Product Details

• Actors: Peter Jason, Stacy Keach, Oja Kodar, Cameron Mitchell, Susan Strasberg
• Directors: Gary Graver
• Format: Black & White, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Image Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: August 3, 1999
• Run Time: 94 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00000IZ0G
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #228,463 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Rare and Important Documentation of Welles' Later Years, January 29, 2000

By 

Matt Wilson (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Working With Orson Welles [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Yes, this shot-on-video documentary is rough around the edges. If you're turned off by that, by all means stay away from not only this documentary, but all of Welles' films after 1958. If, on the other hand, you're looking for a film that tells you what this great artist was up to in his later years, while he was creatively strong as ever, but unable to find financing or studio support,this film is for you. There are interviews here with, among others, filmmaker and Welles friend Peter Bogdanovich and Frank Marshall (who worked with Welles on his unreleased "The Other Side of the Wind" before going on to form Amblin Entertainment with Steven Spielberg). It's not a perfect film, and not all of the people interviewed are as important to Orson Welles' life and career as one would hope, but if you admire Welles body of work I can't recommend it highly enough.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars For Welles Fanatics Only, January 14, 2002

By 

Bill Fleck (Wurtsboro, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Working with Orson Welles (DVD)

When Orson Welles died in 1985, he left behind a body of unfinished work almost legendary among cinephiles. The cinematographer on most of these projects was Gary Graver.

WORKING WITH ORSON WELLES is Graver's take on that body of unfinished work. Sight unseen, you might expect some clips from THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, THE DREAMERS, KING LEAR, and perhaps even DON QUIXOTE. Unfortunately, perhaps for legal reasons, this work is short on such items.

In fact, WORKING WITH WELLES is short on Welles himself. Oh, there are stories...lots of stories...Graver interviews several people involved in the filming of WIND and talks endlessly himself about how much of an honor it was to work with the Man. But in the end, these interviews with Peter Bogdanovich, Cameron Mitchell, Frank Marshall, and others get rather dull. And Graver's canned introductions are even harder to take.

There are some interesting snippets of Welles working in Italy, and the inclusion of the trailer for F FOR FAKE is nice, but two of Gravers' short films seem to be here for no other reason than Graver feels that they should be seen (ditto the trailer for Oja Kodar's JADED, a film it seems she was able to make solely on the strength of her association with Welles).

In short, then, WORKING WITH ORSON WELLES is a curio for Welles fanatics only. Others will find it somewhat less than interesting.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Document of the last 15 years of the life, February 15, 2002

By 

Kevin Lindgren (Twin Cities, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Working with Orson Welles (DVD)

of a filmmaker. As such, this film is of legitimate interest not only to die-hard fans of Welles but also to anyone with a serious interest in the history of film.
The flaws are there: too little Welles; too much, perhaps, of Mr. Graver, whose persona cannot help but seem a little flat compared to the over-the-top Orson. The clips from F for Fake and the trailer for Citizen Kane are available elsewhere. Only the F for Fake trailer is really new. It's the hard-to-find Orson Welles: One-Man Band that apparently contains actual segments from Other Side of the Wind, the "unfinished" film on which Gravers did his most important work with Welles.
However the various Welles stories provide a chronology of the making of a pontentially great film, and provide genuine insight into how Welles worked with actors and camera crews, as well as the "guerilla" filmmaking style of the '70s, normally associated with Coppola, Scorsese and Lucas, but hardly with Orson Welles. Working with Orson Welles helps to sketch one part of an era of American movie-making -- the important years 1970-1985 -- which otherwise might have remained undocumented.