or that do not involve research beyond the course reading material also will be penalized. Papers shorter or longer than the required length will be downgraded accordingly. See the section above on “PAPERS” for further requirements.

September 11: HOW TO WRITE PAPERS/DISCUSSION OF CITIZEN KANE/“BEFORE THE BEGINNING”: WELLES’S ROOTS, PART IToday we will discuss Citizen Kane in depth and how to write about it. We will consider various ways of approaching the four aspects of the film from

which you will choose one for your paper’s topic. The instructor will discuss practical aspects of writing papers and how to construct a thesis for your paper. Make sure to come to this class with an idea in mind for your paper, based on one of the four aspects listed above, including a possible thesis. The instructor will call on students to discuss their planned papers. Key parts of the textbook, The Elements of Style will also be discussed, so be up to date on that reading.

We will also watch Welles’s early amateur film The Hearts of Age, a 1934 spoof of avant-garde cinema, and part of an extremely rare 1978 documentary by Welles about the man he regarded as his greatest influence in life, his schoolmaster, Roger Hill (interviewed along with Hill’s wife, Hortense). This delightful documentary shows the elderly Roger Hill (who resembles Major Amberson in The Magnificent Ambersons) treating Welles with the same affectionate irreverence he displayed toward the youngster at the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois, where, he tells Welles, he turned him to the theater “to keep you busy and keep you out of my hair.”

FILMS: The Hearts of Age (film directed by Welles and William Vance, 1934, 5 mins.); Orson Welles introduces Roger Hill from Remembering Orson . . .; Orson Welles Talks with Roger Hill/A Conversation with Roger Hill (uncompleted documentary directed by Welles, 1978, released in 2005)READING ASSIGNMENTS: McBride, Ch. 4; Strunk & White, 39-65WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Your first paper is due Oct. 9.

September 18: “BEFORE THE BEGINNING”: WELLES’S ROOTS, PART IIBefore directing his first feature film in 1940-41, the youthful Welles was already a familiar face and voice in the American media. A professional radio actor from age nineteen in 1934, Welles panicked the nation with his 1938 broadcast The War of the Worlds, just one of his innovative Mercury Theatre on the Air productions (the show was later retitled The Campbell Playhouse). Welles's New York stage work with producing partner John Houseman, first with the Federal Theatre and then with their own Mercury Theatre, revolutionized the American stage with such electrifying productions as the Harlem “Voodoo Macbeth,” The Cradle Will Rock, and Caesar. This class will give a taste of those early achievements and explore the stylistic devices Welles brought from stage and radio to enrich his film work. FILMS/VIDEOS/RADIO: Excerpt from the radio broadcast Dracula (The Mercury Theatre on the Air, CBS Radio, July 11, 1938, starring and directed by Welles); Welles talking about his 1938 CBS Radio broadcast The War of the Worlds on Orson Welles' Sketch Book (1955 British TV documentary series, directed by Welles, 15 mins.); excerpt from We Work Again (1936 documentary on African-American artists put to work by the Works Progress Administration), showing part of Welles's 1936 “Voodoo Macbeth” stage production; excerpt from Cradle Will Rock (1999, directed by Tim Robbins), reconstructing the opening night of Welles's 1937 Federal Theatre production of Marc Blitzstein's labor opera The Cradle Will Rock; excerpt(s) from Me and Orson Welles, about the Mercury production of Caesar, based on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (written by Holly Gent Palmo and Vince Palmo, from the novel by Robert Kaplow, directed by Richard Linklater, 2008)READINGS: Welles-Bogdanovich, 94-132, 454-490WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Work on your first paper, due October 9.

