The remark about "an exercise in stylized editing" is apt. Near the beginning, Welles explains that he is inserting a scene that was intended for another movie; and near the end there is the way that, not having Picasso available, he manipulates a simple black-and-white photo of the painter.
Recently I saw this film paired on TV with a later documentary about De Hory, and some of the same De Hory footage, reused in the later documentary, was credited not to Welles but to an old BBC program. So evidently even the De Hory material was at least in part not filmed, but only edited, by Welles and company.
Recently I saw this film paired on TV with a later documentary about De Hory, and some of the same De Hory footage, reused in the later documentary, was credited not to Welles but to an old BBC program. So evidently even the De Hory material was at least in part not filmed, but only edited, by Welles and company.