Customer Reviews

Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

When I told a co-worker that I was reading a book on Welles, she said, "Wow, that must be interesting...he was such a mysterious man." And this book definitely is interesting. Instead of reverting to the dry, analytical narrative that most biographies use, the author uses an effervescent, almost poetical descriptive voice, as well as employing an imaginary dialogue with an inquiring editor. The dialogue technique is used sometimes to escape the pitfalls of libel suits (as someone to "suggest" that so-and-so may have homosexual, etc.) as well as to explore multidimensional interpretations of film.

This technique could be distracting, but it isn't. Instead it's compelling, and it gives voice to the reader in an interesting way.

Now, on to the content...this book was a fine portrait of Orson, detailing his early success, blazing masterpiece, debilitating failure, and strange downward slide. It examines Welles with both adoration and horror -- how could someone with so much talent burn so brightly and then burn out?

Scenic analysis of some films are an added bonus, and prove almost as illuminating as biographical details. These film crit moments aren't too heavy for the amateur, but they also won't bore a seasoned scholar. (ALthough if you haven;t seen "Citizen Kane" before you pick this up, you really should go rent it first...and even if you know it well, as I do, you might want to still rent it because the book does explore it with regards to Welles psyche, and it is very helpful to have scenes fresh in your mind.)

This talks about Welles's personal life, but refrains from idle gossip. It emphasizes the *human* struggle in Welles and illuminates the myth without diminishing the pleasant mystery.

Highly recommended for theater & film buffs as well as people with a good taste for a tragic story.

If there is a word for David Thomson's writing that word might be: twee. Another word: self-infatuated. How about: pompous. Having been overpraised in the past he now sees himself as a fellow artist and equal of a legend like Welles. An intellectual Rupert Pupkin, Thomson doesn't much bother with original research or new interviews so much as mincing daydreaming about how he and Welles are such spiritual kin. Ah, the labors of shared genius! These sections are kind of funny in a way but not for long. The vanity of this approach is breathtaking.Stick with Simon Callow's exhaustive 1st volume bio, or the very good one by Brady, or Barbara Leaming's somewhat hagiographic but highly entertaining bio (the best for capturing Welles'charisma and his own take on his life) or even the rather plodding but informative Bogdanovich interview book.

I was so looking forward to reading this book, but it turned out to be not at all what I expected. Perhaps I'm too used to a more conventional style of biography, but I found "Rosebud" hard to get through. As fascinating a person as Orson Welles was, parts of this book were still slow going. The author constantly interrupts the narrative with "dialogues" between himself and...himself? The publisher? An imaginary reader? It's hard to say, and seems to be used mostly to insert his own presence into the biography, and to do an end run around any potential libel.

Other unnecessary bits include a whole chapter of this dialogue between the author and his imaginary friend as they watch the first few minutes of "Citizen Kane," and another entire chapter about how the author became a fan of Welles. This is supposed to be a biography of Orson Welles, not a book about how David Thomson feels about Orson Welles, and how Thomson has taught "Citizen Kane" in his class for years, blah blah blah. Every time Welles' own story gets interesting, Thomson pops up to remind you he's there. Ideally, a reader shouldn't be bombarded with the presence of the author in a biography.

There is some interesting information, but the book as a whole is not put together very well.

David Thompson has written a biography that for the most part seems objective on all accounts. While acknowledging Orson Welles's great genius, he doesn't gloss over the major flaws in his character. Like the tragic figure in Citizen Kane, Welles's seemed to fall because of his own arrogance and indifference to others around him. As a young man in his twenties, Welles seemingly has the world on a string, but either because of ego and the aforementioned arrogance, never seems to learn the important game of diplomacy, whether it be with film executives or some of his talented inner circle. Like a good novel, this biography is an interesting read. It moves along at a nice pace, and the information surrounding Welles's early days in theater and radio are fascinating. The fascination only increases once Welles and Company set off for Hollywood. After inking one of the all-time sweetheart deals that a film studio ever put together, Welles just seems to take it all for granted. He's either alienating friends and executives or just plan goofing off. As a history of the entertainment industry, this book is terrific. As a history of someone who for unknown reasons squandered opportunity after opportunity it's both frustrating and sad. What would American film be today had Welles been a more disciplined individual? We'll never know, but Rosebud helps give us a glimmer of what might have been.

