Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles

Is it too on-the-nose to point out that this documentary is directed by someone named "Workman"?

Perhaps.

This is an absolutely fine documentary that does two things very well:

1. It covers his entire life.

2. It grapples with all of his work on a fairly equal footing, not portraying him as a "once great man".

(I lie ... it does a third thing well. It portrays Welles as a person who must have been one hell of a great person to hang around with.)

Because it covers so much ground in a taught 90 minutes, it doesn't cover much of anything in any depth. It's best for folks with at least some significant Welles gaps that require filling.

"Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles" (2014 release; 94 min.) is a documentary about the genius of Orson Welles, 'enfant terrible' of the 1940s-50s Hollywood and godfather of the indie film scene. The movie opens, of course, with the opening scene from "Citizen Kane", where we see Welles whisper "Rosebud", but after that we get a straight-forward and chronological overview of Welles' life and work. The documentary is divided up in 5 chapters, covering different periods of his life (1915-1941 The Boy Wonder; 1942-1949 The Outsider, etc.). To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from veteran documentary maker Chuck Workman. When I saw his name on this, I felt pretty sure that we'd be in for a great documentary. And it's certainly not a bad documentary. The movie hits all the major high (and low) lights of Welles' career (War of the Worlds; Citizen Kane; Touch of Evil; The Trial; Chimes at Midnight; etc.), and Workman compiles a treasure trove of old clips. He also interviews a bunch of people, including Peter Bogdanovich, Julie Taymor, Steven Spielberg, etc. Yet despite all that, the documentary seems to be missing something. Maybe it's because there is no true new insight or revelation, since yes, we do know that Welles was a genius who was misunderstood and/or difficult to work with. There are a couple of glimpses into Welles' personal life but the tidbit of information from that angle really doesn't add much (we are informed that one of Welles' two surviving daughters refused to cooperate in the making of this documentary). There are a number of great quotes sprinkled throughout the movie such as Orson's "I like Hollywood very much, but Hollywood just doesn't like me much", ha! or this one (about making Citizen Kane): "it wasn't about the money, it was about control". The timing of the documentary is to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Orson Welles' birth.

This documentary opened this weekend without any pre-release fanfare or advertising at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. Since I love documentaries and of course admire the genius of Orson Welles, I went to see it right away. The matinée screening where I saw this at was attended okay but not great (it didn't help that midway through the movie, the fire alarm went off and we had to leave the theater temporarily). If you are new to Orson Welles, by all means take the opportunity to check this out, be it in the theater, on Amazon Instant Video or on DVD/Blu-ray. You will be amazed. For those that are already familiar with Orson Welles, there's really nothing new in this documentary.

Of all the Orson Welles documentary this is probably the most famous and considered the most comprehensive. Which it might be. The documentary follows his life from childhood to death and everything in between; using his work to track his life, with only slight mention to Welles' personal life. And considering this documentary is titled Magician it's ironic how it utterly ignores Orson's career as a magician. But there's only so much you can fit in a 91 minute documentary. It heavily utilizes the numerous interviews Welles did as means to comment on his life. And who else better to comment on Welles' life than Orson Welles? Certainly more than many of the cretins featured in this. Who might know some of the facts but fail to recognize the actual truth or essence. However, some of those in this like Peter Bogdanovic or Oja Kodar knew Orson very well and some of the best living pundits on him.

Magician: The Astonishing Life And Work Of Orson Welles is a stylish, in depth view of the tragedy that is Orson Welles.

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles (2014)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

This is certainly a highly entertaining documentary that takes a look at the career of Orson Welles. It features archival interviews with the director as well as archival and new interviews with a wide range of filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Richard Linklater as well as actors like Charlton Heston and Welles' two surviving daughters.

I've read a lot of negative reviews aimed at this film and while I understand where they're coming from, at the same time I think they're being a bit harsh. Yes, this film could have gone more into the mind of Welles and it could have focused more on his personal life. It could have done a number of things but I think it's best to judge what's actually here and not judge what isn't here or whatever we might have wanted the documentary to be about.

