Loved it for what it is. A chance to see Welles's monster intellect, humor, and sparkly-eyed mischievousness as he jokingly, then seriously, then jokingly ponders the relative value of treasures and fakes, frauds and masterpieces. I've never approached "art" quite the same since I first saw this on a worn out VHS tape ten years ago. The new DVD transfer looks as good as it's ever going to. The (typical for the cash-strapped Welles) dubbed audio gives it an even more unearthly, or maybe just European feel.
His discussion of scarcity as a measure of value, especially as it pertains to food, is priceless.
The man who approached making "Citizen Kane" like a kid in a toy store must have known how elusive, and maybe accidental, great art can be. Did he feel like a fraud as he seemingly effortlessly made one of the great movies? Was it this awareness that made him appear somewhat, to this casual observer, self-loathing in his later years?
After a testy, or maybe just well-edited, scene between the art forger and his biographer and forger to be, Welles finally offers forgiveness for all the fakers and forgers in an absolutely heart-stopping 2 1/2 minute rumination on the cathedral at Chartres. Here he opines (paraphrasing broadly) that this unsigned masterpiece may be the one thing that western mankind offers as proof of what he could accomplish.
"'Be of good heart' cry the dead artists out of the living pasts, 'our songs will be silenced. But what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man's name doesn't matter, all that much.'" He could have ended the movie here for my money.
Instead, what follows is 20 more minutes of entertainment and remarkable editing that intentionally, I guess, break the preceding tension.
His discussion of scarcity as a measure of value, especially as it pertains to food, is priceless.
The man who approached making "Citizen Kane" like a kid in a toy store must have known how elusive, and maybe accidental, great art can be. Did he feel like a fraud as he seemingly effortlessly made one of the great movies? Was it this awareness that made him appear somewhat, to this casual observer, self-loathing in his later years?
After a testy, or maybe just well-edited, scene between the art forger and his biographer and forger to be, Welles finally offers forgiveness for all the fakers and forgers in an absolutely heart-stopping 2 1/2 minute rumination on the cathedral at Chartres. Here he opines (paraphrasing broadly) that this unsigned masterpiece may be the one thing that western mankind offers as proof of what he could accomplish.
"'Be of good heart' cry the dead artists out of the living pasts, 'our songs will be silenced. But what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man's name doesn't matter, all that much.'" He could have ended the movie here for my money.
Instead, what follows is 20 more minutes of entertainment and remarkable editing that intentionally, I guess, break the preceding tension.