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Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios

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Orson Welles is often cited as the classic example of an artist who peaked too early. His great work for the Mercury radio theater (including the infamous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast) was followed by his 1941 film debut "Citizen Kane," consistently rated in polls as the greatest film of all time. After that, embarrassment...a long, slow decline until he became the pathetic figure in wine commercials before he died.

The usual explanation for this focusses on Welles' own character flaws. He was self-indulgent, this explanation says, irascible, unable to bring a film in on budget, constantly trying gimmicky scenarios that didn't have a chance of working or of garnering an audience. Welles supposedly left us a clue to his own personality in "Citizen Kane": the self-obsessed loser who finishes his days alone due to his own inability to relate to others.

Clinton Heylin thinks otherwise. He believes Welles could have accomplished a string of cinematic miracles, perhaps as great as "Kane," had the Hollywood studio system just given him the chance. Heylin has done his homework. He carefully reconstructs what happened to each of Welles' films within the studio system, beginning with "The Magnificent Ambersons" and continuing to "Touch of Evil." It is a fascinating look at what went wrong, and why.

The book has its faults. It is written with breathless prose at times, and you won't find much objectivity about Welles within its pages. Occasionally, the author seems so full of adulation for Welles that he refuses to see his faults. The book accepts Welles' own praise for his relatively untampered-with version of Kafka's "The Trial," for example, which I found (on a first viewing, at least) to be hilariously self-indulgent. (Anthony Perkins and Orson Welles turned out to be a very bad combination, in my opinion, though I know there are people who adore this film.)

Overall, this book makes a valuable contribution to understanding Welles and his struggles with the studio system during the years 1942 through 1958.

When _Citizen Kane_ was released in 1941, it was hailed by critics as a marvel, a film that had accomplished by innovations in plot, theme, photography, and sound what no movie had done before. It was as thick with meaning and style as any play or novel; the enormous numbers of books and articles devoted to it since that time, and its continuous inclusion on any list of great films, confirm how important a work it is. Orson Welles, new to Hollywood, young, brash, and brilliant, had delivered a masterpiece in his very first try. He had made the system work in ways it never had before. He would bring further new and innovative works from Hollywood, it seemed certain. But Welles never again had the freedom that he was able to use on _Kane_, and only made five further movies within the Hollywood system. How did this happen? In _Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios_ (Chicago Review Press), Clinton Heylin has given a useful and informed summary of the troubled give-and-take that resulted in the studios taking all his films except _Kane_ away from Welles at the vital editing stage. "I believe that the only good work I can do is my own particular thing," Welles once said, looking back and using the idiom of the sixties. "I don't think I'm very good at doing their thing."

Heylin comments extensively on other commentators on the Welles productions, because he has set out to redress what he sees as a misinformed analysis that has laid blame on the inner demons of Welles himself for his shocking failure to follow up _Kane_. For instance, Charles Higham wrote twenty-five years ago that Welles blamed others for wrecking his work, but that the real culprit was Welles's own fear of completion. This was, according to Heylin, "a neat little box in which to wrap any enigmas the work itself threw up." It was simple, and attracted many other commentators, and even cost Welles an investor for one of his later projects. However, Heylin shows that Welles was eager to get his films done, finishing them against the odds and against the shortsightedness of studio heads. Welles was not undone by his own inner failings, but "by real people, with real motives." In the stories about each of the six films here, Heylin shows that after _Kane_, Welles directed some fascinating films whose flaws are not due to his own inability to complete them, but to his inability to complete them in his fashion. _The Magnificent Ambersons_, _The Stranger_, _The Lady from Shanghai_, _Macbeth_, and finally _Touch of Evil_ are all covered here in fine detail, and their individual problems laid out.

