The Hearts of Age

Hey, it's Orson Welles. That's about it. It's like finding a scrap of paper left behind by William Faulkner. This is a bizarre, nondescript thing which makes little or no sense. There is a man in blackface and white hair. There is a severe looking woman who may be racist. There is a lynching--sort of. Anyway, that's about it. Not that memorable.

At the tender young age of 19, we shouldn't judge Orson Welles too harshly. Afterall, this is the first film of one of cinema's greatest directors, and the precursor to undeniably one of the greatest movies of all time ('Citizen Kane' would be released 7 years later to extraordinary critical acclaim). 'The Hearts of Age,' an eight minute short, was co-directed by Welles with William Vance (whose only other film credit is a 1932 adaptation of 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and also stars Welles' first wife, Virginia Nicholson.

This silent film, essentially a string of images loosely tied together, was almost certainly inspired by surrealistic classics such as Luis Buñuel's 'Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1929)' and 'L' Âge d'or (The Golden Age, 1930),' and Jean Cocteau's 'Le Sang d'un poète (The Blood of a Poet, 1930).' Whether Welles and Vance where attempting to imitate this surrealism, or merely to satirize it, I was unable to deduce, though the final effect is adequately frightening and disconcerting.

For such a film, comprised of split-second flashes of seemingly random objects, it is difficult to judge performances. However, I can safely assert that Welles' is the standout, even if his performance is far from spectacular. Despite his face being obscured by his "Death" mask, Welles unquestionably radiates at least a small portion of the charisma that would lead him to stardom later in life; his confident – almost arrogant – swagger is unmistakable.

If somebody other than Orson Welles had created this film, would we be taking any notice of it? Probably not. However, the very fact that that it is the debut directorial effort of one of the twentieth century's most respected entertainers makes it a fascinating historical curiosity, and, therefore, must-see viewing. Would I declare that 'The Hearts of Age' so poignantly predicts greater things for this young Mr. Welles? Maybe... but probably not.

This film really was NOT intended for general release. Instead, it's a recording of a production by a small theater group and it made it to the "Unseen Cinema: 1884-1941" set of DVDs. However, it is interesting because it features a very young unknown actor--Orson Welles.

The film looks very amateurish and at times is pretty bad (such as the guy in black-face) and is quite grainy. But, as I said, it was not intended to be a release to the public--just a record for the theatrical group. The costumes are also pretty bad--and the cheap prosthetics on the actors' faces are garish. But, as a historical record of the growth of Welles as an actor, it's invaluable. Well worth seeing if you are a lover of everything Welles--otherwise stay clear, as there's little to keep you interested here.

Watching Orson Welles' first film is like listening to one of the early (emphasis on early, like pre-pubescent) compositions by Mozart- you know things can only go up from here. What Welles' decided to do before he reached the heights of fame as a theater actor/director and with his Mercury company, he tried his hand at making a film. According to the commentary on the DVD, it's an intentional spoof of Cocteau's Blood of a Poet, and Bunuel's first surreal efforts. In that sense it's actually very interesting, as it doesn't make sense plot-wise, but is evocative and spooky when just soaking in the images. There's Welles' himself with a mask of Death. There's a friend of Welles' as some odd character. Then a piano plays. Symbols seem to come and go as they please. Simply put, The Hearts of Age succeeds best at being an test of skills and technics/visual ideas more than a concise film with a carefully structured story as with Citizen Kane or The Trial. However, if you took it out of the context that it's directed by the future 'wunderkind bad-boy' behind some of America's most cherished and truncated artistic works, as just a short film by a college-aged chap it's not that bad (to put it another way, I've seen worse).

In 1938, a young actor and theater director named Orson Welles earned notoriety and recognition when his radio play version of H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" was broad-casted, shocking the nation and prompting many studios to notice Welles' talent. This success would take Welles to Hollywood where in 1941, he would direct what is now considered by many critics as the best movie ever made, the influential classic "Citizen Kane". At the age of 26, Welles had already made the movie of his lifetime, and was about to begin a career that despite the many troubles he found (mainly studio interference), managed to produce excellent results. However, "Citizen Kane" wasn't the first time this prodigy had made a movie, as before "Kane" the young Welles made 2 short films that helped him to experiment with the medium. The first one was "The Hearts of Age", a film he did when he was only 19.

"The Hearts of Age" is a surrealist film based on ideas about old age, decrepitude and death. Virginia Nicholson plays an Old Woman, sitting on a bell on the top of a house while a black servant (Paul Edgerton) rings the bell. She seems to enjoy the feeling of the bell moving with her on top as she watches people coming by, and gets angered whenever her servant stops to rest a bit. Soon, a sinister man (Orson Welles) appears, acting exaggeratedly polite to her, and becoming interested in her servant. Soon she discovers that the sinister man is Death, as he begins to do his job with some of the people she has seen. The Lady doesn't seem to care much until he decides to go after her servant, whose death would mean that the bell would stop moving. As she watches how his servant dies, she discovers that she is also on Death's list.

Cryptic and strange, this 8 minutes short film was written by Welles in an apparent attempt to satirize the surrealist movies of Jean Cocteau, or at least that's what he said about it many years later. It certainly follows the style and structure (or lack of one) of the works of surrealists (like Buñuel for example), as the plot is developed in a dreamlike fashion, often illogical and filled with metaphors about the main theme. In this case, theme is mortality, the nature of death and how people reacts to it. The movie also touches the subject of the hypocrisy of the attitudes towards black people that people of his time used to have. While this may sound like a honest attempt to satirize what Welles sees as the pretentiousness of surrealist artists, it never truly achieves that purpose and in the end it feels more pretentious and over-the-top as the movies is attempting to parody.

While of course nowhere near the movies he would make later in his career, "The Hearts of Age" does show two interesting traits that would later become trademarks of Welles' style. First, a highly creative camera-work, which even in this experimental stage already shows that Welles understands the limitless possibilities of cinema and its value to tell stories visually. The second of those traits is his stylish use of editing (sadly something he wouldn't be able to show in many of his movies), which in this films still shows a lot of influence from Soviet montage theory, but that later would evolve into the perfect complement for his cinematography. Something that can also be seen in this short film is that even at the age of 19, Welles already knew what to get from his actors, and had the skill to direct them properly into delivering what he wanted.

Considering the style of the short, this last thing may sound insignificant, but one can't deny that while certainly the movie is nothing more than a mere amateurish experiment, it shows that Welles truly had a prodigious talent despite the lack of a properly written script. The cast is good in their roles, although as written above, the main weakness in in the script. It's not that it's bad (it actually handles symbolism in a remarkable way), it's just that it seems to take itself too seriously for its own sake that it ends up making the film a but boring despite the short runtime. Welles himself considered the movie more an experiment on film-making than an actual film, and watching the results, it's hard to disagree with him, as the technical aspects are far more interesting than the artistic merit of "The Hearts of Age".

Wheter he truly intended to make fun of surrealism or actually failed in an attempt of making surreal art, it is truly an impossible thing to know for sure; but what we do know is that this first movie marked the beginning of Welles' interest in film-making as an extension for his work at the theater. An interest that would transform into an obsession that would become the force behind some of the most significant films in the history of cinema. "The Hearts of Age" is not exactly something amazing, but given its historical importance, it is a required viewing for anyone remotely interested in the career of one of the most important men in film-making: Orson Welles. Weak, confusing and a tad pretentious, "The Hearts of Age" is the proof that even giants started small. 6/10