The Eyes of Orson Welles

Mark Cousins explores the many contradictions of Orson Welles through the sketches and paintings the Citizen Kane director created since he was a boy

Film Review by Jamie Dunn | 16 Aug 2018
Film title: The Eyes of Orson Welles
Director: Mark Cousins
Starring: Orson Welles, Beatrice Welles, Mark Cousins
Release date: 17 Aug
Certificate: 12A

Mark Cousins is a champion of the underseen. But the Belfast-born, Edinburgh-based filmmaker has an uncanny knack, too, for spinning the familiar on its head, making it feel laundry fresh, whether it’s sprinkling magic dust on his rough-hewn hometown in I Am Belfast or comparing Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again to Bollywood on Twitter. In his latest film, he looks anew at a subject from which you’d expect few surprises: Orson Welles. The Citizen Kane director may be one of cinema’s most celebrated and discussed figures, but Cousins finds interesting new perspectives through which to observe his life and career.

Cousins' vehicle into discussing Welles, as the film’s title suggests, is the way he looked at the world. Specifically, the way he expressed what he saw through his art. Cousins' ace up his sleeve is that he doesn’t simply have Welles’ films as windows to his soul, but also the expressive sketches and paintings he made since he was a lad, many of which have barely seen the light of day.

Speaking to Welles in an intimate voiceover, Cousins brings him up to speed on the major events since his death in 1985 – the internet, 9/11 and the current “guy in the Oval Office who thinks he’s Charles Foster Kane” – before travelling back and forth through the filmmaker’s life, “like Groundhog Day”, exploring it through different lenses. There's Welles the political activist and Welles the cad, the knight in shining armour and the offish jester. The imaginative leaps Cousins takes as he explores this contradictory character are both illuminating and elegant, moving as fleetly as Welles’ ink on paper.

As well as exploring new sides to the filmmaker, Cousins also shines a torch on his little-loved films. Scrapy works like Mr Arkadin and Macbeth clearly excite Cousins’ imagination more than the perceived masterpieces; Citizen Kane barely gets a look in. Seeing the world through Welles’ eyes is a wonderful thing; through Cousins' isn't bad either.

Released by Dogwoof