One of the sound ideas that Heylin stresses is that not all the complaints the studios had against Welles ought to have been based on their financial worries. It is true that Welles didn't care much about making money, nor did he take pains to get the money men on his side in his endeavors. Welles could, when he wanted, work fast and inexpensively; _Kane_, for instance, was not a particularly expensive movie, and its glorious effects are all the more wonderful for being, on the whole, simple and cheap. Welles could film many pages of script in a single take, using combinations of shots that could compress ideas in an economic model any studio would embrace. He was certainly difficult to work with, self-indulgent and not only flouting Hollywood rules but disappearing from the studios at just the time when he should have been there to support his own versions of his films. Heylin takes the stance, however, that Welles was over and over again a victim, and _Despite the System_ marshals an impressive collection of facts (shooting scripts, rewrites, memos, and of course, other authors' books of interpretation) to support such a view. Against the system, Welles had considerable triumphs, but the subject here is his defeats, and they are told with sympathy; his admirers will read this book with a heartbreaking sense of loss.

This book is heavy on argumentation. Whatever newly researched material it provides (and whether it provides much at all is debatable) is wound up in the fiber of a polemic the likes of which we haven't seen since the glory days of the Andrew Sarris-Pauline Kael Wars. I wish there had been a little less nonchalant jab-shooting at those with whom the writer doesn't see eye-to-eye, and a little more substance that was new.

That said, I will concede that this book is, naturally, highly readable. But bear in mind, it would be hard to imagine a book about any aspect of a life like Welles' being anything but readable. Having read Leaming's friendly biography and the Bogdanovich interview book (This is Orson Welles), however, I have to say everything here feels more than merely familiar, like something I (as a reader of books on this topic) have known for years now.

It begins to look as if a resifting through the same plate of sand is all we are going to get from further books about Welles, barring some sort of major uncovering of tapes, films or personal papers. And that doesn't appear likely at this point.

Heylin doesn't have much good to say about Simon Callow's ongoing biography of Orson Welles, sneering at him for making it so long and involved. I can see him criticizing Callow for relying on John Houseman and Michael McLiammoir if they are supposed to be so unreliable, but why criticize him for not wrapping up his biography in two volumes and extending it to a third? You'd think he himself (Heylin) was some minimalist purist, but he's written far more hackwork himself than Callow ever will. Think oif a topic, Heylin's written an angry book about it.

If Orson Welles didn't have any emotional problems that led him to studio disputes, then I'm Tallulah Bankhead. Were all the studios conspiring against Welles because he was a dangerous man? I doubt it. But maybe ninety per cent of them were. There was still a fatal weakness in Welles that led to the mistakes among the six studio films Heylin counts over and over again. It's a door that swings both ways, but until the day comes that people realize it, there will always be a place on the shelf for books that paint Orson as an innocent victim of studio malice, Othello to Iago's "motiveless malignity."

If you have ever seen Citizen Kane and enjoyed Orson Welles' performance, I think you will enjoy reading this book. The author tends to badmouth other critics which is pretty funny, but he also gives a nice insight into the life of Orson Welles. Pretty interesting although I wouldn't call it the EASIEST read. Fairly easy though.

Orson Welles did the movie 'Citizen Kane' and should have gone on to further greatness. Instead it appeared that he had peaked early and did litle for the rest of his careet.

In this extensively researched book, Clinton Heylin uses shooting scripts, schedules, internal memos and much more to come to a different conclusion. He says that the subsequent five movies Wells made were effectively ruined in post-production editing and cutting. For instance his movie 'The Lady from Shanghai' was cut from 155 to 86 minutes.

I suspect we will never be able to see a 'Director's Cut' of this movie, the 69 minutes that wound up on the cutting room floor were probably thrown away. So looking at the script and what recollections remain after half a century will have to do.

Mr. Heylin does point out some of the problems that were self inflicted, disappearing for a few days at critical times for instance. The book remains, however, a condemnation of the movie production system. I suspect this remains today as I look at the number of re-makes of old movies, the sequels, and how few original groundbreaking movies get made.

This book sheds little light on the Hollywood scene in Welles times and contains little on Welles' personal life or makeup. Rather it supplies endless, scene by scene trivia on how Welles saw his dramas develop. A good book for a collegiate motion picture major but a bore for the general public.