Orson Welles

Born: 6 May 1915
Where: Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA
Died: 9 October 1985

In the eyes of critics and the public alike Welles - largely for his groundbreaking debut Citizen Kane - is the greatest director who ever lived.

His pioneering, influential cinema was imaginative, ambitious and technically daring while his baroque cinematic style created a dense moral universe.

Before his dramatic arrival in Hollywood, Welles had carved a considerable reputation in theatre and radio.

At 18 he was a successful actor at the experimental Gate Theatre in Ireland and at 19 he made his Broadway debut as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet.

Soon Welles was also directing radio dramas, most notoriously with the Halloween 1938 broadcast of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.

Concocted news bulletins and eyewitness accounts were so authentic in "reporting" the landing of hostile Martians in New Jersey that the broadcast caused a panic among unsuspecting listeners.

Seeking to capitalize on Welles' notoriety, RKO brought him to Hollywood to produce, direct, write and act in two films in the most generous offer a Hollywood studio had ever made to an untested filmmaker.

After several projects (among them an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness) came to naught, the 25 year-old Welles made what is generally described as the most stunning debut in the history of film.

Initially called "American" and later retitled "Citizen Kane," Welles' film was a bold, brash and inspired tour-de-force that told its story from several different perspectives.

It recounted the rise and corruption of an American tycoon, Charles Foster Kane (modeled on publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst).

Although well received by the critics, it faced distribution and exhibition problems exacerbated by Hearst's negative campaign and it fared poorly at the box office.

Welles' second film for RKO, an adaptation of Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons, was a more conventional, less flamboyant film.

But with Welles off to South America to shoot a semi-documentary (the never-completed It's All True), the studio severely edited the film, deleting 43 minutes.

Even in its truncated form Ambersons remains a dark, compelling look at nature of wealth, class and progress in America.

When it proved a commercial failure, it was a blow from which Welles' reputation would never recover and he was dismissed by RKO.

The Stranger, produced by independent Sam Spiegel, had Welles directing himself as a Nazi war criminal hiding in a small town, but it was devoid of the characteristic Welles touch.

He regained his filmmaking flair with 1948's The Lady From Shanghai, a stunning film noir in which Welles and his wife Rita Hayworth co-starred.

Welles' next film proved to be the first of an informal, impressive Shakespeare trilogy, an eccentric version of Macbeth in which the actors were encouraged to speak with thick Scottish burrs.

The film, however, was not successful and was dismissed at the Venice Film Festival. Four years later, he answered his critics with a striking version of Othello, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes.

The final film in the trilogy was the triumphant Chimes at Midnight/Falstaff which Welles, who by this time was of the correct girth to play Falstaff, fashioned from five of Shakespeare's historical plays.

As a separate narrative, Falstaff's tale is a bitter one of deteriorating friendship passing from privilege to neglect. It ranks among Welles' greatest achievements.

After the failure of Macbeth, Welles began a self-imposed, ten-year exile from Hollywood.

His follow-up to Othello, Mr. Arkadin/Confidential Report, was an acerbic profile of a powerful man that showed signs of the brilliance that marked Kane.

Welles returned to Hollywood to act in and direct Touch of Evil, a film noir masterpiece.

His 1962 adaptation of Kafka's The Trial, a nightmarish extension of that vision, depicted a society completely devoid of a moral sense, where empty procedure replaced principle.

His final completed film, F For Fake was a diverting collage of documentary and staged footage that investigated the line separating reality and illusion.

, celebrated all tricksters--including its director, who sometimes stated that if he had not become a director, he would have been a magician.

At the time of his death, The Other Side of the Wind, a project he had begun filming in the 1970s, remained unfinished.

Obviously autobiographical, it was the story of a famous filmmaker (played by Welles' good friend, John Huston) struggling to find financing for his film, just as Welles was forced to do many times.