The summer heat is unrelenting, let's reduce the scorching sun heat through the evening cool breeze by watching one of the most influential and dynamic directors of all time, Orson Welles's films. May is also the birthday month of the director.
About Orson Welles: George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter who is remembered for his innovative work in film, radio, and theatre. He is considered among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.
In 1937, he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented a series of productions on Broadway through 1941, including Caesar (1937), a modern, politically charged adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
In 1938, his radio anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air gave Welles the platform to find international fame as the director and narrator of a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds, which caused some listeners to believe that a Martian invasion was occurring. Although reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed 23-year-old Welles to notoriety.
His first film was Citizen Kane (1941), which is consistently ranked as one of the greatest films ever made, and he co-wrote, produced, directed, and starred in as the title character, Charles Foster Kane. Welles released twelve other features, the most acclaimed of which include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Touch of Evil (1958), The Trial (1962), Chimes at Midnight (1966) and F for Fake (1973). His distinctive directorial style featured layered and nonlinear narrative forms, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles, sound techniques borrowed from radio, deep focus shots and long takes. David Thomson credits Welles with "the creation of a visual style that is simultaneously baroque and precise, overwhelmingly emotional, and unerringly founded in reality." He has been praised as "the ultimate auteur". Among Welles's notable roles in films by other directors are Rochester in Jane Eyre (1943), Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949) and Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (1966). Welles was a lifelong lover of Shakespeare, and Peter Bogdanovich writes that Chimes at Midnight, in which Welles plays John Falstaff, is "arguably his best film, and his own personal favorite"; Joseph McBride and Jonathan Rosenbaum have called it Welles's masterpiece, and Vincent Canby wrote, "it may be the greatest Shakespearean film ever made."
Film Title: THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI | 1947 | 88 minutes | English Language |
About the film: The Lady from Shanghai is a 1947 American film noir directed by Orson Welles and starring Welles, his estranged wife Rita Hayworth, and Everett Sloane. It is based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King.
Although initially received mixed reviews, it has grown in stature over the years, and many critics have praised its set designs and camerawork. In 2018, the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
SCREENING FOLLOWED BY DISCUSSION! ALL ARE WELCOME!!! ENTRY IS FREE & OPEN TO ALL!!!