Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Actor for Hire: The Other Side of Orson Welles at the Quad December 7 - 13

The Quad salutes the towering acting talent of Orson Welles with a 12-film survey including Jane Eyre, A Man for All Seasons, The Third Man, Compulsion, and The Long Hot Summer

Beginning work on what would be his final narrative feature (the only recently completed and released The Other Side of the Wind), the iconic and ever iconoclastic director Orson Welles stated that if John Huston didn't play the lead role, then he himself would. Like Huston, Welles was as accomplished an actor as he was a filmmaker; his inherent creative resourcefulness informed his formidable versatility as a performer. He had started acting as a teenager, treading the boards in Ireland; he was still a teen when, back in the U.S., he made his mark on Broadway in Romeo and Juliet (as the fiery Tybalt) and on the radio. At age 23, he made the cover of Time Magazine, for his own Mercury Theatre troupe’s staging of Heartbreak House. His striking physical presence, thunderclap voice, and ability to jacknife between domineering and frail coalesced when he starred in his seismic 1941 debut feature as writer/director, Citizen Kane. While the impetus for Welles’ subsequent gallery of acting roles was increasingly to bankroll his own projects, it also afforded creative collaborations that yielded marvelous performances. This retrospective samples four decades of Welles’ film appearances for other directors, from rewarding star-turns to scene-stealing supporting roles.

The Black Rose
Henry Hathaway, 1950, U.S./UK, 120m, DCP

Butterfly
Matt Cimber, 1982, U.S., 108m, 35mm

Compulsion
Richard Fleischer, 1959, U.S., 99m, DCP

Jane Eyre
Robert Stevenson, 1943, U.S., 97m, 35mm

Journey Into Fear
Norman Foster, 1943, U.S., 69m, 35mm

The Long Hot Summer
Martin Ritt, 1958, U.S., 116m, DCP

Malpertuis
Harry Kümel, 1971, Belgium/France/West Germany, 119m, 35mm

A Man for All Seasons
Fred Zinnemann, 1966, UK, 120m, 4K DCP

A Safe Place
Henry Jaglom, 1971, U.S., 94m, 35mm

Ten Days’ Wonder
Claude Chabrol, 1971, France/Italy, 110m, 16mm

The Third Man
Carol Reed, 1949, UK, 104m, DCP (restored British version)

Tomorrow Is Forever
Irving Pichel, 1946, U.S., 105m, 35mm

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