Orson Welles: The Artisitc Ego

"I believe, thinking about my films, that they are based not so much on pursuit as on a search. If we are looking for something, the labyrinth is the most favorable location for the search. I do not know why, but my films are all for the most part a physical search."
- Orson Welles

In 1938, Orson Welles directed a radio production of The War of the Worlds which so frightened the nation that many people actually fled for the hills. For an actor, writer, and director at the age of 23, it was an amazing acknowledgement of his talents and the first of many controversies that this wunderkind would provoke. His off-Broadway Richard Wright's Native Son in 1941 caused great social discussion just as his 1955 verse-play of Moby Dick provoked a storm of literary debate. When he made his film debut with Citizen Kane (USA 1941), a thinly disguised biography of William Randolph Hearst, Welles provoked more than just controversy, he also provoked Hearst. Hearst's power as a newspaper tycoon was waning when Citizen Kane was made, but he and his associates were still able to harass Welles for years.

The controversies are, however, insignificant in regards to Welles's films. He is one of the greatest, and one of the most idiosyncratic, film­makers in the cinema. His combination of brilliance and megalomania delight and annoy the viewer simultaneously. He refuses, however, to bore the audience and even his detractors cannot deny that his films are at least lively enough to enrage them.

Welles was born on May 6, 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His father was an inventor, industrialist, and hotelier and his mother was a concert pianist. His parents loved to travel and their friends included such people as Harry Houdini and William Randolph Hearst. His parents died while he was a child and Welles was raised by his guardian, Dr. Bernstein. When he was 16, Welles left school and traveled to Ireland where he attempted a career as a painter. Painting, however, was the one art form in which Welles failed. Finding himself stranded in Dublin with little money and an interest in working in the theater, he attempted to convince the owners of the Dublin Gate Theater that he was a famous American actor who had decided to grace them with his talents. They did not believe him, but were impressed by his audacity and hired him to play minor parts. By 1932, when he was barely 17, he was directing plays by Ibsen and Chekhov at the theater.

Welles returned to America in the mid-1930s and went to work in both theater and radio. He directed an all-black production of Macbeth and, for a brief time, provided the voice for The Shadow radio series. During this time, he and a group of other performers banded together as the "Mercury Theater" and produced a series of radio plays, the most infamous being The War of the Worlds. It was the "Mercury Theater" that Welles took with him to Hollywood for the production of Citizen Kane.

Welles was given total control over Citizen Kane, an unprecedented act by any Hollywood film studio. He filmed on a closed set and the details of the production were kept secret. Prior to the film's release, however, word leaked out that it was loosely based on Hearst's life and his news­papers began a protracted campaign against both Welles and the film. The release of Citizen Kane was delayed and Welles, who was already listed as 4-F, was repeatedly drafted by the Army, courtesy of Hearst's influence.

Hearst's outrage over Citizen Kane can be appreciated, for the film freely borrows from the various scandals which surrounded him. It is Welles, however, who is most exposed in the film. Welles lost both of his parents at the age of 8, the same age that Kane is sent away from his parents. The character of Bernstein in Citizen Kane was modeled after Welles's guardian. Kane's megalomania seems, in retrospect, to be a mirror image of Welles's own ego. In an interview, Welles once stated that Hearst did not have enough style to be Kane. Welles is notorious for style.

Perhaps Hearst should have been offended by the fact that his life was used as a stage upon which Welles strutted his own self-absorption. The dominant theme in all of Welles's films is that of the supreme egotist who must ultimately fail due to his inability to truly control the world around him. Welles may flaunt his own megalomania, but he does so in order to critique it and no other filmmaker has ever been so harsh when it comes to self-criticism.

For many critics, Welles's other films are elaborate footnotes to Citizen Kane. Though this is not true, and many of these films are unique in their own right, they certainly continue the concerns of Welles's original work. The Trial (France 1962) presents society as a cruel, irrational force which has an ego of its own; an ego to which the individual must either adapt or be punished. In this respect, it is as if Charles Foster Kane had succeeded in creating his artificial universe (the Xanadu of Citizen Kane) and we, the viewer, are trapped within it.

The Lady From Shanghai (USA 1948) deals indirectly with the destruction of the universe. All of the characters, except Welles's, are self-absorbed with their own fears, desires, and need to control others. The film's finale, a shoot-out in a hall of mirrors, presents the world as a complex series of self-reflections which are eventually shattered by a barrage of gunfire. In no other film has the self-destructive nature of megalomania ever been presented with such fascination as well as contempt.

With Falstaff (Chimes at Midnight - Spain/Switzerland 1966), Welles attempted in to explain himself. Like Kane, Falstaff is an egotist who seems concerned only with himself. His need, however, for love and approval from others is far greater and his inability to achieve this is painful to him. Kane's wealth insulated him from his own feelings. Falstaff has nothing but his feelings and in this regard, he is like a child. Unlike Kane, Falstaff knows that he does not control the world and, at the same time, he knows that he cannot change his nature.

Falstaff's ego is tempered by the fact that he knows better, and this conflict in his character makes him the most humane, and ultimately tragic, figure in all of Welles's films, It is as if Welles is saying that the overbearing nature of his ego is due to the fact that he has no other perspective from which to view the world. His self-absorption is actually a dynamic form of introspection.