Product Description
Here is an historic recording of Welles' interpretations of excerpts from classic and contemporary literature, including works from Poe, Twain, Hemmingway, Kipling, Fitzgerald, Stevenson, Hawthorne, and many more. 4 cassettes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Does not include War of the Worlds!
I agree that this is a great cd, and I enjoyed every story on it.HOWEVER, do not buy this expecting to hear War of the Worlds, because it is not included.As noted on the back cover, an "introduction" is included, but not the reading itself.I think it is misleading to use that story for the cover art, and to word the summary the way they do.

Hopefully, you can enjoy it for what it does include, as I did.

Welles is the false "god of my idolitry."
These priceless tapes have Orson Welles god-like voice telling and retelling several literary classics.I play them over and over again, and hope that they will be transferred to CD.

Mr. Welles has impeccable taste in literiture and an absolutely perfect delivery and diction.I am mesmerized by every breath he takes.Heck, I would pay for Welles reading a lundry list, or the instructions to shaving cream.

Welles captures the essence of each of these classic works.
Orson Welles uses his sonorous, mellifluous, matchlessly expressive voice and his legendary gift for characterization to delineate these oft-told tales in a way that will make you hear them as if for the first time.And if you are indeed hearing any of them for the first time, it will make you want to run to the library to read them and to savor them as they were meant to be experienced. ... Read more

Amazon.com Review
First published in 1965, The Cinema of Orson Welles isthe first monograph ever written about its subject. It remains athoughtful and perceptive study of Welles's films. Author Peter Cowie,one of the world's foremost film critics, writes about the directorwith real authority: "The American cinema prior to [Citizen]Kane was undoubtedly one of illusion--and the cinema of Welles isone of illusion dispelled." "The leading figures in Welles'sfilms are brought to their knees by a single fatal flaw, as inclassical or Shakespearean tragedy; they are nearly all Manichean,unscrupulous, and damned; yet they are all capable of arousing one'ssympathies." As these quotations reveal, the book covers thebreadth and scope of Welles's craft and the themes that run throughouthis oeuvre. Cowie's appendices provide important background material,data on Welles's unfinished films, and an excerpt from a provocativelecture Welles gave on filmmaking. Cowie also supplies a detailedfilmography and scores of fine photographic stills. --RaphaelShargel ... Read more

Product Description
Well-known for his work in film and theater as director, actor, and writer, Welles' influence in the field of radio has often been overlooked for the more glamorous entertainment of his movies. The Medium and the Magician is a comprehensive review of Welles's radio career, devoted to assessing his radio artistry and influence in the field. Visit our website for sample chapters! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Researched, but dull
There is so much about Orson Welles that continues to astound us, not the least of which was his precocious, almost manic production in radio, that this book is rather pale. The sheer zest and joie de vivre you hear almost every moment in Welles' (almost totally preserved) radio work doesn't shine through in this book, which is a great pity. There were times I wasn't sure whether the author had listened to the radio shows at all, and if so, whether we heard the same thing. We certainly didn't interpret the work or the implication of it similarly. why people insist on pigeonholing Welles as the creator of the War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane and nothing else is the biggest fallacy going. He produced, wrote, directed, acted in so much, (and so much simultaneously), that the whole corpus of the radio plays needs to have a better treatment than this.

Orson Welles and Magic
I have always been a fan of Orson Welles on radio and television. Having collected a ton of radio broadcasts on CD and audio cassette and having watched most of his movies, I appreciate the genius of his work. I picked up a copy of this book recently and am amazed at the amount of research put into it. An aspect of Welles rarely discussed is his magic career. At the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention this September in Aberdeen, Maryland, I plan to attend the presentation about Orson Welles and his magic career so I can watch rare footage and films with Welles, and get an even deeper insight to his trickery. Book comes recommended. ... Read more

Product Description
Orson Welles was all too aware, in his later years, that posterity would judge his life to have been essentially a failure: that it would construct a neat parabola of decline that would arc down from his youthful masterpiece, Citizen Kane, to the wine adverts he used to fund his latter day imbibing. In Despite The System Clinton Heylin shows brilliantly how Welles was undone by real people, with real motives - and by the circumstances found in a single time and place, Hollywood at the end of its golden era - and yet still succeeded in forging a body of work that, whatever its flaws, is without equal in the history of cinema. ... Read more

