Original subtitles

One of Orson Welles's most famous tricks:

his silhouette.

A disguise, an abstraction of his self

or simply a game.

Maybe it was too good a trick.

Welles, the person, disappears behind his own outline.

At some point, he becomes merely a stylized shadow of himself.

Toward the end of his life, criticism of Welles was getting louder.

"Burned-out genius, half-extinct volcano. "

The Welles legend took on a life of its own.

1975, ten years before his death,

Welles returns to Hollywood.

The American Film Institute is honoring its prodigal son.

For decades, Hollywood has shown no interest in him.

But now, to everyone's surprise, he receives the Life Achievement Award.

Welles's early career took off like a rocket.

First, a wunderkind, then a successful director on Broadway

and controversial radio producer.

At 23, he was an author, director, actor and journalist

and excelled in all.

Hollywood was calling.

Citizen Kane catapulted the 26-year-old to worldwide fame.

But everyone's favorite was becoming a burden.

Hollywood thought him too profligate, rebellious and eccentric.

Before long, no one in America wanted to hire him anymore.

He chose to go into exile in Europe.

But European producers, too, were cool to him.

With each film, his work became more difficult.

The few things he completed were admired by the critics,

but ignored by the public.

Many of his projects were never realized.

For Welles, returning to L.A. did not mean retirement.

He was determined to reconquer Hollywood.

He brought with him clips from a new film that he wanted to finish in the U.S.

Welles showed clips from his new film, The Other Side of the Wind,

his most ambitious film in a long time.

For him, it's as important as Citizen Kane.

When Welles died in L.A. in 1985,

The Other Side of the Wind remained an unreleased fragment.

Obscure legal problems have prevented the release of the film to this day.

That new beginning Welles had planned never happened.

In fact, his reputation as a has-been who couldn't finish films was reinforced.

For some, his glory had always been nothing but a brilliant scam.

Others saw him as a fallen giant.

Who are we to believe about his final years?

Oja Kodar.

For 20 years, up until Welles's death, she was his partner in life and work.

He left his personal archives of unreleased films and fragments to her.

The more she hesitated to release them, the further they fell into oblivion.

It was always believed that Welles couldn't finish what he started.

In total, he completed only 12 movies.

Almost all of them were edited and mutilated by producers.

The Magnificent Ambersons, Mr. Arkadin,

A Touch of Evil,

almost none were released in the way Welles intended.

As for all his other projects,

only rumors, traces and speculation.

The trailer for F for Fake was rejected by U.S. film distributors.

Too long, too extravagant.

Hero, tragedian, megalomaniac.

Welles was often confused with the great roles he loved so much.

Amused, he made use of these cliches and played with them.

Lord Plumfield versus Welles.

A small puzzle in two parts on two planes of time.

Years later, he completed this sketch with additional shots

in which he played the part of the journalist himself.

He shot these scenes in a corner of a park near Paris.

This house would serve him as a studio for several years

a small film studio where he could work on new projects independently.

No one knows when or why Welles decided to read solitary chapters of Moby Dick.

The fragments in Oja Kodar's archive were seemingly created without a clear plan.

Welles followed his own system

continuing his numerous parallel projects as the opportunity arose.

Welles's creative life was similar to that of a vagabond.

He went where the films he appeared in took him.

Not all of these roles were rewarding.

With the steep acting fees he charged, he funded his own projects.

He'd take the money and return to the sets of his films.

As a director, he wouldn't chase after locations for his films,

but like a nomad, he made sure the films came along in his carry-on luggage.

No matter where he found images and motifs --

a take here, or a shot for a different project there --

they only served as a backdrop for his own universe.

Over the years, his work became a patchwork without any chronology.

Any method would do if it helped him wring his own visions out of the world.

Spain is more than just a stopover on his travels.

He spent 30 years trying to complete his Don Quixote.

A close friend to many matadors, he was passionate about bullfighting.

As a young man, he had even ventured into the arena.

It would become a life long passion.

Traveling, shooting and then some more traveling.

A window frame against a landscape, and a new idea was born:

a short humorous skit on Winston Churchill.

