The World of Cinema — Orson Welles Has Returned to Hollywood!

The capital of cinema was dazzled by Welles's creative mind and opened its doors to the young genius, and he asked it to give him a full year in which to pass through the doors of its studios as a spectator and observer.

When the year had passed, Welles entered the studio, this time as author, director, and actor; he locked its doors and set to work. A month later he came out, and with him came out the great cinematic masterpiece: "Citizen Kane." The film press received its newborn with a warm welcome, and its critics could find no word to describe him but one: "genius."

The film "Citizen Kane" changed, and introduced, more than one artistic concept in the seventh art, and proved once more that great art is not confined to the might of machinery and industry, however strong they may be, but is always and forever creation and feeling.

"Citizen Kane" was followed by the film "The Ambersons," in which Welles opened the cinematic field to his friend Joseph Cotten; it was Welles's second cinematic masterpiece. Film followed film, from "The Stranger" to "The Lady from Shanghai," in which the starring role was shared by his wife at the time, Rita Hayworth — that captivating actress who, despite her separation from Welles, has remained a friend to him, respecting him and prizing his genius.

And when the producers' commercial fingers began reaching toward Welles's works, he decided to turn his back and depart...

He departed for Europe, and every city he stopped in — its men of letters and its artists — gave him a reception befitting his lofty artistic production; and at that time he had not yet passed his thirtieth year. Welles kept finding admiring friends he had never seen before, in whom esteem for him had reached its full measure.

At last Welles has returned to Hollywood, after deserting it for twelve years! He had deserted America — that giant young artist who had stood the whole of it on end and made it live on its nerves for an entire night, when he was working in the field of radio and presented his famous program "The People of Mars," so that overnight his name was on every lip from one end of the country to the other.

Welles deserted Hollywood after making it come to him while he stood on the boards of one of the "Broadway" theaters, directing and acting — his skin dyed black — Shakespeare's immortal play "Hamlet," with a cast all of Negroes.

In the cinema he had new flights that carried the young seventh art broad strides forward. And achieving that was not easy, for if the artistic means were at his disposal, the material means were not; so Welles took to working on other men's account, in films varying in their strength and their success, but each time he was the great artistic pillar within them. It is enough for me to mention the film "The Third Man," which Carol Reed directed in Vienna, and the film "Cagliostro," directed by Gregory Ratoff.

All this so that Shakespeare's two plays, "Macbeth" and "Othello," might see the light on the screen. And if you wish me to tell you about Macbeth, I will say this: one of the editors of the film magazine "The French Screen" had attacked the film on the sole ground of Welles's statements about his understanding of Shakespeare, which differs from the English understanding generally. That same week the film was shown in Paris, and when the magazine's next issue appeared, the editor-in-chief bowed before Welles's genius and apologized.

There comes to my mind here an anecdote that took place in Venice, at one of its film congresses. Jean Cocteau — the French writer, poet, and artist — had come there to show his film "Beauty and the Beast," and in Venice he met Welles, who had come in his turn to show his film "Macbeth." Finding no cinematic atmosphere there in which he could feel at ease, Welles decided to withdraw from the congress; whereupon Cocteau did nothing less than follow suit, declaring: "A film congress from which Welles withdraws has no value in my eyes!"

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As for his film "Othello," whose making took three years — during which Welles endured great financial difficulties that forced him to break off the work and then return to it once the necessary money was secured — Welles presented it in the name of Morocco, where most of its exterior shooting was done, and it was shown at the Cannes congress... And while the men of the press and the cinema were applauding his new masterpiece, which won the first prize, Welles was resting at the farm of his friend Cocteau... the great Cocteau who once said: I wish I could be Welles's "profile"!