Welles directing The Magnificent Ambersons

September 25: A MUTILATED MASTERPIECE: THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONSWelles's second feature is an adaptation of Booth Tarkington's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1918 novel The Magnificent Ambersons. With breathtaking originality, Welles chronicled the disintegration of a wealthy Midwestern family and, by extension, the disintegration of the American way of life with the coming of the automobile and the social changes that resulted, including air pollution and urban sprawl. The film stars Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, and Tim Holt; Welles narrates with an eloquent blend of nostalgia and irony. Unfortunately, while Welles was in South America shooting his documentary It's All True for the U.S. government, Ambersons received a mixed response from preview audience members, so RKO cut more than fifty minutes and filmed new scenes, including a ridiculous happy ending. Peter Bogdanovich has called the mutilation of Ambersons

“the greatest artistic tragedy in the movies.” But what remains of Welles's conception of Ambersons is still one of his greatest achievements. As Welles said, “It was a much better picture than Kane -- if they'd just left it as it was.”FILMS/RADIO: Excerpt from The Magnificent Ambersons radio version (The Campbell Playhouse, CBS Radio, October 29, 1939, starring and directed by Welles); The Magnificent Ambersons trailer, including footage cut from the film (1942, 2 mins.); The Magnificent Ambersons (1942 release version, written and directed by Welles, based on the novel by Booth Tarkington; additional scenes directed [without credit] by Robert Wise, Freddie Fleck, and Jack Moss, 88 mins.)READINGS: McBride, Ch. 5; Strunk & White, 66-85; Welles-Bogdanovich, 133-168, 454-490WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Work on your first paper, due October 9.

October 2: RECONSTRUCTING AMBERSONSMany Welles aficionados cling to the hope that the print of the uncut Magnificent Ambersons that Welles was working with in Brazil may have survived, but to date it has not surfaced. In the meantime, a Welles admirer from Michigan, Roger Ryan, took it upon himself to “reconstruct” the uncut Ambersons using stills for missing scenes, the parts of Bernard Herrmann's musical score that RKO removed from the film, and recreated dialogue drawn from the studio cutting continuity. Ryan's work, performed by him and his friends, is somewhat amateurish (in the good sense of a labor of love) and gives a strong idea of how different Welles's conception of Ambersons was from the studio's version. With much of Welles's dark sociopolitical vision restored, this longer version shows just how radical was his portrait of the collapse of a decaying American aristocracy in the machine age. FILM: Roger Ryan's reconstruction of The Magnificent Ambersons (1993, 111 mins.)READINGS: McBride, Ch. 6; Welles-Bogdanovich, 169-203WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Continue working on your first paper, due next week.

October 9: FINDING A NEW STYLE: IT'S ALL TRUEYOUR FIRST PAPER IS DUE TODAY. For Welles aficionados, the triumphant release of the 1993 documentary It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles was literally a dream come true. It's All True, the multipart documentary Welles filmed in Brazil in 1942 for RKO

and the U.S. State Department's Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (Nelson Rockefeller), was left uncompleted when Welles was fired by RKO on trumped-up charges. Most of the Technicolor footage and some of the black-and-white footage was discarded by the studio, but some was rediscovered in the 1980s, enabling the restoration of parts of “The Story of Samba (Carnaval)” and “My Friend Bonito” and a 48-minute reconstruction of the “Four Men on a Raft” segment.

Welles in Brazil with the jangadeiros of It’s All True

Seeing what Welles was doing in South America reveals that he was forging a new, non-Hollywood style, based on complex editing of scenes largely filmed on actual locations, a style he would continue developing for the rest of his career. The radical cross-cultural aspects of this project, which caused such official consternation both in Brazil and in Hollywood, are thoughtfully explored in the documentary on It's All True.FILMS AND VIDEO: It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles (directed by Richard Wilson, Myron Meisel, and Bill Krohn, 1993, 86 mins., including footage from Welles's unfinished 1942 documentary It's All True); unedited rushes from It's All True; Orson Welles' Sketch Book (Welles talking about the “My Friend Bonito” segment

of It's All True in a segment from his 1955 British TV documentary series, 15 mins.)READING: Welles-Bogdanovich, 204-242WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Work on your second paper, due December 4.

SECOND PAPER -- DUE DECEMBER 4 (nine full doublespaced pages, plus a one-page doublespaced bibliography)Discuss in detail one of the Welles-directed films or videos shown in this class in whole or in part (other than Citizen Kane), analyzing both its style and content and relating the film to the overall development of Orson Welles's career, while also discussing his collaborative work with the other individual artists involved. Give your essay a clear overall thesis encompassing the various aspects of this assignment. NOTE WELL: Relating the film or video to the overall development of Welles's career and to the contributions of his collaborators is vital to this paper. Papers neglecting these aspects of the assignment and papers that do not involve research beyond the course reading material will be penalized. Papers shorter or longer than the required length will be downgraded accordingly. See the section above on “PAPERS” for further requirements.

