Orson Welles: The One-Man Band (1995) User Reviews

A haunting treat for Welles fans

[Michael_Cronin · 8/10 · 21 December 2002]

When Orson Welles died in 1985, he left behind him several masterpieces, several interesting failures & countless performances in films of varying quality. He also left a massive amount of unfinished work & the legend of a great filmmaker who peaked early & spent the rest of his career struggling to finish projects, most of which remain incomplete.

I'm not sure if this documentary debunks or cements that image, but it doesn't really matter, because the real image one is left with is of a filmmaker as a true artist, experimenting with different techniques & ideas as soon as they occur to him, often abandoning films as one might throw away a rough sketch that doesn't quite work. He carried his editing table around the world with him as a painter might carry his brushes & paint.

The real joy to be had here is in seeing these rough sketches - short comic skits, recitals from Moby Dick & Shakespeare, screentests & so on. Even more tantalising are the brief glimpses of larger projects which were unable to be completed - The Deep, The Other Side Of The Wind & The Merchant Of Venice. There's several appearances by Welles himself in various forums - talking at a university, performing magic & chatting with the Muppets.

Oja Kodar, Welles' longtime companion & collaborator, takes the viewer through this previously unseen body of work & gives a picture of the filmmaker that is in marked contrast to the commonly held image of Welles as some kind of burnt-out megalomaniac.

Underlying this film is a deep sadness at the fact that Orson Welles could have achieved so much more, had he been given the chance & not run into so much bad luck, but it is wonderful that some of his 'lost' films have been allowed to see the light of day.

snippets of greatness

[didi-5 · 9/10 · 30 March 2005]

A hugely enjoyable look at the films that were never completed by Hollywood's infant terrible, Orson Welles - while he was appearing in second-rate films (or taking tiny cameos in good films) he was chasing his dreams of making films like Moby Dick, The Merchant of Venice, and others.

Here we see clips of what is left and see how the failed projects developed, grew, and ran out of money. We also see surprisingly funny stuff such as the One-Man Band segment, alongside more serious stuff like The Other Side of the Wind.

As well as his lost work, this film gives an opportunity to bring sundry TV appearances together - Orson with the Muppets, doing magic tricks and recitations, and so on.

Looking at Welles' legacy of unfinished work

[BrandtSponseller · 8/10 · 1 May 2005]

Orson Welles: The One-Man Band, which is one of many excellent extras on the Criterion Collection DVD edition of Welles' film F for Fake (Vérités et mensonges, 1974), is a 90-minute documentary, put together (co-directed) by Welles partner/companion Oja Kodar and filmmaker Vassili Silovic. It examines Welles' career primarily via a focus on his unfinished projects, and is of great interest to Welles fans for presenting (sometimes extended) clips of those unrealized films. Although this documentary is put together in the style of F for Fake, it's not nearly as successful artistically, which probably underscores what a genius Welles could be when he was in charge.

The unfinished or lost works prominently featured include Moby Dick, The Merchant of Venice (1969), The Other Side of the Wind (1972), and a kind of surrealistic "biopic" that Welles was working on, set in London, called One Man Band. There is also a fascinating question and answer session with Welles filmed on a college campus, bits of a television show with him talking to various Muppets (it appears to be more of a talk show than something taken from The Muppet Show), a few instances of Welles performing magic tricks, and quite a few scenes filmed specifically for this documentary. The latter tend to have the best cinematography. The clips from unfinished films that Welles shot or supervised tend to not be properly processed. They need color correction; they need to be cleaned up, and so on.

Just seeing the Welles film clips out of context like this tends to undermine their potential impact for me. For example, the surrealistic Merchant of Venice scenes and the bizarre sex scene from The Other Side of the Wind are both fascinating, but with improperly processed prints and with just snippets that should have arrived in a full film in the same vein, neither quite work, and in the context of this documentary, they tend to slow it down too much. The bits of Welles reading sections from Moby Dick at the camera in close-up and the brief scenes from an unrealized film called the Dreamers do not work at all for me. The snippets of One-Man Band are primarily interesting in that they amount to Welles doing his best Benny Hill impersonation.

