This should be a 5-6 but a sharper light shines on Orson Welles.
At this point in his Career, Welles had abandoned any attempt at storytelling in favor of atmosphere and meaning via oblique camera angles. If you love Welles you'll see the brilliance in the camera work and defend the genius, vision, breadth, greatness; you'll criticize others for not "getting" it; you'll discuss the real meanings with other cognoscenti.
Really though, it's an awful movie. I mean, just plain bad. The worst kind of Hollywood: a terrible jazz-like score; villains with all the cartoonish menace of Wild One, Rebel w/o Cause, or On the Waterfont (I kept waiting for Karl Malden to jump out in a priest outfit and punch someone); a meandering story that goes nowhere; and some of the worst acting imaginable. Acting so wincingly bad that it brings tears to your eyes.
Weaver's performance is clownishly painful - something out of bad theatre for children. Welles, as always, pontificates and overacts ponderously. Heston, as always, alternates between woodenness and overacting - he was a master at reacting to the wrong things; Leigh overacts and almost jumps out of the screen in places; the list goes on. There isn't an understated performance in it.
In case you haven't seen it: Heston plays a Mexican (no, I'm not kidding) DEA guy with no discernible ethnicity beyond some facepaint and a greased mustache.
There's also the wonderful technique of having 2-3 characters talk at once so that you can't possibly follow what's going on. Much like real life where the salesman in your group interrupts before you can begin to get to your point.
Dietrich is a fortune teller with heavy lines such as (to Welles) "Your future is all used up". This is often quoted as one of the important bits. Cotten is a coroner with his trademark simpering smile.
What happens in the end: Welles drowns in the physical, moral and spiritual garbage that he created for himself. Or did the world create it for all of? Why for that matter are we here? Of course he finds time before he goes for a self-pitying speech that questions the meaning of his own life and - yes - all of our lives. Yup, just like Kane and Third Man.
It's a shame about Welles really: he had some great ideas and some beautiful camera techniques. He just couldn't present anything without slamming it in your face over and over and over. He'd have been a good preacher or university professor where he could lecture without any questioning.
At this point in his Career, Welles had abandoned any attempt at storytelling in favor of atmosphere and meaning via oblique camera angles. If you love Welles you'll see the brilliance in the camera work and defend the genius, vision, breadth, greatness; you'll criticize others for not "getting" it; you'll discuss the real meanings with other cognoscenti.
Really though, it's an awful movie. I mean, just plain bad. The worst kind of Hollywood: a terrible jazz-like score; villains with all the cartoonish menace of Wild One, Rebel w/o Cause, or On the Waterfont (I kept waiting for Karl Malden to jump out in a priest outfit and punch someone); a meandering story that goes nowhere; and some of the worst acting imaginable. Acting so wincingly bad that it brings tears to your eyes.
Weaver's performance is clownishly painful - something out of bad theatre for children. Welles, as always, pontificates and overacts ponderously. Heston, as always, alternates between woodenness and overacting - he was a master at reacting to the wrong things; Leigh overacts and almost jumps out of the screen in places; the list goes on. There isn't an understated performance in it.
In case you haven't seen it: Heston plays a Mexican (no, I'm not kidding) DEA guy with no discernible ethnicity beyond some facepaint and a greased mustache.
There's also the wonderful technique of having 2-3 characters talk at once so that you can't possibly follow what's going on. Much like real life where the salesman in your group interrupts before you can begin to get to your point.
Dietrich is a fortune teller with heavy lines such as (to Welles) "Your future is all used up". This is often quoted as one of the important bits. Cotten is a coroner with his trademark simpering smile.
What happens in the end: Welles drowns in the physical, moral and spiritual garbage that he created for himself. Or did the world create it for all of? Why for that matter are we here? Of course he finds time before he goes for a self-pitying speech that questions the meaning of his own life and - yes - all of our lives. Yup, just like Kane and Third Man.
It's a shame about Welles really: he had some great ideas and some beautiful camera techniques. He just couldn't present anything without slamming it in your face over and over and over. He'd have been a good preacher or university professor where he could lecture without any questioning.