• One of the major revelations- and best films- I’ve seen in 2018. I have seen it before, twice I think, but always on really inferior copies (this is not much better), over a decade ago, without the eye I have now for visuals and this is something to behold. I’ll get to it more below but this film requires patience with that first 25 minutes
  • The 7th ranked Welles film on TSPDT
  • The former wunderkind, boy genius not auteur martyr takes a Kafka adaptation, blows it up with unbelievable visuals and set pieces—but there’s a dual meaning there with a second reading of Welles trapped and the victim of Hollywood
  • Bleak, baroque, a labyrinthine
  • Welles as said it’s “the finest film I have ever made”
  • Dark lighting from noir
  • Surrealism into a nihilistic dystopia— made with such bravado—fragmented, ambiguous, claustrophobic
  • Extreme camera angles and shadow work
  • There are many readings— Anthony Perkins as a homosexual. Hollywood… Nazis
  • Uninspired cartoon prologue and then
  • Welles as an intellectual- always an adaptation of weighty material if not his own- The Shakespeare work then Kafta
  • Flaws- the dubbing/synching is a disaster
  • We’re 26 minutes in before the first interesting shot. We’re trapped in that ugly room- this is a flaw.
  • Then were off- we’re in that massive office built like a maze, it’s a stunner of desks and lighting- ceiling as mise-en-scene given Welles angle work and eye for massive set pieces. As Perkins character falls more and more out of reality and into that surrealistic world we’re off from artistic standpoint
  • Underneath the bleachers like a spider web—sea of chairs
  • Architecture as character at it’s finest—apartment exteriors
  • A sea of extras as architecture
  • Clearly an influence on Soderbergh, Pakula, Fincher with their office work- even today in homecoming from Sam Esmail–
  • The house of Welles character is gorgeous—a sea of books with the girl
  • Set piece after set piece of a mise-en-scene designed to perfection- not just perfection but ambition and formal consistency that is married to narrative
  • The lighting in the underground tunnel
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  • Avant-garde
  • Sea of newspapers
  • Steps and skyscrapers—exhibition shots with framing
  • Poor acting in this film from many people—Welles included- his scene drags a little- there aren’t many down sections after that weak opening
  • A masterpiece of mise-en-scene and set piece work
  • Influence’s Blade Runner, Brazil– clearly some borrowed from Metropolis
  • Some of the visuals are among the greatest of the decade, Welles’ career- the attic with light coming in and picture frames all over, the hall of cabinets going on forever
  • It’s a very tough film to evaluate- there are things it does better than most masterpieces yet also things about it (some of the acting for example) that 20 films from 1962 do better
  • A masterpiece