Parallax View

The standard wisdom about Orson Welles’s 1946 thriller The Stranger—broadly, that it’s Welles’s weakest film, the runt in his otherwise superlative litter—needs challenging, even if Welles himself seemed mostly disinclined to do so. Only in 1982, three years before his death, did he appear to suggest, to BBC interviewers, that it wasn’t so terrible after [...]

[This was a program note for the October 12, 1971, showing of The Magnificent Ambersons in the University of Washington Lectures & Concert Film Series "The Cinema of Orson Welles." It begins with continued commentary on Citizen Kane, shown the week before—an essay located here.] One of Charles Foster Kane’s least sympathetic moments occurs in [...]

[This is a program note written for "The Cinema of Orson Welles," the Autumn 1971 film series of the University of Washington Office of Lectures & Concerts, and distributed at the October 5, 1971, showing of Welles' first feature film.] Thirty years after its initial release, Citizen Kane may very well be the most talked-about [...]

This program note was written in connection with the November 16, 1971 showing of Touch of Evil in the University of Washington Office of Lectures & Concerts Autumn Quarter Film Series “The Cinema of Orson Welles.” Since that was a long time ago and the only version of the movie available at the time was [...]

[This is a slightly edited version of a program note written for an Autumn 1971 University of Washington Office of Lectures and Concerts Film Series, "The Cinema of Orson Welles." It is submitted for your consideration because The Lady from Shanghai is a cardinal film noir and the stylistic points made about Welles's direction are [...]

I’ve done the best DVD releases of the year in some incarnation or another for years. This one is a little different. This is not a celebration of the most impressive special editions, the most stunning transfers or the best supplements. This is my list of what I consider the essential movies that debut on [...]

“(Universal) told me that although they didn’t know who was going to direct (Touch of Evil), Orson Welles was going to play the heavy. ‘You know, Orson Welles is a pretty good director,’ I said. ‘Did it ever occur to you to have him direct it?’ At the time Orson had not directed a picture [...]

In 1998, while researching the revision of Touch of Evil, I pursued an interview with Walter Murch, then and now arguably the dean of American film sound and image editors. I had only an E-mail address. He responded with this very gracious message: Dear Sean: I received your email about Touch of Evil, and here [...]

My research into the unprecendented work done on Touch of Evil in 1998 began here, with a lengthy phone interview with Rick Schmidlin in August of 1998, a month before I’d even had a chance to see the new cut. The man who proposed the radical idea of creating a new version of the film [...]

Bob O’Neil was the head of film preservation and restoration at Universal in 1988. His job was to evaluate to all the materials Universal held in its film library and oversee the repair and restoration of elements for new prints and home video releases, everything from Hitchcock classics to Abbot and Costello movies to film [...]

In 1998, as Universal was preparing the theatrical release of the revised Touch of Evil, I was offered the opportunity to talk with star Janet Leigh about the film in a phone interview. I had yet to see the new version, so my questions were formed around my research and my familiarity with the previous [...]

In 1998 I had the rare pleasure of interviewing Charlton Heston for the release of the Walter Murch-supervised “restoration” of Touch of Evil (1958). It was supposed to be the center of a essay on the film, but the article was canceled and the interview unpublished until earlier this year on my website. I republish [...]

[Editor's note: This essay was originally written in 1998, before the re-edited version from producer Rick Schmidlin and editor Walter Murch, and is based on the 109-minute version that was rescued from the vaults in 1975, generally known as the "preview version. This version had replaced the original 98-minute theatrical version in retrospective screenings and [...]

Last year, in a piece I wrote for GreenCine, I dreamed up my fantasy list of box sets and special editions I wanted to see (heck, I wanted to OWN) in the coming years. Less than year later, two of those dream DVD sets have been announced. (I doubt my piece had much to do [...]

Don Quixote is one “lost” Welles film that is surely doomed to remain that way: unfinished, fragmented, a puzzle with pieces that have been recut so many times they simply don’t fit together. Welles jokingly renamed the film “When Are You Going to Finish Don Quixote?” because he continued to rewrite and reconceptualize the film [...]