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Reviews
La décade prodigieuse (1971)
French and American artists unite to make a mystery
I found it quite bizarre that this bizarre movie made in 1971 is rated so low and some reviews are so bad. French director Chabrol unites with french actors Michel Piccoli and Marlene Jobert and Americans Orson Welles and Anthony Perkins (Perkins frequently worked with Welles). Loosely based on a mystery novel by Ellery Queen, this film is excellent and should be taught in film history classes. It combines elements from European and American cinema and the final outcome is World Cinema with superb acting by Orson Welles. Welles plays his favorite "Shakesperian" type of character, which he portrait in his films Othello, Macbeth, Citizen Kane, Mr. Arkadin and Immortal Story (which he made few years earlier). The film has good camera work, excellent props (statues that reminded me of the one's in Citizen Kane), costumes by Karl Lagerfeld and a strange electronic score at the beginning of the film supplemented with classical music as the film progresses. I won't spoil anything by going into plot details but to sum things up; this film kind of feels like "Citizen Kane part 2 made in France". Welles' character, Theo, lives in a mansion, his wife is having an affair, he's lonely, he's always buying expensive art and so on. Welles the filmmaker dominates this film, it's quite clear that director Chabrol learned a awful lot from him, the editing, the music, camera-work and the dramatic performances all remind me of his work. Highly recommended and it's a shame how hard it is to find a copy of this film, cause Orson Welles never acted in a good motion picture after Ten Days Wonder.
Histoire immortelle (1968)
Welles' last and shortest masterpiece
This was Orson Welles' only film in color apart from the documentary F for Fake which he made in 1973. After this film he sadly did not get the change to write and direct more movies. As mentioned before he made one documentary in the seventies, shot sections of the movie Other Side of the Wind (never finished it), made a bunch of commercials and starred in horrible movies (apart from The Kremlin Letter, Waterloo, Catch 22, A safe Place, Ten Days Wonder and Get to Know Your Rabbitt). So the only great thing we have from Orson Welles as a pioneer movie director during the last 20 years of his live (he died in 1985) is Chimes of Midnight (1966) and this film which he made in 1968 for french television. This film is short and excellent. The way Orson uses color celluloid is spellbinding, i've never seen anything like it, he uses red and green colors like a painter and projects a certain eerie feeling seldom seen in cinema. The story is a typical one by Welles. A rich and powerful older man is lonesome in his mansion and only wants to be loved. For those of you who love cinema, this film is a must see by one of the greatest directors of all time. Based on a story by danish writer Karen Blixen.