This is that rarest of birds, a celebrity biography that's actually a good book. Thomson is an insightful, elegant writer and a solid film (and film industry) critic, and his skills are fully at work here, as he resists both of the the strong responses that Welles usually elicits: hero worship, and the urge to debunk. Obviously long fascinated by Welles, Thomson manages to be as objective as possible (though I think he errs on the side of generosity with regard to some of Welles's post-Kane films). Thomson even manages to say something original and interesting about Citizen Kane, which alone would make the book worth a read. The real trouble with a biography of Welles is how to deal with the last two thirds of the life of someone who reached his peak at 26. That's a lot of anticlimax to deal with. Peter Guralnik faced a similar problem in his massive, two-volume Elvis Presley biography---how to write meaningfully and accurately about post-Army Elvis without boring people to death. Thomson deals rather more successfully with post-Kane Welles, mainly because he doesn't go into as much detail. Admittedly the later parts of the book become a bit of a blur; but throughout the book one gets the strong sense that Thomson has a firm grasp (as much as anyone can) of the enigmatic Welles---has his number, so to speak. Yet he is neither cruel nor fawning. This is THE Welles bio to read.

David Thomson thinks he's some kind of superior being and criticizes in a pompous and condescendent manner everything Welles ever did. He's one of those people who think that Welles never achieved anything after Kane. He wonders if he was even really responsible for Kane? He states that Welles did not write any of the script (false), that Greg Toland was director of photography while Robert Wise was responsible for the editing. SO what did Welles do? He directed! Apparently, that's not enough to make Kane his movie, his masterpiece, among others. Well if movies were only based on photography, scripting and editing, then why would directors be needed?

Thomson insults Welles in every paragraph; he hammers him over and over, relentlessly. He focuses on the less successful aspects of his life and exaggerates them. He ridicules him, makes fun of his weight, says he's egotistical, a liar, a misogynist, an unfaithful friend, a machiavellic mischievous man who uses people, cheats on his wives, dates married women, eats like a pig and stuffs his face with anything he could find (he talks a lot about that), a pretend genius or would be genius who thinks he's the victim of evil Hollywood moguls. What other bad things could be said about Welles? Basically, any insult or evil thought you would ever have towards your worse enemy would not match up to the way Thomson writes about Welles.

Welles is not the only target of the author's wrath towards famous people. Any dead actor that was a friend or acquaintance of welles is also treated unkindly, as for the ones who are still alive, Thomson refrains himself from making a judgement. What a coward! Dead celebrities are such easy targets to criticism aren't they?

When Thompson runs out of evil things to say, he talks about his childhood and when he went to see The Third Man with his grand mother who for some reason has a claw instead of a hand. Oh poor little David, he could not hold his grandma's hand, only a claw! Tear. Who cares! Also, he has the annoying habit of interrupting every other chapter with imaginary conversations between the writer (?) and the publisher (?). It's never quite clear and really pointless. It's a way for him to put himself in value and shows how he can also criticize his own work. What a decent man!...

I was not expecting a hagiography, I know Welles was not godlike. Thomson explains at the end of the book that he does not mean to put Welles down, but only attempts to humanize him. Well there's a difference between humanizing someone and destroying the truth. Also, a biography should include anecdotes, facts, it should be detailed and accurate. Thompson writes some kind of very superficial, selective, inaccurate story, with imaginary dialogues about what people could have said to welles or thought of him. You can't assume things in a biography.

