Best Of UbuWeb: Orson Welles - One Man Band

The Orson Welles we remember best is the young genius at the top of his game: the Orson Welles who revolutionized film technique and narrative with Citizen Kane; the Orson Welles who literally had people running for their lives with The War Of The Worlds. One Man Band is a 90-minute documentary telling the story of an Orson Welles we don't remember nearly as well: a frustrated director who spent the last years of his life starting a wide range of exciting and ambitious projects only to watch them fall apart, one after the other.

It's a fascinating film, a behind-the-scenes look at the latter parts of Welles' career, relying heavily on interviews with his widowed partner — actress Oja Kodar — and tantalizing clips of the projects that never came to fruition: his one-man version of Moby Dick; a sea-bound thriller starring Jeanne Moreau; a narrative-twisting character piece with John Huston, Dennis Hopper and Peter Bogdanovich.

You can stream the entire 90 minutes of the film on UbuWeb here.

-----

UbuWeb is one of our most favourite sites on the whole of the Internet, host to multimedia files from the history of the avant-garde. Visit it here. Or see all of our "Best Of UbuWeb" recommendations here.

Posted by Adam Bunch, the Editor-in-Chief of the Little Red Umbrella and the creator of the Toronto Dreams Project. You can read his posts here, follow him on Twitter here, or email him at adam@littleredumbrella.com.