I really thought the film did a good job at giving a quick look at the work of Welles going back to his childhood to his radio work to his movies and of course the projects he was doing at the end of his life. I thought the archival interviews with Welles were great and I really liked how they pretty much helped the legend tell his own story. The film clips are wonderful and it was just a great way to get introduced to the man and his films.

If you're already familiar with Welles then you might not learn anything "new" here but this is still a highly entertaining documentary and one that's certainly worth watching.

MAGICIAN is a dud - a less than mediocre run-through of the life and career of the legendary entertainment figure Orson Welles. I caught a theatrical screening Saturday that proved to be a complete waste of time.

Contrast this loser with the 2007 documentary SPINE TINGLER!, which informatively and entertainingly profiled schlockmeister William Castle. Unlike Welles, Castle is a mere footnote in film history, but the portrait of him was lively, to the point, and even created an emotional connection (bordering on pathos) when looking at his declining years and premature death - the elements sorely lacking in MAGICIAN.

Director Chuck Workman is famous and lauded in some circles (not mine) for his career in compilations (more accurately excerpts) -often responsible for the abbreviated Academy Awards show's highlight reels of great moments in film. I find him to be a master of trivializing, taking works of art ranging from a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon to any number of great feature films and extracting a cute or memorable moment from each, then juxtaposing them together for generally idiotic effect (e.g., a montage of famous screen kisses). I'm old-fashioned: I like to sit through an entire cartoon or movie, even endlessly long ones like BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, THE DECALOGUE or SHOAH. My dreaded "high-brow" satire would be a Saturday Night Live tribute to Jacques Rivette by Workman (or perhaps Tom Schiller, pick your poison) consisting of fleeting clips from his brilliant but notoriously long feature films.

And so it is not surprising to me that Workman trivializes Orson Welles' life and career. Most of MAGICIAN consists of old interviews with Welles or other deceased witnesses, ranging from Sydney Pollack to John Houseman. Ken Burns has made a career treating subjects for whom living witnesses are few or nil but through eloquent narration and sometimes readings by talented actors has brought them to life. Where Workman does have a live testimonial the results are - you guessed it- trivial: Welles biographer Simon Callow is a terrific actor and erstwhile director himself, but his comments are unenlightening; Welles' longtime companion Oja Kodar (who I saw give a highly educational talk on Welles decades ago when she presented excerpts of his unfinished films including THE DEEP and THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND) is totally wasted in an interview that makes her out to be a flake; Welles experts Peter Bogdanovich and Joe McBride plus recently deceased Paul Mazursky briefly have minimal information to contribute; and Francis Coppola's longtime editor Walter Murch is strictly footnote material discussing the "improvements" (this seems to be a cottage industry) in Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL that have been made by re-editing the Universal re-edited picture. Perhaps meant to insult on purpose, Workman even works in comments by Wolfgang Puck (!) concerning Welles' famous appetite. Thanks a lot, Chuck.

To further trivialize matters, Workman insists on including numerous film homages to Welles, such as clips from DAY FOR NIGHT, ED WOOD and the TV movie about KANE starring Liev Schreiber. There is more junk like this than attention to Welles' voluminous screen acting career which gets short shrift other than references to how "in demand" he was. The controversy regarding Welles vs. Herman Mankiewicz in apportioning authorship to CITIZEN KANE (screenwriting-wise) is obfuscated rather than clarified by this worthless documentary.

For someone who knows little to nothing about Orson Welles the film hits the familiar clichés -his boy wonder achievements dating back to childhood and growing up in Woodstock; mercurial milestones in theater and radio, triumph and fall in Hollywood and latter years as true independent filmmaker. For me it amounted to a mass of generally misleading information (frequent claims that FALSTAFF not KANE is his true masterpiece) and significant omissions (his Kodar period sloughed off and his long collaboration with the late talented pornographer Gary Graver (more famous as Welles' cameraman) ignored.

No need to worry - I suspect another filmmaker, perhaps even Burns or his brother Ric, will conjure up a suitable treatment of the renaissance man Welles. In the meantime MAGICIAN instantly belongs on the scrap heap of bad movies which, to paraphrase Theodore Sturgeon in his famous quote about science fiction, make up 90% of film history ("but then 90% of everything is crud").