In a recent twist, Sight and Sound’s decade-spanning critics’ poll dethroned Citizen Kane from its long-held position atop the list. Following a fifty-year reign, Orson Welles’ captivating debut failed to retain the top spot. While this development may disappoint Welles enthusiasts worldwide, the true tragedy lies elsewhere.
What’s truly lamentable is that Welles’ extraordinary directorial legacy continues to be overshadowed by what he himself dismissed as ‘that movie.’ Despite recent attempts to diminish the revolutionary impact of Citizen Kane (1941), it’s important to note that Welles didn’t even consider it his best work.
Critics increasingly recognize that Welles, far from burning out at the age of 25 as popular belief suggests, remained a formidable creative force. Unfortunately, Welles’ reputation was marred by simplistic criticisms dating back to the 1970s (‘Welles had a fear of completing his films/He ended his days acting in the Transformers movie’).
While Welles devotees have long argued against such notions, their perspective has only recently gained broader acceptance. The director consistently reinvented himself as one of the earliest avant-garde independent filmmakers, producing masterpieces (or as he humbly described them, ‘flawed masterpieces’) such as Othello (1952), The Trial (1962), Chimes at Midnight (1965), The Immortal Story (1968), and F for Fake (1974).
These films, often characterized by their quirkiness and limited theatrical releases, remain strikingly original even decades later. Moreover, Welles’ later work exhibited a distinctly European flavor.
With this year’s BFI poll, the title of the director of the ‘Greatest’ film was shifted from an American-turned-European director (Welles) to a European-turned-American director (Hitchcock). Remarkably, in both instances, the accolade was bestowed upon a signature film from their Hollywood tenure.
While Hitchcock’s early British cinema was often deemed inferior to his later, higher-budget American works, recent critics such as Charles Barr have questioned the overlooking of Hitchcock’s early English films. It’s worth noting that Hitchcock’s leisurely-paced 1956 Hollywood remake of his own The Man Who Knew Too Much is frequently regarded as inferior to the brisker 1934 English original.
Similarly, Welles’ European career was unjustly disregarded by critics. Among his later films, only the Hollywood-produced noir thriller Touch of Evil (1958), which was thankfully restored to a semblance of a director’s cut in 1998, has garnered widespread acclaim comparable to Citizen Kane.
This oversight is regrettable. Welles was as much a European director as he was an American one. Having been deeply influenced by Europe during his extensive travels in childhood, he fled to Ireland and Spain as a teenager, where he pursued careers as an actor, pulp fiction writer, and bullfighter.
Welles often expressed a profound affection for Europe, viewing it – like many Americans – not as a collection of nations but as a unified continent (though he also regarded Spain as so multifaceted that it constituted its own continent). When his Hollywood career faltered in 1947, he turned to Europe. Initially, this decision was purely pragmatic: he had connections in the Italian film industry and hoped to amass a fortune through lucrative acting roles, intending to return to America triumphantly after a few years.
However, things didn’t unfold as planned. Except for a brief return to Hollywood in 1956-1958, Welles remained in Europe until 1970. He maintained residences in France, Italy, and Spain, and also worked in Austria, Belgium, Britain, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, West Germany, and Yugoslavia.
Pragmatism played a significant role in Welles’ decision to exile himself in Europe. In Hollywood, Welles was viewed as ‘damaged goods,’ particularly as the industry was already experiencing a post-war decline, with studio executives reluctant to take commercial risks on a maverick talent.
Notably, Welles’ groundbreaking 1939 contract with RKO, which granted him unprecedented artistic freedom for Citizen Kane, was partly a result of RKO’s desperation amid the looming specter of decline.
In contrast, many European countries boasted burgeoning post-war film industries, bolstered by generous state subsidies in countries like France, Italy, and Spain.
Welles’ eventual return to America in 1970 was similarly driven by pragmatism; he believed “that’s where the action is.” Additionally, with American investors withdrawing funds from European studios in the late 1960s, opportunities for work in Europe were dwindling. However, the move proved disastrous.
None of the American funding opportunities resulted in a completed film being released, and Welles’ only directorial releases in the 1970s continued to be in Europe.
Despite this, Welles’ political beliefs was often overlooked, though efforts by scholars like Simon Callow seek to rectify this neglect. He was a prominent advocate for progressive causes and a liberal supporter of the New Deal, actively campaigning for Franklin D. Roosevelt and even considering a Senate run in 1946.
Joseph McBride contends that Welles’ European exile was influenced by anti-communist blacklisting. Although Welles is not typically seen as a victim of the blacklist due to his absence from America during its peak period, McBride points out that until 1956, Welles had an extensive FBI file rife with accusations of communism. His departure in 1947 coincided with the HUAC hearings, and his return to America would have unlikely until after McCarthy’s downfall.
Europe, with its more progressive politics aligned with Welles’ own beliefs, proved more welcoming, especially among the Left Bank intellectuals who championed his work. Additionally, Welles found sympathetic Republican allies in Spain; during the 1930s, he had supported the Republican cause, later declaring that “the Spanish Civil War was the central tragedy of anybody’s life who’s my age.”
