Orson Welles the Showman

December 28, 2006

The most recent New Yorker has the Nobel Prize lecture delivered this year by the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. At one point he mentions that his father had recommended Montaigne, and this leads to an insightful passage on how he experiences the writing life:

I would like to see myself as belonging to the tradition of writers who—wherever they are in the world, East or West—cut themselves off from society and shut themselves up in their rooms with their books; this is the starting point of true literature.

That is the tenderly claustrophobic feel that pervades the whole of the lecture. Writers retreat into a lonely zone.. and after years in that zone they produce something lovely.. an image of the world that is rich and layered. There are no hints of a shortcut.

Returning to the biography Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu by Simon Callow, I was reminded of how differently Welles lived and created. There was no lonely zone.. no habitual place of quiet for Welles. He worked at a white heat, running from project to project and collaboration to collaboration. A person who worked with him in his early theater days wrote:

Even during those early years he was driven to being overbusy. When he was not busy he was lonely and miserable.. He would start at ten in the morning and not leave the theater. He might dismiss his cast at four the next morning but when he would return at noon, we would find Orson sleeping in a theater seat.. [293]

I'm not criticizing this manic creativity.. but it does have its consequences. Callow notes that in 1936 Welles performed a radio adaptation of Hamlet.. and then he asks in parentheses: "is there a character in the whole of dramatic literature for which he was less suited?" (304). A man who lived at his pace was unlikely to have a real feeling for the inwardness that is the chief characteristic of Hamlet. There is a golden ratio of reflection to creative output.. and to bypass this ratio is to bring on some sort of judgment.

Callow mines a similar vein when it comes to Welles as an actor:

His relationship to acting was paradoxical: he was immersed in its lore and unusually well equipped, physically, to practice it, but he never allowed himself to discover its deep rewards. [284]

That is a comment from an author who has presumably experienced something of those deep rewards.. and it is in passages like this that I most appreciate Callow's insight. Yes, Welles had great acting in him.. but in his major roles a deep emotional commitment to his characters is lacking. Think Citizen Kane or Mr. Arkadin. His movie version of Macbeth is also weak when it comes to a portrayal of interior evil, but strong when it comes to the construction of a dark foreboding atmosphere. Callow again is helpful:

His lack of communion both with himself and with the character he was playing made this [lack] inevitable. His idea of acting was purely cerebral; when that is the case, the god can never enter in. [284]

Yes, Orhan Pamuk and Orson Welles are different characters.. duh! One is a writer and one is an actor.. and the difference of lifestyle between those two professions has been noted for ages. But getting past that, Orson Welles was also a creator. This need for a lonely room.. a place for quiet reflection and free interior wandering.. is imperative for every creator. It is imperative not just for some psychological ideal of mental health.. but also for the long term nourishment of the creative force. The careful story told by Callow in his first volume of the biography of Orson Welles is that of a man with hurricane force creative energy who somehow neglects to know himself.. and the creative loss that flows from that interior neglect.