Although I was drawn to the documentary by seeing the unfinished clips, what ended up being the most significant aspect of The One Man Band for me was the exploration of Welles' difficult relationship with the film industry, his occasional bad luck (such as losing or having the negatives of Merchant of Venice stolen), his efforts to fund his projects, which tended to always surmount what he could arrange financing for, and his public comments, which mostly downplayed the unfinished works, and in which he presents himself both as a carefree, somewhat modest "artiste" and a deep pessimist. In some of these respects, Welles had a career similarity to other maverick outsider artists, such as Frank Zappa.

Relatively simple shots, such as driving by the outside of the big Hollywood studios and the Director's Guild of America, have significant symbolic impact in this context, as we're seeing the "closed door" to Welles' creative ideals. There are aspects of Welles that I would have liked to see explored more in depth in this documentary, such as his visual artworks (both the works intended as ends in themselves and those intended as tools for film-making), but this is a fairly successful, if somewhat sad and disheartening look at a very unique talent.

another good reason to pick up the new F for Fake DVD...

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 29 January 2006]

Orson Welles fans, this may be the best you'll get in terms of 'lock-box' finished films from the prolific, perpetually f***ed over father of maverick-style cinema (i.e. few films made in Hollywood, with Europe his only safe place for his very independent ways as an actor/writer/director/producer/editor). Like an author who's smaller, in-the-vault kinds of works put together by an editor into one compilation, One Man Band, like the documentary It's All True, is a sort of collector's item in and of itself. Along with giving the fullest possible glimpses (as far as we Welles fans know) of the films as part of Welles's un-official scrapbook, there are some revelatory insights from his longtime companion Oja Kodar, and clips from a public interview in an auditorium (a very funny one) that shines some light on a couple of issues. The director here is the editor, assembling the pieces at times in the essay style of F for Fake (and this film is now included with it on the brilliantly packaged Criterion DVD), though not as frantic in style and purpose.

Here we get something very special, in spurts, and even when the interest is a little more low-key than expected (though fun, the novelty isn't exceptional of Welles reading excerpts from Moby Dick and The Merchant of Venice), one can't look away. The best parts include the intact scenes from the Deep, London, the filmed excerpts of Merchant of Venice, the little moments of Welles's odd, hilarious imitations, and the one that still could be completed, the Other Side of the Wind. That last film is maybe the most fascinating film of the lot, as it goes even further with montage and experimental style than F for Fake. It's wild, it's rambling, and I could only get an idea of what was going on, but that's all I could've asked for anyway. The veneer of Welles's personality, as well, is stripped a bit away through Kodar's insights, how he was more of a modest man than the overwhelming, megalomaniac personality people made him out to be. At the end of the day he was, as the film makes clear without a shadow of doubt, one of the true poets of 20th century cinema, and like other controversial artists his major works were practically all censored, while the minor works barely left his traveling-alongside film cans.

To see a filmmaker at work, at least in retrospective, can be many things, from dull, to over-indulgent, to really passing all of that and showing a man at work. While there isn't footage of Welles at work on a set like with Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie or A.K., the footage here compensates for that. One can see through the little bits of film done, the ones that showed his determination to keep rolling along instead of getting stuck in the past, that it isn't too much of a surprise that he got a little sick of people tipping the hat to Citizen Kane and nothing else he did in his career. His story is one of the tragedies of the artist's world, though it's good to know that he never got too depressed to not quit at the magic and voices. It's a real treat.

Very good look at Welles the man, his relationship with Hollywood and unfinished projects

[dbborroughs · 8/10 · 13 December 2005]

This is a loving film essay on Orson Welles and his unfinished films. Its an interesting look at the man who was just trying to make the films he wanted to on his own terms. Made with the assistance of Welles' longtime companion Oja Kodar this film lets us see a number of his unrealized projects for the first time. Its a treat for anyone who has been interested in Orson Welles and heard stories of these lost treasures; or for any one curious to what end he was putting the money got from his numerous film and television roles. While I'm not sure what I would have thought of some of the films (The Dreamers for example) I find that I'm very interested in where he was going with other (his Moby Dick, which consisted of him simply reciting passages from the book is an interesting idea). I especially loved some of the short humorous bits that Welles put together, his Churchill film is very funny, as his is bit with two English tailors. As a person who has been very critical of Welles of late, due in large part to extreme disillusionment with his Don Quixote (which I found to be a crashing bore) I find that this film re-awakened my respect for the man. Its not a perfect film, most of the pieces we see only awaken a desire to see more of the unfinished films and at times it seems to go on too long. Still this is a must see if you're interested in Welles or cinema, especially its lost treasures.

