DESPITE THE SYSTEM by Clinton Heylin
March 3rd, 2005 by Andre Soares
In Despite the System : Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios, author Clinton Heylin argues that Citizen Kane (1941) was quite probably not the only masterpiece Orson Welles ever made. And if we haven’t been able to see those other great Welles films, well, that’s because studio heads at RKO, Universal, and Columbia ruined the director’s work — via indiscriminate editing — before they reached movie houses.
Among the hard-to-handle director’s mangled films are The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady from Shanghai (1948), cut from 155 to 86 minutes; and the psychedelic Touch of Evil (1958), with its Mexican Charlton Heston (in all likelihood the one good performance in Heston’s career) and a leather-jacketed Mercedes McCambridge to boot.
Heylin based his conclusions on interviews, shooting scripts and schedules, internal studio memos, and Welles’ private correspondence.
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Chicago Review Press (February 28, 2005)
ISBN: 1556525478
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