Schwarzwaelder Torte, Guglhupf,

Burgtheater-Linzer, Topfenschnitten,

Kaffeecremetorte, Nusstorte,

Erdbeercreme, Italienischen,

gemischte Kognakfruechte, Streusel

Wurfelkugel

and Sachertorte.

Welles loved making up stories.

But simply touch his life story, and legends invented by others come up.

They become inextricably mixed up with his own overgrown story.

For example, a fire is said to have destroyed his house in Spain.

He's said to have lost his dearest childhood keepsakes,

photos, letters, documents and unfinished films.

But his house is still standing, undamaged, in Madrid.

Fact cannot be separated from fiction.

The Deep.

There was also a lot of doubt about that project.

With this thriller, paid for out of his own pocket,

Welles hoped to reach a large audience.

Welles gathered together some of his actor friends.

Oja Kodar, Jeanne Moreau, Michael Bryant, Laurence Harvey.

He was working in Dalmatia and used the Adriatic for the Pacific.

As many times before, financial problems forced him to stop production.

It was decided to postpone production until the following year.

The death of Laurence Harvey ultimately made it impossible to complete the film

with only a few scenes to go.

About the same time, in the Mediterranean,

Welles started work on The Merchant of Venice.

He brought back some images from the carnival to set the scene.

The Merchant of Venice was to be a short TV adaptation of the Shakespeare play.

His financing seemed in order,

but there were tax problems, and his backers pulled out.

Once again, he tried to complete it on his own

to prevent yet another project from being left incomplete.

So, he left expensive Venice.

A small town on the Dalmatian coast had to stand in for the lagoon city.

The window frame hits the road again,

and wooden puppets fill in form asked carnival goers lying in wait for Shylock.

Welles managed to complete the shooting

and was ready to begin editing.

He thought he'd finally done it, but then the negatives disappeared.

The circumstances of the theft were never fully cleared up.

Years later, somewhere in the world, Welles would take out his camera again

and rerecord his Shylock monologue,

the monologue that would forever be missing from his Merchant of Venice.

By then, Welles was used to being asked about his unfinished projects.

As usual, he'd reveal only half the truth.

This reputation was a heavy burden for him.

When his troubles with The Other Side of Wind became known,

his long-time doubters felt vindicated.

As long as it was a matter of honoring the director of Citizen Kane,

Welles was welcome anywhere.

But as soon as he he tried to launch a new project, he faced rejection.

Screen tests,

a commercial for Japanese whiskey.

Welles sells his voice, his face, and his legend.

Part of his strategy of self-financing.

For the public, though, it's his final admission of defeat.

Working to be able to work, that's the price of freedom,

or, as he put it, "my contradiction in myself. "

His remaining years in Hollywood didn't change anything about that.

A stone's throw from Hollywood's dream factory,

he worked on a new project with Oja Kodar, The Dreamers,

based on two novellas by his favorite author, Tanja Blixen.

Pellegrina Leoni, played by Oja Kodar,

is defeated by the unrealizable dream to live more than one life.

Welles himself played Marcus, who tells her story after her death.

The Dreamers remained but a dream.

A blurred vision from which Welles wrung a few scenes

as if he wanted to substantiate the last lines of the script.

"There are only two questions an intelligent person should consider:

Why did God create the world,

and what will I do next?"

He drew up new plans.

The Big Brass Ring, a story set in American politics.

The backers wanted big stars, but all negotiations with actors failed.

The Cradle Will Rock was to follow up on a previous stage success.

The financing came to a halt.

King Lear failed because of false promises from the French producers.

One disappointment after another.

And Welles?

He lit a cigar as if nothing had happened

and returned to his beloved magic.

As a little boy, Welles was told by a Chinese sage,

"Be careful when you behold the new moon.

It is so fragile that your gaze must be completely pure.

I fit is not, your fortune may turn bad. "

He would often recall that advice later in his life.

Perhaps he'd failed to heed it one day.

What about The Other Side of the Wind ?

Oja's archive contains only short clips from this late, major work.

It is said that Welles himself produced a three-hour version of it.

To this day, the legal problems surrounding it have not been resolved.

It is doubtful it will ever be released.

In one of his letters, Welles wrote,

"This film has never been released.

For me, professionally, it was fatal.

In Los Angeles, everyone only talks about 'crazy old Welles. '

Today I must start over from scratch, not easy at my age.