Review: The Eyes of Orson Welles

One of Orson Welles' sketches... of himself!

When there's a new documentary about someone famous, it better be interesting because previous docs have already tread on the same ground. And with Orson Welles, much is known about his acting career and personal life (three wives, three daughters). But do many people know that he liked to draw?

This is the premise of a new documentary called The Eyes of Orson Welles by filmmaker Mark Cousins who also writes and narrates this 115-minute love letter to the giant of cinema. Cousins somehow gets access to a box in a storage unit in New York, opens it, and wearing gloves, goes through it to find lots and lots of sketches.



The strokes are bold and deliberate, lots of play on dark and light, or quick drawings that capture craggy old faces. There are lots and lots of Christmas cards that he draws, paints, makes Santa Claus and the Christmas tree look more minimalist. These drawings are a vehicle in which to discover more about Welles' life.

A rough sketch of a knight on horseback

Cousins divides the documentary into five different parts, but basically he uses the sketches as a vehicle to put things into context, primarily showing how his sketches of landscapes of where he used to live, Ireland, Scotland, and Morocco, and shows them side by side with Welles' films that Cousins' believes to be the inspiration for his sets or particular scenes.

They are pretty convincing theories.

The filmmaker talks about how the camera always looks up at people to make them bigger or taller, and how the Nazis used totems of light and Welles echoed that idea in some of his films too, and how there was the "Orson swing" where people in scenes would swing around instead of just scoot over or walk a step away.

In Citizen Kane viewers look up or down at the characters

You can tell that Cousins has studied every minutiae about Welles' films and his life to be able to make such eagle-eyed observations. He visits practically every place that Welles lived or worked, going over the same landscapes he must have seen too, so the viewers can see what he saw.

There's wonderful scenes visiting Welles' third daughter who is still alive, Beatrice, who is 63 and lives in Arizona. She shows several paintings that her father did and talks about how her parents met -- her mother was an Italian heiress, actress and model Paola Mori.

Beatrice was recruited to act in her father's film, most famously in Chimes at Midnight, and later she became a model too. She now looks after her father's estate, and acted as consultant for this documentary, which is probably why Cousins got such great access to Welles' sketches.

Welles' youngest daughter Beatrice who lives in Arizona

In the beginning of the film, Cousins wonders aloud what Welles would think of the world now, over 30 years after his death (he died October 10, 1985). The narrator tells him we've had an African-American president and now some weirdo in the White House... Cousins argues we need Welles more than ever in this environment that has become so politically charged.

Welles would never back down from a political fight -- we learn that his mother was a community activist who took Welles to a church that did not discriminate, and Cousins believes this is where the young boy learned about social justice. Later on he abhorred what the Nazis did and even changed the ending of a film adapted from a book to have a more horrific ending to drive home the point.

In the documentary we see this picture so many times

Before the film I didn't know much about Orson Welles and afterwards felt like I learned a great deal not only about him as a person, but also as an actor and director, how he saw things so visually imbued with lots of meaning.

However The Eyes of Orson Welles seemed to drag on a bit too long towards the end, and Cousins keeps showing a picture of Welles probably in his late 20s or early 30s, lying on his stomach on a bed, his head propped up by his hand and looking wide-eyed into the camera. This got a bit too tedious -- he can't show another picture? And I also wondered what happened to the box? Did he bring it back to the storage locker?

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the documentary, particularly the using the sketches to delve deeply into Welles' life. He created these drawings and paintings when he was happy, mad, sad. But most of all he was a very creative person who not only thought about words on the page, but how he wanted  viewers to see his world.

Filmmaker Mark Cousins

The Eyes of Orson Welles
Written, directed, narrated by Mark Cousins
115 minutes