Missing Other Side of the Wind

[hollywoodshack · 6/10 · 23 August 2013]

Gary Graver and Oja Kodar were Orson Welles' constant companions during the last years of his life. Graver was his photography director for American films and Kodar was his live in girlfriend. In One Man Band, the focus is usually on the films Oja performed in. The secondary message seems to be Oja wants fame and recognition because she was Welles' lover and wants to use him as a stepping stone to promote her own success. Shown is an extended promo for F for Fake where Oja is prancing about semi nude or in sexy clothes every minute of the ten minutes or so of the rejected trailer. The film in fact was a boring comparison of a famous art forger and Clifford Irving who faked Howard Hughes' biography. My main disappointment is that more of Welles' legendary unfinished film was not shown, The Other Side of the Wind. The scene shown is a short semi nude clip featuring Oja again. Gary Graver was said to have a complete working print of the movie, but his documentary featured little or nothing from it at all. A truckload of films are retrieved, but Oja claims to have just a few scenes. This is very hard for me to believe, indeed. A complete film from either Graver or Kadar kept separately from the negative stored in a vault in France seems to have vanished.

Orson Welles: The One-Man Band was a fascinating look at his unfinished works

[tavm · 10/10 · 26 August 2009]

After watching Orson Welles' first film, the experimental short The Hearts of Age, on UbuWeb, I decided to see the other one under his name there called Orson Welles: The One-Man Band. This documentary was directed by Vassili Silovic with the cooperation of Oja Kodar who takes us through her and Orson's house in search of his unfinished films and other stray materials. Among the most fascinating of those: scenes of The Other Side of the Wind like that of a female reporter interviewing a narcissistic director played by John Huston and his associate played by Peter Bogdanovich or a car scene with a young woman making love to a young man while the driver is being nonchalant through it all, Welles doing a monologue of reading "Moby Dick", and scenes of The Dreamers featuring compelling turns by both Ms. Kodar and Welles. There's also some funny scenes like that of Welles portraying Winston Churchill or the rejected F for Fake trailer where he claims his "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast wasn't a hoax after all! And then there's his acceptance speech at the American Film Institute honors, his performing with Muppets, and some partially funny moments from his Londan-based endeavors that were also fascinating to watch. There's others I haven't mentioned but I'll just say I heartily recommend Orson Welles: The One-Man Band for any of his enthusiasts out there. P.S. I recognized Charles Gray on The Merchant of Venice clips from his work in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the Bond films, You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever.

One of Hollywood's Greatest Creators

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 20 November 2014]

Orson Welles' archives of unfinished/never released movies and the last years of his life from the perspective of Oja Kodar (life and artistic partner Of Orson Welles in his last years).

What is Orson Welles? Is he a visionary, an artist, and a constant creator? Yes. This is a man who was only 26 when "Citizen Kane" was made, and continued to make brilliant work for decades. Perhaps some day we will see more of it (rumors abound that "lost films" will turn up).

Why does this film have Muppets? Because it should. And why is the narration in German? This is a bit of a shortcoming. Because so much of it is in English, having the voiceovers in German does not seem to make a lot of sense. At the very least, it could have multiple sound options. (Subtitles are preferable to dubbing, but this would not even be dubbing because the narrator is never on screen.)

The Twilight Years Of A Film-making Prodigy.

