Orson Welles Reading Moby Dick

May 1, 2007

The documentary Orson Welles: One-Man Band includes some brief scenes from various projects by Orson Welles. Some of the most fascinating include Welles simply reading text into the camera. He gives a reading of sections from Moby Dick.. and whether he envisioned ever supplying dramatic interludes is unknown. All that is left are his characteristic fragments of a project. I find this state of affairs fascinating since it allows the imagination to rush in and complete the project.. building masterpieces in the thin air of the mind.

In the above scene Welles recites the introduction to Moby Dick.. "Call me Ishmael.." It is a surprisingly effective scene with mysteriously rippling light streaking his face. The documentary plays this scene and then notes: "No one knows when or why Welles decided to read solitary chapters of Moby Dick".

Another example of this tendency to simply read texts is found in the recital of Shylock's speech from the Merchant of Venice. Here Welles mostly completed a film of the play but the negatives for this crucial scene were lost. So at some point Welles simple filmed himself speaking these lines in his everyday clothes:

I think they should release what remains of the Merchant of Venice and then simply stitch this scene into the text.. It would break the illusion of the film and provide a moment in which not a character, but the director himself takes on the lines, eyes moist with emotion.

These bits and pieces of film appear to come from the early 70s. This past week I watched the 1956 version of Moby Dick directed by John Huston. Orson Welles puts in an appearance as the whalers preacher. We are shown a somewhat dour congregation with plaques on the wall to commemorate sailors who have died in the business of whaling. Welles enters the scene and climbs up onto a pulpit which is in the shape of a ship's keel. There he opens a books and preaches a sermon about Jonah.. which I assume holds closely to the sermon in Melville's Moby Dick.

This scene puts later bare textual recitals into context. Here in the film Moby Dick he had a bit part requiring only five minutes of preaching.. yet the viewer watches and listens to Welles fill his role. His speaking voice alone, with its modulations, holds our interest: "Jonah thinks a ship made by man will take him out to countries where God does not reign".

Welles developed what we might call a declamatory style. He is most comfortable with high flown rhetorical passages.. and he relies on his voice. This rhetorical flare turned out to be perfect for the creation of fragments.. which makes sense since pure acting would seem to require the most dramatic context, while purple passages have the affect of standing out from their dramatic context.. allowing for fragmentation of the experience of the play.. and for anthologizing. In films like Moby Dick Welles fills parts that call for rhetorical drama.. and then later as he works independently he begins to strip down drama in favor of bare recitation. I am not convinced this was the most fruitful direction for Welles.. but that does not mean I would not shell out whatever I needed to spend in order to hear him recite fragments of a text like Moby Dick.