The indelible signature of Orson Welles's films

Contemporary Review, Nov, 2004 by Geoffrey Heptonstall

These are strange, profound questions posed with characteristic bravura by Welles clad in Spanish cloak and hat, like an old master. He stands poignantly, contemplating the supremely harmonious beauty of Chartres. There he finds an answer, assured in his avowal that such a perfect work of art cannot be anything but the whole truth. The truth is imaginative without being imaginary. Welles savours the labyrinths of paradox he leads us down.

Welles was too much the artist, or showman, to allow his enquiry to be anything but a personal exploration. There is vanity, too, for he recognises his own ability to deceive. There is a mockery of human vanity, including his own, which makes F for Fake the most encompassing of all his statements. We can detect that mockery as a characteristic thread throughout the oeuvre. It may be called the humility of which a knowingly great personality is capable. The charm is in keeping with the manner of the man.

It is well to remember that we are talking of someone whose talents included accomplished stage magic. It is credibly reported that Peter Sellers had such superstitious doubts of Orson Welles that he refused to work with him. That proscription is merely a neurotic acknowledgement of a powerful magnetism. The conjuror defies us to discern how the trick is done. Welles adds to this the artistry of a performer who may convince us that there is no deception. It is the truth of a well-told story. It is true not to life but to a shared experience in imagination. Our interest lies not so much in the skill of the deception, but in the bravado of the performance.

That, however, is to ignore the possibility of a credible purpose in the Wellesian artistry. The suspicion, voiced by Borges with which many would concur, that the showman was swimming in the intellectual shallows. Was there a discernible meaning to sustain the performance? As cabaret entertainer the answer will be, and need be, no. But Welles claimed, if only implicitly, a depth of reflection. The answer may lie in the innocence of art. The suspecting and/or cunning glance is problematic for art. A prophetic role, even a kind of divination, is available, and perhaps necessary, for the story-teller knows more than he will tell. Welles was physically equipped for the prophetic role, yet there is a hint of the charlatan. The charlatan knows less than he will admit. He has an innocence turned sour, whereas Welles retained a quasi-naivety which never admitted defeat.

The saint must doubt his goodness. The true artist must wonder if he is not a forger. There is a terrible danger in certainty. Conviction is another matter, but the certainty of which I speak is the surety of damnation. The trickery Welles would use was the vitality released in an act of audacity. Consider the crazy mirror sequence in The Lady from Shanghai. It is the vortex uncoiling too quickly for the eye to interpret what is happening. It serves as a paradigm both of a style and of the career which it fed. It was the frenetic energy of questioning the unanswerable. Conclusions were ever tentative.