Description
Book SynopsisDepicts the artist's life and work in Italy.
Trade ReviewAnile's Orson Welles in Italy (translated from the Italian original of 2006) takes us back to the invention of Welles' independent methods after the Second World War. Anile's research into contemporaneous Italian sources adds degrees of nuance to a largely mythical period in Welles' career.
-- Matthew Asprey Gear * Senses of Cinema *
Orson Welles in Italy recounts, in detail and with great panache, not the beginnings of the myth of the slipping career but its first full development. . .The most interesting aspect of the book perhaps is its account of Welles's critical reputation in Italy, the way he managed to disappoint and annoy authoritative judges on the right and the left, neither side being ready for what were seen as American excesses of visual style. Meanwhile, back home, Welles was increasingly suspected of engaging in un-American activities.
* New York Review of Books *
Alberto Anile's Orson Welles In Italy is a key corrective resource for an under-examined portion of Welles's career and life. Anile's extended examination of the disjointed production of Othello alone—Welles's only 'Italian' film—is worth the price, as it relates the frustrating, even maddening chaos in which Welles was obliged to work, and in spite of which he was still able to produce such a fine, inventive film.
* PopMatters *
[I]t is remarkable that Alberto Anile has managed to spot a niche that previous biographers have neglected. The gap in the record is the six year period between 1947-53, when Welles was based in Italy It makes for a tale packed with vivid and intriguing vignettesBy focusing exclusively on this interlude in Welles's career, Anile manages to capture something of the essence of his talent and personality—that mix of preternatural genius, wit and narcissistic, self-defeating excess—and something too of the fizzing glamour of film and celebrity industries of post-war Rome...The book is highly entertaining and at times illuminating, expertly translated and introduced by Marcus Perryman.
* Times Literary Supplement *
[T]his is a fine work. . . . Highly recommended.
* Choice *
Table of ContentsTranslator's Preface
Introduction
1. Arrival
Orson Welles: "Hollywood . . . teaches nothing anymore"
2. Pizza with Togliatti
3. Black Magic
4. Dolce Vita
Franca Faldini: "It was just an adolescent flirtation"
5. Citizen Kane
6. Life after Rita
7. The Fall of Macbeth
Alfredo Todisco: A Necktie with Dedication
8. Othello Begins Shooting
9. Scalera Gets Cold Feet
10. The Last Desdemona
Alvaro Mancori: "Every now and then he would shout, 'Traitors!'"
11. Blessed and Damned
12. Waiting for Othello
Tullio Kezich: "A maverick filmmaker"
13. Reviewing Othello: The World Premiere
14. Byzantine Timekeeping
15. Going, Going, Gone
Gian Luigi Rondi: "I have changed my mind only about Citizen Kane"
16. Welles and Rossellini
Appendix 1: The Italian Version of Othello
Appendix 2: The Opinion of the Catholic Center for Cinematography
Notes
Index