October 16: SHAKESPEARE FOR THE MASSESWelles was able to film Shakespeare in Hollywood only by accepting a low budget and a twenty-three-day shooting schedule in 1947 at the B-picture studio Republic Pictures. His unjustly maligned experimental film Macbeth, which he called a “charcoal sketch” of a great play, uses stylized sets, expressionistic performances, and some astounding long takes, including a single ten-minute shot for the scene of King Duncan's murder. Disconcerted by Welles's daring blend of cinematic and theatrical techniques and by his decision to have his cast speak with authentic Scottish accents, Republic ordered the film cut to 86 minutes and redubbed. In 1980, Welles's associate Richard Wilson, who had supervised the earlier changes, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive restored the film to its original 107-minute length and soundtrack.FILM AND VIDEO: Macbeth (1948, restored 1980, written and directed by Welles, based on the play by William Shakespeare, 107 mins.); and

Orson Welles' Sketch Book (Welles talking about his “Voodoo Macbeth” in a segment from his 1955 British TV documentary series, 15 mins.)READINGS: Welles-Bogdanovich, 243-287; also review previously assigned reading material in preparation for next week's midterm examWRITING ASSIGNMENT: Work on your second paper, due Dec. 4.

OCTOBER 23: MIDTERM EXAM/SHATTERING HOLLYWOOD’S HOUSE OF MIRRORSThe MIDTERM EXAM will be given during the first sixty minutes of the class. It will consist of multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, and essay questions drawing from the films shown in class, the reading material, and class discussions. The Lady from Shanghai (1946; released 1948) is a remarkably personal work made as a genre film within the studio system, a baroque film noir about a gullible “Black Irish” sailor (Welles) trapped in a world of corruption and deceit centered around a mysterious rich woman played by Welles's estranged wife, Rita Hayworth. Shanghai makes splendid use of San Francisco locations. But because of its byzantine narrative style and its iconoclastic approach to Hayworth's star persona, the film displeased Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn. It was recut and rescored by the studio, but what remains is one of Welles's most entertaining and visually alluring films.FILM: The Lady from Shanghai (1948, written and directed by Welles, based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King, 86 mins.)READING: Welles-Bogdanovich, 288-322WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Work on your second paper, due Dec. 4.

October 30: AROUND THE WORLD WITH ORSON WELLESWelles left Hollywood in November 1947, escaping both Hollywood hostility toward his work as a director and the incipient blacklist of leftwing artists in films and broadcasting, prompted by that month's hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. “I chose freedom,” he wrote of his decision to leave Hollywood. He remained in Europe for most of the next ten years. While there he pursued the peripatetic style of independent filmmaking, largely on actual locations, that he had first ventured into with It's All True. Welles's approach in his independently-made 1952 film Othello -- using elaborate cutting to bridge widely disparate locations -- was magnified over the next few years as he ranged widely throughout the world making quirkily personal films and television programs with a dizzying

array of eccentric characters. Mr. Arkadin (1955), about an enigmatic international financier (Welles) who commissions an investigation of his own criminal past, was reedited by the producer, making it seem even more bizarre. Welles also launched a never-to-be-completed film of Cervantes' Don Quixote in Mexico and Spain and made two series of documentaries for British television, one appropriately titled Around the World with Orson Welles. That series became a hymn to the glories of independence.FILMS AND VIDEO: Welles talking about his political situation and his expatriate status during the blacklist era in an interview with Michael Parkinson, The Parkinson Interview: Orson Welles (British TV, 1974/85); excerpt from Mr. Arkadin (aka Confidential Report, 1955, written and directed by Welles); excerpt from Don Quixote (unfinished feature begun in 1955, written and directed by Welles, based on the novel by Miguel de Cervantes); Around the World with Orson Welles (1955 British TV documentary series directed by Welles: segments “London,” “St.-Germain-des-Près,” 26 mins. each)READING: Welles-Bogdanovich, 491-519WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Work on your second paper, due Dec. 4.