Product Description
This book focuses on a literary figure, Shakespeare's Falstaff, who has taken on a life independent of the plays in which he first appeared. The highlights of Falstaff's "career," included in this collection, are works by two major artistic figures of the 20th century: Fernand Crommelynck (1886-1970) and Orson Welles (1915-1985). Each of the Falstaff plays in this volume is preceded by a preface, and the anthology as a whole is framed by an historical introduction and a comprehensive critical bibliography. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Shakespeare Bulletin, published by University of West Georgia on March 22, 2005. The length of the article is 24474 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Touch of Shakespeare: Welles unmoors Othello (1).(Orson Welles)
Author: Scott L. Newstok
Publication: Shakespeare Bulletin (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2005
Publisher: University of West Georgia
Volume: 23Issue: 1Page: 29(58)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Welles is his own words, almost.
Barbara Lemmings' biography on Orson Welles is one of the most gripping accounts of the late, famous radio, tv and screen personality.It delves deeply into his youth and life before he shocked the world with Citizen Kane.The most fascinating aspect of this book is that it was written with the assistance of Welles, therefore it is almost an autobiography with areas and events fleshed out by Welles' contemporaries, business associates and friends.Hearing Welles comment on events in his life puts a different spin on the legend and no doubt makes the reader rethink what ever opinions s/he had on Welles.One possible down side for film buffs is that production information on Welles' films is scantly touched on, but considering this book is about his life as whole, not just the brillinat films he intermitantly made, one shouldn't be too disappointed.One excellent point of the book is the production detail in which Welles' final film, The Other Side of the Wind, a possible masterpiece was put together, then unceremoniously taken away from him and lost (which is the story of his entire film directing career) to the world. After finishing the text, one will be left with a sense of wonder, sadness and disappointment in regards to Welles' life which turns out to be tragic in nature. ... Read more

Product Description
Orson Welles, a self-conscious storyteller who often invited his audience to question the methods and veracity of what they see and hear. He was that rare magician who both pulled the wool over our eyes, for our delight, and unravelled the wool before our eyes, encouraging us to ponder the nature of the magic itself. Many of the characters in Welles’s movies can also be seen as magicians of a sort, creating impressions intended to manipulate other characters, or even themselves, in one direction or another. But unlike Welles, few of them voluntarily expose their tricks to the scrutiny of their victims.Six major Welles films—Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil, The Trial, and Chimes at Midnight—receive a scene by scene analysis in this critical study. From a viewer’s perspective it illuminates the dramatic rhythms of each film as they unfold on screen and from the soundtrack. Frequent analogies to other movies and pertinent quotations from the impressions of other commentators broaden the text, but always within the scene by scene progression dictated by the film under discussion. ... Read more

Product Description
The central topic of this study is the penultimate filmof the American film director Orson Welles: F for Fake (1973). Thisfilm shows the new style, which I call, "essayistic documentary",Welles created at the end of his career. Orson Welles here combineselements of the fictional and the documentary film genre with magicand autobiographical information, thus realizing a stylistic collagewith a complexity that superseeds his other works. The theme of Wellesis not only the revelation of film as technical artefact and the filmdirector as its constructor but the visualization of the elementaldiscrimination between "signifie" and "signifiant". This study ismeant to show that the self-reflection in the sense of cubistic artenabled Orson Welles to create such a personal and intimate film likeF for Fake and to consider this style as an arrow to the future. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Best Critical Analysis of Welles' Late Period
Thieme's book is slim but packed with analysis.Focusing on Welles' final completed film, F for Fake, it places it in the context of the numerous other projects he was working on during his later years, and illuminates how the playful and innovative techniques used in Citizen Kane's "News On the March" montage evolved into a unique style and format used by Welles for several other important projects. From reading this book, I begin to suspect that these films offer an essential and missing link to understanding the dynamic tension between fact and fiction in the modern documentary form.Indeed, F for Fake, as a film, plays out many of the contradictions and questions that film theorists engage with constantly, in a way that is dizzying and filled with limitless layers.Thieme's study is only a first step in an important direction

The book, like most Welles scholarship, suffers from the fact that several of Welles later works are not available - such as Filming Othello, Filming The Trial, Viva Italia, and The Fountain of Youth.Thieme gives these works more thought than anyone else, and uses them to build a strong argument for her thesis.The problem is that the reader (like me) has no access to these films, and probably won't for a very long time.

If you are a serious Welles scholar or enthusiast, this book is essential for tackling his long neglected documentary work. Just be aware that it is a critical study with a formal academic format and tone.Conceptually, the book is far from perfect.It requires dialog and debate with others, and that does not seem possible given the current state of Welles' legacy.But kudos to Thieme for tackling such a neglected subject, and for doing so despite the lack of a wider audience with which to engage. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

One of my favorite radio works and a superb adaptation
This recording is a treasure on any number of levels.

It is an excellent realization of the original novel (unlike, say, the flat and uninvolving 1998 motion picture), which provides a wonderful additionalwindow on the material to audiences familiar mostly with the stage musical.In particular, it includes a number of priceless moments neglected in themusical version, and makes time for a certain amount of the philosophicalmusing which is hard to pack into an up-tempo dance number.

It is, in myopinion, among Orson Welles' very best works for the radio, and featuressuperlative work from him as a writer, director and actor (the work is allthe more spectacular when you realize that it was all done live, in frontof the mike, in one "take"). His script is a study in the use ofthe radio medium, and the performance is a joy to listen to.

There havebeen a great many renditions of Les Miserables: good, bad and indifferent.This is one of the best; go buy it. ... Read more