5 Great Directors From 5 Great Filmmaking Nations
1. United States Orson Welles
Its strange: of all the cinemas in the world, and despite the fact that of the numerous films Ive seen more than half have come from America, this was the easiest decision of the bunch. Yes, you can label me a classicist; you can yak on about Stanley Kubrick or Quentin Tarantino deserving to be there instead; you can even go as far to say Im a perverse idiot. Fact is, Orson Welles is Americas greatest ever director. Heck, Im sure even if he made Citizen Kane and gave it up he would head this list.
But he didnt, and after Kane Welles gave us five more masterpieces: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958), The Trial (1962), Chimes at Midnight (1966), and F for Fake (1974). Now Im not going to explain why each of these films deserve such praise, for what I will say about them, collectively, remains much more unnerving.
As a moviegoer, I have to say that Kane is no longer my favourite Orson Welles film (I'd take Ambersons, Chimes at Midnight, or Touch of Evil), but it is still the best place I know of to start thinking about Wellesor for that matter about movies in general.
Its common knowledge that what Griffith createdThe Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), The Love Flower (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1921), et alWelles perfected. Its even more known, know, that Citizen Kane is the film that has done more to reshape cinema than any other. (As critic Trevor Johnston put it, "seeing it for the first or umpteenth time remains a revelation.") Clearly, no single film is the greatest ever made. But if there were one, for me Kane would now be the strongest contender, bar none.
I digress. To say why Welles is one of the greatest of all directors is actually quite simple. All you have to do is skew Ingmar Bergmans quote about Luis Buñuel a little and it becomes clear: "Orson Welles always made Orson Welles films." What I mean by this is that, although Welles encountered tightened studio control after Kane, all his films are, to some extent, just as propelling as one other.
You can definitely call Kane better than Ambersons, or Touch of Evil better than The Trial, but if you evaluate Welles films based on the artistic freedom granted, you can see just how good he really was. I like to think of him as a modern-day version of Atlas.
Are we wrong? Who is the best of the bunch? Let us know in the comments below?