Best Five/Worst Five: Orson Welles

Someone once asked me to rank the best and worst handfuls of movies Orson Welles made as a director. I normally resist or at least try to resist indulging any director-worshipper* and the more I dig into Welles' often far superior radio, writing and television work the more I realize that him devoting the bulk of his adult life to the cinema was less his manifest destiny than a codependent relationship he wasn't strong enough to walk away from once the honeymoon was clearly over and the bad times rarely stopped rolling.

All that said, I was weak and played along with this parlor game anyway. Actually, it is fun, I just don't like playing it with only directors [or only movies]:

Best
1. THE TRIAL
2. F FOR FAKE
3. TOUCH OF EVIL
4. CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
5. OTHELLO

Worst
5. MACBETH
4. MR. ARKADIN
3. THE STRANGER
2. DON QUIXOTE
1. SWINGING LONDON

THE TRIAL is the apex of Welles' post-Hollywood collage-as-mise-en-scène style; unlike OTHELLO, it rarely draws attention to itself, and unlike ARKADIN, it rarely looks like a cheap budget fix. THE TRIAL seems much more personally felt than any of his other movies, except for maybe CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, and it's the only one of his European movies that had a crew that came close to the technical chops of an American film crew at the time, so Welles had a far better shot at realizing what he imagined.

Because everyone asks: CITIZEN KANE is certainly one of the greats, but it's more of a brilliant, comprehensive textbook of filmmaking [hence, it ranks so high on critic lists and such] than a brilliant film. It's a greater calisthenic achievement than a meaningfully artistic one. It behaves a lot like Will Eisner's post-CONTRACT WITH GOD work; a mega-ton showcase of nearly peerless skill and craft, but in the service of a story that really doesn't deserve so much brilliance.

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* The director-as-auteur theory would never have taken root if the director wasn't the member of the producer/writer/director/editor quadrangle who works with movie stars the most. You know it, I know it, dogs know it.