November 6: A LATE-NOIR MASTERPIECE: TOUCH OF EVIL“Touch of Evil is a movie which makes you rethink what a movie should be,” Andrew Sarris has observed. Assigned to write, direct, and co-star with Charlton Heston in a B-movie crime thriller for Universal-International, Welles (in his bravura 1957-58 return to Hollywood filmmaking) delivered this astonishingly baroque work of art, which contains one of the cinema's most celebrated opening shots. The tragic fall of a corrupt police captain, Hank Quinlan (Welles), provides the framework for a thoughtful drama about the abuse of official power as well as the springboard for some of Welles's most dazzling visual imagery and most surreal atmospherics. Although altered by the studio for its original release, Touch of Evil has been restored to the specifications of a highly detailed memo written by Welles in 1957, scrupulously followed by producer Rick Schmidlin and editor/sound designer Walter Murch (whose credits include the three Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation).FILMS AND VIDEO: Touch of Evil (1998 restored version, written and directed by Welles, based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson [pseudonym for Robert A. Wade and H. Billy Miller] and a screenplay adaptation by Paul Monash [uncredited], 111 mins.) with opening shot (including superimposed credits) from the 1958 release version; and a

segment from Orson Welles' Sketch Book (Welles talking about the abuse of police power on his 1955 British TV documentary series, 15 mins.)WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Work on your second paper, due Dec. 4.

Welles as Captain Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil

November 13: WELLES THE AVANT-GARDE ARTISTAccepting the finality of his break with Hollywood studio filmmaking after the studio’s manhandling of Touch of Evil, Welles returned to Europe and made films drawing from the European avant-garde traditions of both literature and cinema. His surrealistic 1962 film of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial, starring Anthony Perkins as Joseph K., divided even Welles admirers with its controversial reworking of the allegorical tale for the post-Holocaust era. Along with an excerpt from The Trial, we will watch two Welles films made for television companies: The Immortal Story, a delicately filmed color featurette adapted from an Isak Dinesen tale, and The Fountain of Youth, which was made in Hollywood before his departure for Europe but takes innovative paths that the American TV industry was unwilling to let Welles continue exploring.FILMS AND VIDEO: Excerpt from Welles interview about his film The Trial by producer Huw Wheldon on Monitor (BBC TV, 1962); excerpt from The Trial (1962, written and directed by Welles, based on the novel by Franz Kafka); The Fountain of Youth (1958 TV show, written and directed

by Welles, based on the short story “Youth from Vienna” by John Collier, 25 mins.); The Immortal Story (1968, written and directed by Welles, based on the novella by Isak Dinesen, 56 mins.)WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Work on your second paper, due Dec. 4.

November 20: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT“The Ambersons and Chimes at Midnight represent more than anything else what I would like to do in films,” Welles said after making his 1966 film of Shakespeare's plays about the relationship of the young King Henry V and his aging mentor, Sir John Falstaff. “. . . [W]hat I am trying to discover now in films is not technical surprises or shocks, but a more complete unity of forms, of shapes.” Chimes at Midnight, perfunctorily released in the U.S. as Falstaff, is arguably Welles's masterpiece, the fullest, most completely realized expression of everything he had been working toward since Citizen Kane. Containing his greatest performance, as the character “the greatest conception of a good man, the most completely good man, in all drama,” Chimes is a somber comedy-drama about the assumption of kingly power and the betrayal of friendship. Keith Baxter's performance as Prince Hal/Henry V is both majestic and chilling. Chimes also contains the cinema's most breathtaking and horrific battle sequence. But Welles's great achievement has seldom been screened in the U.S. and remains largely unknown by moviegoers who believe he never lived up to the youthful promise of Citizen Kane.FILM: Chimes at Midnight (aka Falstaff, 1966, written and directed by Welles, based on the plays Richard II, Henry IV Parts I and II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare and [for the commentary] The Chronicles of England by Raphael Holinshed, 119 mins.)WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Your final paper is due at the next class, December 4.

