This Is Orson Welles

Ordered 2 of the same books in error. Sent one back no quibbles got my money back no problem.V fast response bravo.

This thing is heavy enough to knock someone out with.

Worth a read.

Stuck up its own arse.

Just what I was looking for as a special present. Thank you

Peter Bogdanovich made the journey of his much admired French cinema directors - from film critic to author of his movies. Yet the biography of Bogdanovich, at least as a cinema director, run much shorter of those French ones. After some years of movie reviews, in which he showed good taste and a skill for writing clearly, Bogdanovich jumped to the movies via Roger Corman. However he was blessed or curse with a sudden success - "The Last Picture Show" was a great hit and it is indeed a very good movie (even if some say it is his "only" good movie). He followed it with "What's Up Doc" an open homage to the screwball comedies. Yet from there his career went South. Furthermore, and most sadly, he was involved in serious financial trouble (for which ha had to file for bankruptcy, twice) and hit by one of the most heinous crimes of the Eighties, that one of his partner Dorothy Stratten. He never recovered.Bogdanovich carried on writing and he has authored many books of cinema, two very, very good: "Who the hell directed it" and "Who the hell is in it". These are masterpieces (more the former than the latter) in which he interviewed many directors and actors. Some of the pieces are very touching (Stewart, Lemmon, Dean Martin).Yet this one book, "This is Orson Welles" is regularly chosen as his best, obviously because of the subject at stake - the great and inimitable man behind Citizen Kane. But for these eyes this book is a tad dissapointing, for reasons that could have been avoided.Firstly, as I say in the title of this review, it should be cut. Even if it is a long interview, we the readers should be spared of the "Oh Peter, Peter" that the interviewee says when he doesn't like a question. Same with some other exclamations and comments made by Welles, that should have been trimmed.Secondly, it is a rather disorganized book. It consists on several meetings between Peter and Orson, along almost two decades, and it shows. Sometimes, they come back to a point they did twenty pages (and 10 years) before. It is not lineal and becomes openly confusing at some points.Third. It is repetitive regarding the "system". Notoriously, Orson Welles had many disagreements with producers that eventually cut his career, a least as a Director, quite short. But it is a recurrent comment, more like a constant one, blaming a producer or a studio for this or that frustrated project. Sometimes it is like the alumn complaining he didn't pass the test because the teacher didn't like him.And then there's the dispute between Bogdanovich and some other reviewers on Welles. There is too much space, too many pages, to much energy, on the matter of Orson Welles and how some critics killed a potential resurrection of Welles in the seventies because of bad reviews on his career. And in two cases, Pauline Kael and David Thomson, Bogdanovich is simply wrong. Those, like me, that have read literally everything that Kael and Thomson have put on print, do know that they both praised unconditionally Orson Welles, calling Kane a masterpiece virtually without equal. And the same, or almost, of "The Magnificent Ambersons". But then they (Kael and Thomson) do say also that Orson Welles could be lazy, too disperse, inconstant or unnecessary slow making a movie (all this has been admitted by Welles himself). And this is all they say and this is what happened with Orson's career in Hollywood.So in the end, a good book for cinema lovers (nothing on Orson Welles can be dull or lack interest) but that could have been much better (the masterpiece many claim to see) by being shorter and edited in many places.

The hard-back is heavy enough to knock someone out with.

This is a quite wonderful book. As a guide to the career and life of Orson Welles, it could hardly be bettered, although, as the interview material dates from more than ten years before Welles's death, it is perhaps not quite as complete as one might greedily like. But there is a tremendous amount of material here, and Bogdanovich is just the man to conduct Welles through his amazing story. Welles, of course, was a colossal liar, as Fellini was, and it is to Bogdanovich's great credit that he knows exactly when to challenge his subject and when to let the mythology stand - Welles's fictions were not simply self-serving, as is usually the case with film directors, but the deliberate invention (which he began very early in life) of a legend; and he was right to do this, for his career is the very stuff of legend. The composer Bernard Herrmann once wisely remarked that whenever Welles said something obviously and outrageously untrue, it invariably turned out, upon investigation, to be entirely accurate; and a mere taxonomy of the facts, astounding as they tend to be, would hardly give the full, rich flavour of the man and the artist. This book does; you can hear Welles's voice as you read, it's as if he were in the room with you, relishing a last laugh at his enemies from beyond the grave. Forget the sleazy, lying books of Charles Higham, forget the silly, petty biography of Barbara Leaming, give away the ignorant trivia of the lazy, self-important Simon Callow to the charity shops; this is the gold standard of Welles books.