[DhavalVyas · 10/10 · 10 January 2008]

When a person slowly disappears, nobody seems to notice. This is probably what happened to Orson Welles when his film career stumbled into a downhill slope. The man who was arguably the most brilliant filmmaker to emerge on the American scene, ended up doing narration, wine commercials, and magic shows. He died in poverty, leaving behind masterpieces, but also leaving behind dozens of unfinished films. Films that could have been just as magical as his earlier works. 'Orson Welles - The One Man Band" takes a look at those struggling later years when Welles was a ghost hovering around the Hollywood movie scene. Many people knew he was trying to make movies, but many people also knew he could never get them finished. Because of his inability to finish films, no major studio would try to finance him, so he became a gypsy-like filmmaker. Even still then many projects were not finished.

Although it is sad to see a legend struggling so badly, the film does not feel sorry for him. In fact, the film has a very positive outlook on Welles later years. The film is narrator by two people. One is the filmmaker. The other is Welles' companion, Oja Kodar. She had spent a considerable time with Welles in his last years and knew him probably better than anyone else. The image she shows of Welles was not of a burned-out has-been, but of a strong man who still had plenty of creative spark. When watching the snippets and short clips from his unfinished films, one can see exactly what Oja Kodar was seeing. Either it was bad luck or it was his conflicts with studios that could not get his films finished. Or maybe it was both. Regardless, one can see even in his later films, Welles still had incredible film-making talent and vision. One can see that he was also a versatile actor. He could play a wide variety of roles and play them as good as the best actors. When we see how creative he still was, we cannot help but think it was the Hollywood that ruined his career. There could be a lot of truth to this because many people feel he was never the same after 'Citizen Kane' because Welles might have stepped on too many big toes after his brilliant debut feature. But the unknown remains just that. At times, it is the artist who ruins his or her career with their own bare hands.

It is hard to say what happened, but this film does not try to explain that either. It tries to focus on Welles the artist. And he was just that until his death. An artist who had no audience. How frustrating, but we have seen this example time and again throughout history.

Some interesting and less interesting clips presented poorly

[cherold · 5/10 · 14 January 2018]

This is some clips of unfinished Orson Welles films along with some interview footage of him and his ex lover and some pretentious filler.

This includes a fascinating scene from The Other Side of the Wind, some interesting bits from The Dreamers and The Deep, some Moby Dick monologues and some comedic nonsense that is like some weird old guy's home movies.

Oja Kodar is engaging as she talks about her time with Orson, but she's apparently also been a major impediment to the finishing of The Other Side of the Wind, and one suspects that a lot of the intent of this film is to put Oja in front of the public, since she Welles was never able to make a star of her. (On the bright side, I think Netflix has managed to get the project of finishing the film going again; hopefully they'll finally do it!)

While there are some terrific moments, the presentation is lacking and some of Welles' material is shockingly amateurish.

Good for Fans of Welles

[Michael_Elliott · 18 April 2012]

Orson Welles: The One-Man Band (1995)

*** (out of 4)

This is an interesting documentary from Oja Kodar who served as Orson Welles life partner. This 60-minute documentary takes clips from various unfinished films by Welles and presents them as parts of his work that simply for one reason or another never got finished. Throughout all the clips we get some stuff from Welles giving interviews where he talks about his craft. One such clip comes from his AFI Lifetime Achievement award and another comes from a Q&A he was giving and he gives an interesting answer about his unfinished films including DON QUIXOTE. We get clips or notes to films such as THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, MOBY DICK, THE DEEP, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, ONE-MAN BAND, The Orson Welles Show, THE DREAMERS and a bizarre extended trailer for F FOR FAKE. Needless to say, the ones who will enjoy this the most are fans of Welles because they'll get a chance to see all of this footage, which went pretty much unused for years. I'm sure the success of IT'S ALL TRUE helped get some of this out there. While there's nothing ground-breaking in terms to the quality of the film, I think it remains entertaining as long as you don't mind watching this footage of Welles. I must admit that I thought it was rather sad watching this thing and seeing such a great artist doing stuff that would never come together and eventually sit on a shelf for decades. Kodar is shown on-camera as she shows off some items of Welles as well as some of the paintings that he did. Of course, a more detailed documentary about the life of Welles is certainly something that we need but until then this here is a nice introduction to the work he never completed.