THANKSGIVING BREAK: M-F, November 25-29

December 4: FINAL PAPER DUE/TRUTH AND ILLUSIONYOUR FINAL PAPER IS DUE TODAY. Jean Renoir said, “F for Fake is a very important film because it asks the question every artist has to face at some time in his career: What is art?” Welles's dazzlingly-edited meditation on his own art and the meaning of authorship mixes found footage and

newly shot material. This 1974 “essay film” deals with the career of art forger Elmyr de Hory, Elmyr's biographer (and fellow faker) Clifford Irving, the reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes, and Welles's own history of trickery and artifice. With it we will see the elaborate and unconventional trailer Welles shot for F for Fake, which was not used by the distributor; a short documentary in which Welles discusses his plans for the film that would become The Other Side of the Wind; and part of Welles's final television appearance on the last night of his life.

Welles in his later years

FILMS AND VIDEO: F for Fake trailer (1978, directed by Welles, 9 mins.); F for Fake (1974 documentary, directed by Welles, written by Welles and Oja Kodar, 85 mins.); Welles Madrid Juin 1966/Welles Madrid June 1966 (1966 documentary, directed by Albert and David Maysles, 9 mins.); excerpt from Welles's last television appearance, The Merv Griffin Show (syndicated, taped October 9, 1985, broadcast October 15)READINGS: Review previously read material in preparation for next week's final exam.

December 11: FINAL EXAM/WELLES'S FUTUREThe FINAL EXAM will be given after the film screening and will take the remainder of the class period; there may be questions dealing with the film being shown today. The exam will consist of multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, and essay questions drawing from the films shown in class, the reading material, and class discussions. When the American Film Institute held a “Working with Welles” series of panel discussions and screenings in 1978-79 (co-hosted by the instructor), we decided to end the series with a program on Welles's future. When Welles heard about that program, he joked, “What a witches' sabbath that will be!” But unlike Hank Quinlan, whose future was “all used up,” Welles continues to have one, as his unfinished works from his later years keep emerging in various forms. The legacy of his fertile final period is examined in the German documentary Orson Welles: The One-Man Band, made by the cooperation of Welles's companion and collaborator of his later years, Oja Kodar.FILM: Orson Welles: The One-Man Band (original 1995 version of compilation documentary directed by Vassili Silovic, 90 mins.)

INSTRUCTOR'S BIO

Joseph McBride began writing about Orson Welles when he was nineteen and a student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. McBride is the author of the critical studies Orson Welles (1972; revised and expanded edition, 1996) and Orson Welles: Actor and Director (1977), as well as the 2006 book What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career. He spent six years playing the role of a film critic in Welles's still-unfinished feature The Other Side of the Wind (1970-76); he also appears in Welles's 1982 documentary Filming “The Trial” (first shown in 2002) and was an audience member in the unsold 1978 TV pilot The Orson Welles Show. McBride moderated the “Working with Welles” seminar for the American Film Institute and the Directors Guild of America in Hollywood, 1978-79, in which Welles and many of his colleagues participated, and worked with longtime Welles aide Richard Wilson in putting on Welles’s memorial tribute at the Directors Guild in 1985.

Orson Welles rehearsing Peter Bogdanovich and Joseph McBride for their roles in The Other Side of the Wind on the first day of shooting, Los Angeles, August 23, 1970

McBride also has written such books as Writing in Pictures: Screenwriting Made (Mostly) Painless (2012), Searching for John Ford (2001), Steven Spielberg: A Biography (1997, 2011, 2012 editions), Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (1992, 2000 editions), and Hawks on Hawks (1982; new printing, November 2013). The French edition of Searching for John Ford, A la recherche de John Ford, 2007, won the “Best Foreign Film Book of the Year” award from the French film critics' organization, le Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma, in 2008. McBride’s most recent book is Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit, published in June 2013. McBride also appears in a forthcoming feature film on the subject, Dallas in Wonderland, and the related documentary of the same title.

McBride’s screenplay credits include Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979), and he received a Writers Guild of America Award for The American Film Institute Salute to John Huston (1983), four other WGA nominations, two Emmy nominations, and a Canadian Film Awards nomination. He worked with Welles on the Huston tribute as well as on the 1982 live worldwide TV special Let Poland Be Poland, a tribute to the Solidarity movement that McBride co-wrote for the United States Information Agency. In 2011, McBride was the subject of a documentary feature written and directed by Hart Perez, Behind the Curtain: Joseph McBride on Writing Film History.

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