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The Big Brass Ring
Conceived in part as a companion piece to Citizen Kane, The Big Brass Ring will come as a revelation even to keen Welles admirers.
- GenresFilm
Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
About the author
Orson Welles
223 books210 followersGeorge Orson Welles, best known as Orson Welles, (May 06, 1915 - October 10, 1985) was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio.
Noted for his innovative dramatic productions as well as his distinctive voice and personality, Welles is widely acknowledged as one of the most accomplished dramatic artists of the twentieth century, especially for his significant and influential early work—despite his notoriously contentious relationship with Hollywood.
His distinctive directorial style featured layered, nonlinear narrative forms, innovative uses of lighting such as chiaroscuro, unique camera angles, sound techniques borrowed from radio, deep focus shots, and long takes.
Welles's long career in film is noted for his struggle for artistic control in the face of pressure from studios. Many of his films were heavily edited and others left unreleased. He has been praised as a major creative force and as "the ultimate auteur."
After directing a number of high-profile theatrical productions in his early twenties, including an innovative adaptation of Macbeth and The Cradle Will Rock, Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds performed for the radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was reported to have caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was occurring. Although these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to instant notoriety.
Citizen Kane (1941), his first film with RKO, in which he starred in the role of Charles Foster Kane, is often considered the greatest film ever made. Several of his other films, including The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Touch of Evil (1958), Chimes at Midnight (1965), and F for Fake (1974), are also widely considered to be masterpieces.
In 2002, he was voted the greatest film director of all time in two separate British Film Institute polls among directors and critics, and a wide survey of critical consensus, best-of lists, and historical retrospectives calls him the most acclaimed director of all time. Well known for his baritone voice, Welles was also an extremely well regarded actor and was voted number 16 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars list of the greatest American film actors of all time. He was also a celebrated Shakespearean stage actor and an accomplished magician, starring in troop variety shows in the war years.
Noted for his innovative dramatic productions as well as his distinctive voice and personality, Welles is widely acknowledged as one of the most accomplished dramatic artists of the twentieth century, especially for his significant and influential early work—despite his notoriously contentious relationship with Hollywood.
His distinctive directorial style featured layered, nonlinear narrative forms, innovative uses of lighting such as chiaroscuro, unique camera angles, sound techniques borrowed from radio, deep focus shots, and long takes.
Welles's long career in film is noted for his struggle for artistic control in the face of pressure from studios. Many of his films were heavily edited and others left unreleased. He has been praised as a major creative force and as "the ultimate auteur."
After directing a number of high-profile theatrical productions in his early twenties, including an innovative adaptation of Macbeth and The Cradle Will Rock, Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds performed for the radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was reported to have caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was occurring. Although these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to instant notoriety.
Citizen Kane (1941), his first film with RKO, in which he starred in the role of Charles Foster Kane, is often considered the greatest film ever made. Several of his other films, including The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Touch of Evil (1958), Chimes at Midnight (1965), and F for Fake (1974), are also widely considered to be masterpieces.
In 2002, he was voted the greatest film director of all time in two separate British Film Institute polls among directors and critics, and a wide survey of critical consensus, best-of lists, and historical retrospectives calls him the most acclaimed director of all time. Well known for his baritone voice, Welles was also an extremely well regarded actor and was voted number 16 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars list of the greatest American film actors of all time. He was also a celebrated Shakespearean stage actor and an accomplished magician, starring in troop variety shows in the war years.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 2, 2019
Would it have made a good movie? Who knows. It’s a very solid script that you can picture Welles and Nicholson in and it’s too bad we’ll never get to know what could have been
August 4, 2014
Read this in a day. Welles is one of my creative heroes, and this, which is his other Swan Song (the one that should have been, not that F for Fake is a bad way to go out at all), is claimed on the book jacket flap as a companion piece to Citizen Kane... I guess in a general way it is, in terms of a depiction of the American dream gone awry. But it's really a story of loss in the guise of a political thriller.
Its not perfection unrealized, some dialog parts find the filmmaker indulging just a bit too far - and yet I can't complain because the dialog, for like 95% of it, is just glorious stuff, full of wit and brio and has the wisdom of a man who has lost a lot in his life but still tries to find something worth living for. Love, for one thing, is really a big factor here.
I had to adjust my expectations fairly quickly, however, as I thought reading about it in My Lunches with Orson (Jaglom/Biskind) it would be more like House of Cards. In a strange way it had more of a tone of that John Huston movie (also made in his later days) Under the Volcano, where it's people trying to find themselves in a foreign land, this being Spain. Only here, Welles doesn't lose all of the threads of suspense exactly, and there's a sub plot involving the main character (Blake Perrin)'s men plotting about the other main character Merrick (sic). This has the air almost of the team in the West Wing years before: cynical or just calculated characters who know how to talk and will certainly let you know!
But the real wonder here and tragedy ultimately is how richly realized Welles got his vision... to the point where, thanks to my knowledge of the "what if" variety I pictured Nicholson as this Texas Senator-cum-would-be-Regan-defeated and Welles himself as the older ex Roosevelt advisor who has become like an old battered drunken sage with a lot of things to say but a lot of pain underneath (reading it too I could sense a lot of Welles coming out too). It's a real movie, and shows that the old master wasn't ready to stop trying new tricks (some of the visual descriptions, while VERY nihilistic, are challenging to say the least).
Its not perfection unrealized, some dialog parts find the filmmaker indulging just a bit too far - and yet I can't complain because the dialog, for like 95% of it, is just glorious stuff, full of wit and brio and has the wisdom of a man who has lost a lot in his life but still tries to find something worth living for. Love, for one thing, is really a big factor here.
I had to adjust my expectations fairly quickly, however, as I thought reading about it in My Lunches with Orson (Jaglom/Biskind) it would be more like House of Cards. In a strange way it had more of a tone of that John Huston movie (also made in his later days) Under the Volcano, where it's people trying to find themselves in a foreign land, this being Spain. Only here, Welles doesn't lose all of the threads of suspense exactly, and there's a sub plot involving the main character (Blake Perrin)'s men plotting about the other main character Merrick (sic). This has the air almost of the team in the West Wing years before: cynical or just calculated characters who know how to talk and will certainly let you know!
But the real wonder here and tragedy ultimately is how richly realized Welles got his vision... to the point where, thanks to my knowledge of the "what if" variety I pictured Nicholson as this Texas Senator-cum-would-be-Regan-defeated and Welles himself as the older ex Roosevelt advisor who has become like an old battered drunken sage with a lot of things to say but a lot of pain underneath (reading it too I could sense a lot of Welles coming out too). It's a real movie, and shows that the old master wasn't ready to stop trying new tricks (some of the visual descriptions, while VERY nihilistic, are challenging to say the least).
February 15, 2013
A fascinating blueprint of a film that, sadly, never got made. A screenplay, but as readable as a novel.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews