Thursday
Dec172009
Movie Review - 'Me and Orson Welles'
Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 11:03PM | Me and Orson Welles
Starring Zac Efron, Christian McKay, and Claire Danes  |
Orson Welles was 25 when he directed Citizen Kane. It’s hard to fathom how anyone could make a film with such
bravura at 25, to say nothing of doing it the first time he walked behind a camera or without acknowledging that
this little feat - creating a cinema landmark still cited by many as the best film ever - was undertaken in 1941.
Prior to Kane, Welles worked in radio and theater, shocking the country with War of the Worlds while
only 23, and staging legendary adaptations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Julius Caesar when he was even
younger.
Me and Orson Welles presents The Man Who Would Be Kane during rehearsals for his Mercury Theatre’s
Caesar, which he updated as an allegory for Mussolini’s Italy. By this time (1937), Welles was already a
well-paid radio personality, contributing his voice to any number of weekly radio dramas and serving as a voice of the classic crime fighter The Shadow. One of his earliest productions, a kind of mini-series take on Les Miserables Welles adapted in 1937, indicates quite clearly his facility with voices (often portraying multiple characters within scenes) and the red pen.
Welles' edits were and are controversial. For example, this version of Julius Caesar, a play that runs about 20,000 words, was 100 minutes on stage with no intermission. Some critics hailed the new approach as well as the modernity of the presentation, while others thought it was akin to sacrilege. And behind it all was a kid, a 22-year-old kid. If this film does one thing wrong in its depiction of Welles it is not addressing the character's age, worth noting since the “Me” in Me and Orson Welles is portrayed by Zac Efron, who is also 22.
Behind one of the year’s best performances is British actor Christian McKay, and his is a flawless piece of work.
Capturing Welles as equal parts artist, genius, and charlatan, McKay creates a man whose domineering nature barely
masks his fragility. It also does not foretell the future, a now threadbare piece of Hollywood lore starring one of its most talented writers, actors, and directors all rolled into one as a cautionary tale, a man who could only find work hawking Paul Masson wine at the end of his career. McKay is in that moment in 1937, though, and never looks to the old, fat Welles, the intermediate Touch of Evil Welles, or even Orson a handful of years later.
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