Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles (2014)

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles: Directed by Chuck Workman. With Orson Welles, Simon Callow, Christopher Welles, Joanne Hill Styles. A look at the life and work of the great theatre, radio and film artist.

“Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles celebrates the centenary of the birth of the legendary Actor, Director, Raconteur and Foodie. The documentary has no narration, it just uses clips from Welles movies, footage from interviews and Welles himself ends up narrating his life through anecdotes and stories he told throughout his career.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe problem is if you want to know about the man just watch the Arena documentary from the BBC that was made a few years before he died where you get Orson Welles, his life and career from the big man himself, many clips of which are used here.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eMagician feels like a tepid rundown of his career. There are some major contributors such as Steven Spielberg but the only interesting aspect I took from this is a man who became a low budget independent film-maker, forever looking to raise money so he could complete the many films he had in production at any one time, some of them going on for years, many never completed.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOrson Welles was an important figure in cinematic history, this documentary is a starter not the main course.”