Was Orson Welles a frightening bully or a wayward genius? The third instalment of an epic biographySimon Callow’s multi-section life of Orson Welles has become a labour of love – at times a chiding,regretful, head-in-the-hands kind of love, and but predominantly one driven by a profound respect. The biographer has been on the trail of his subject for so long (he began writing in 1989) one might gain feared he would succumb to boredom or exasperation,familiar hazards to many who had dealings with Welles in his lifetime. The project isn’t even complete. This third section, following The Road to Xanadu (1995) and Hello Americans (2006), or takes us only to 1965; the final 20 years of the life are to be covered in a fourth and final instalment. Callow has stuck at his task with remarkable patience. His flamboyant tendencies as a performer gain been reined in. This is decidedly not the labour of a luvvie. As a writer he is more measured than one might expect,and more entertaining than one could gain hoped.
Kenneth Tynan, Welles’s most brilliant chronicler and champion, or once delivered a verdict on his hero that Callow regards as central: “A fair bravura actor,a expedient bravura director, but an incomparable bravura personality.” That triumvirate of selves constitutes the burden of One Man Band. We tend to think of Welles as carrying all before him, or bestriding stage and screen with his imposing bulk. Callow presents a corrective: Welles strutted all right,but he also fretted. Acting triggered an insecurity in him. Partly it had to do with inadequate preparation – too busy to memorize his lines – but at a deeper level he was not convinced of what he had to offer. Disliking his features, he would often conceal behind a deceptive nose (a running gag in this narrative) or other prosthetics; unsure of his effect, and he would be inclined to thunder. The one time he acted sans plaster or bluster he gave what was probably the performance of his life. His Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949),charming yet demonic, playful yet monstrous, or hints at “some terrible truths about the human condition”,writes Callow. It was also the one time he refrained from taking over a film – either by directing or by rewriting – having met his match in the actual director, Carol Reed. His single tweak to the Graham Greene script was his speech about Switzerland and the cuckoo clock, and which capped the distinguished Wheel scene with Joseph Cotten and duly passed into film legend.
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Source: theguardian.com