The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018)

Orson Welles: Self

Photos 

Quotes 

• Orson Welles, Himself : A stick was straining. What happens when it breaks? Absurdity becomes the norm.

• Orson Welles, Himself : I - was - a - satirist! Didn't you see that?

• Orson Welles, Himself : So, the world kept turning after I'd died.

• Orson Welles, Himself : I don't take art as seriously as politics.

• Student, after a screening of "The Trial" : One of the changes you made to the story was at the very end when Josef K is killed, he's killed in a - a very alarmingly different way than in the book. And, I was really curious as to why you changed both the way he was killed and the way he was acting when he died?

  Orson Welles, Himself : Because the book was written before the Holocaust.

  [long pause] 

  Orson Welles, Himself : And I couldn't bear the defeat of K in the book - after the Holocaust. I'm not Jewish; but, we are all Jewish since the Holocaust. And I couldn't bear for him to submit to death, as he does in Kafka. Masochistically, submit to death. It *stank* of the old... Prague Ghetto to me.

• Orson Welles, Himself : I'm rather fond of chivalry and honor. And I - I - to use a hackneyed, drug-store psychiatry word, I identify with Quixote to the extent that I am interested in outmoded virtues.

  Bernard Levin, Himself : The virtues of chivalry?

  Orson Welles, Himself : Yes. Honor and personal honor and courage and things like that.

  Bernard Levin, Himself : Well, you're clearly a romantic, whatever else you are and very much so.

  Orson Welles, Himself : I suppose so.

  Bernard Levin, Himself : But, aren't you a romantic in a very unromantic time?

  Orson Welles, Himself : Yes!

  Bernard Levin, Himself : Do you feel out of your time?

  Orson Welles, Himself : Yes, oh yes. I think every self-respecting artist ought to.

• Orson Welles, Himself : My ending of "The Lady from Shanghai", that crane shot as I walk into the empty Fun Fair.

  Michael O'Hara [the Lady from Shanghai] : Everybody is somebody's fool. The only way to stay out of trouble is to grow old. So, I guess I'll concentrate on that. Maybe I'll live so long that - I'll forget her. Maybe I'll die - trying.

  Orson Welles, Himself : That's more important than the ending of "The Trial".

• Orson Welles, Himself : You split my politics with my love. But, they're the same thing. Or, at least, have the same root. You missed how funny I found it all. You do know that life is a circus, don't you?

• Orson Welles, Himself : Kane himself is close to farce, close to parody, close to burlesque.

• Orson Welles, Himself : Since you mentioned Mr. Arkadin, recall if you can it's climax. I stalk through the film like a shadow; but, the world of my story is absurd. Arkadin's character, Zouk, has lost his pants!

  Jakob Zouk [Akim Tamiroff - Mr. Arkadin] : What's he gonna think if he catches me out here dancing around in my underdrawers?

  Orson Welles, Himself : Does it remind you of anything? Laurel and Hardy, perhaps? My camera was usually lower, of course, but the *humanity* in Stan and Ollie is the same. The childishness. The circus.