The author is too involved with his own thoughts instead of sticking to the facts in an objective manner. If you want to learn about Welles, read "Road to Xanadu' by Simon Callow, which focuses on Welles life up to Kane. Or "This is Orson Welles" which is a series of Welles interviews conducted by Peter Bogdanovich in which Welles tells the story of his life. Sure he had a tendency of lying about his past, but only because he was a story teller. Story Tellers always add a little to the truth. Thomson has no such skill.

Unfortunately I can't give 0 star to this book, or I would. It's really just food for the shredder.

I enjoyed Thompson's book very much. Not only does he give us the insight on the genius of Orson Welles, but he also gives us a very compelling look at Orson Welles the man. After I was done with this book I was left with a very muddled feeling: I didn't know whether to hate Orson Welles or to admire him.

David Thomson's <Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles>, though undeniably detailed and well researched, was also lacking in many respects. This was a good thing.

Several years back, upon my brother's behest, I picked up a book entitled <Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu> by Simon Callow. Callow's book was intensively researched, shattering the godlike Wellesian visage that existed within my mind due to Welles' own self promoting exaggerations. The imposingly thick tome only covers the first 26 years of Welles' life, and though entertaining, I found Callow to be highly skeptical , a bit removed from his subject and utterly exhausting.

Thomson's work, in comparison to Callow's, may seem rushed and under researched, but that is only part of its charm. Thomson has no ill intentions of passing himself off as someone who has done vast amounts of research, but merely as a great admirer of Welles willing to ask questions and make bold observations. Not blinded by hero worship, Thomson is ready and able to criticize Welles for what he sees as a genius' failures or shortcomings, and I believe he is able to do so in a way that does not lend itself to Callow's skepticism. If I wanted to read a straightforward text on the life of Welles, I could easily do some research and find books like Frank Brady's biography, but Thomson's <Rosebud> is anything but conventional, inviting the reader to partake in some musings and discussions on an enigmatic character with the stylistic flourish of the most engaging novelist.

Thomson is able to expand upon the aspects of Welles' life that he finds most fascinating or noteworthy, leaving me to feel as though Welles' earlier radio and theatre work, which Callow goes into extensively, were not of great interest to Thomson. It is upon Welles' entry into film that <Rosebud> really picks up, and though Thomson reveals a frustratingly sad side of Welles, it is not altogether cynical and abrasive. Thomson is uninterested in simply providing an unbiased view of Welles, for which I applaud him, as <Rosebud> offers up very personal opinions that may or may not be wholly justified, but they all encouraged me to second guess myself, second guess Welles and see things from another perspective.

<Rosebud> is no "Idiot's Guide To" anything, and for that I was grateful. Another rehashing of the same tired "...and then this happened, and this is what Welles said about it..." is precisely what Thomson avoided.

Thomson provides an examination of Orson Welles in a light I had previously not seen, basking the legend in an unappealing, and all-too-human glow that lovingly gives fault to fantasy, adding a character and life that could easily be overlooked by "sticking to the facts" as it were.

David Thomson is simply not the man to be writing a straightforward biography. He lovingly embraces his subject, attempting to recreate a destroyed man by examining his cinematic triumphs, his humanistic failures and, yes, even his quirky physical traits. For this unique view, <Rosebud> is a more valuable text to me than a thousand exhausting Callows.

I have been doing a lot of reading on Welles for a research project and while it is clear that Welles was no angel, this book seems to go out of its way to put Welles in the worst possible light. There are too many flights of fancy and liberties taken. For example, based on no evidence Thomson suggests that not only did Welles have sexual relations with Dorothy Commingore but that he practically raped her. Perhaps the book reveals more about the author than it does about its subject.

There are some useful takes on lesser known figures like John Toland but on the whole it is a book to take with several grains of salt.

Simply the definitive account of the greatest american talent in cinemas history. From the glory of Kane to the despair of daytime commercials, Thomson treats the subject with equal measures of admiration, pity and despair. A great story well told. As Kane said "if I hadnt been rich, I COULD HAVE BEEN A TRULY GREAT MAN "