FEDERICO FELLINI

FEDERICO FELLINI

Born - January 20, 1920(1920-01-20)
Rimini, Italy

Died - October 31, 1993 (aged 73)
Rome, Italy

Spouse(s) - Giulietta Masina (1921-1994)

Biography

Fellini's father Urbano (1894-1956) was a traveling salesman and wholesale vendor. In August 1918 he married Ida Barbiani (1896-1984) in a civil ceremony (with the religious celebration the following January). After Federico's birth in 1920, two more children arrived: Riccardo (1921-1991) and Maria Maddalena (m. Fabbri; 1929-2002). Urbano Fellini was originally from Gambettola, where the young Federico vacationed at his grandparents' house for several years.

Born and raised in Rimini, his childhood experiences would later play an important part in many of his films, in particular, I Vitelloni (1953), 8½ (1963) and Amarcord (1973). It is misleading, however, to assume that all his films contain autobiographical anecdotes and fantasies. Intimate friends such as screenwriters Tullio Pinelli and Bernardino Zapponi, cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno and set designer Dante Ferretti have insisted on how Fellini invented his own memories simply for the pleasure of narrating them in his films.

During Mussolini's Fascist regime, Fellini and his brother, Riccardo, were part of the Avanguardista, the fascist youth group that every adolescent Italian male was obliged to join. It must be clearly stated, however, that Fellini and his family were not fascists or in sympathy with fascism. After moving to Rome in the spring of 1939, Fellini landed a well-paid job writing articles for the hugely popular satirical weekly, Marc’Aurelio. It was at this time that he interviewed Aldo Fabrizi, inaugurating a friendship that would lead to professional collaboration and radio work. Of conscription age since 1939, Fellini had nonetheless managed to avoid being drafted through a suite of clever ruses. Commenting on this turbulent epoch, Fellini biographer Tullio Kezich notes that although “the Marc’Aurelio period was happy, the happiness masked a phase of shameless political apathy. Many living under the Mussolini dictatorship during its last years experienced the schizophrenic tug between official loyalty to the regime and the intrinsic freedom of humor.”

In 1942, Fellini met Giulietta Masina, and a year later, on October 30, 1943, they were married. Thus began one of the great creative partnerships in world cinema. Several months after their marriage, Masina fell down the stairs and suffered a miscarriage. Then, on March 22, 1945, Pierfederico (nicknamed Federichino) was born but died a mere month later on April 24. These family tragedies affected the couple in profound ways, particularly in the conception of La strada (1954).

The Fascist regime fell on July 25, 1943 and the Allies liberated Rome on June 4, 1944. During that euphoric summer, Fellini set up the Funny-Face Shop with his friend De Seta, drawing caricatures of Allied soldiers for money. It was here that Roberto Rossellini came to see Fellini about his project, titled Rome, Open City (1945). Rossellini wanted the young man to introduce him to Aldo Fabrizi and collaborate on the script (with Suso Cecchi D'Amato, Piero Tellini, and Alberto Lattuada). Fellini accepted, contributing gags and dialogue.

In 1993 Fellini received an Oscar "in recognition of his cinematic accomplishments that have thrilled and entertained audiences worldwide." That same year, he died of a heart attack in Rome at the age of 73, a day after his fiftieth wedding anniversary. His wife, Giulietta Masina, died six months later of lung cancer on March 23 1994. Fellini, Giulietta Masina and their son Pierfederico are buried in the same bronze tomb sculpted by Arnaldo Pomodoro. Shaped like a ship's prow in the water, the tomb is located at the main entrance to the Cemetery of Rimini.

The Federico Fellini International Airport in Rimini is named in his honor.

Filmmaking career

Variety Lights (1950), Fellini's first film, was co-directed with the more experienced director, Alberto Lattuada. The film is a charming backstage comedy set amongst the world of small-time traveling performers, a world Fellini knew well after working on Roberto Rossellini's Paisà in 1946. While the film shoot was an exhilarating one for the 30-year-old Fellini, its release to poor reviews and limited distribution proved a disaster for all concerned. The production company went bankrupt, leaving both Fellini and Lattuada with debts to pay for over a decade.

Fellini's first solo-directed film was The White Sheik (1952). Starring Alberto Sordi, the film is a revised version of a treatment first written by Michelangelo Antonioni in 1949 and based on the fotoromanzi, the very popular photographed cartoon strip romance magazines published in Italy at the time. Producer Carlo Ponti had commissioned Fellini and Tullio Pinelli to develop the treatment. Finding the finished screenplay perplexing, Antonioni gave it to Alberto Lattuada who also turned it down. Fellini then decided to take the plunge and direct the film himself.

Working on the new script with Fellini and Pinelli was playwright Ennio Flaiano (who also co-wrote Variety Lights with Fellini and Lattuada). Together, they crafted a now classic tale of a newly-wed couple whose outward appearance of respectability is demolished by the fantasies of the immature wife (convincingly portrayed by Brunella Bovo). For the first time, Fellini and his composer, Nino Rota, worked together on the film's score. Having met in Rome in 1945, their collaboration continued successfully until Rota's death during the making of the ill-fated City of Women in 1980. This exceptional artistic relationship has been memorably described as one of "empathy, irrationality and magic."

A major discovery for Fellini after his great neorealist period (1950-1959) was the work of Carl Jung, whom he first read in 1961 under the supervision of noted Jungian psychoanalyst, Ernst Bernhard. Jung's seminal ideas on the anima and the animus, the role of archetypes and the collective unconscious were vigorously explored in such classics as 8½ (1963), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Satyricon (1969), Casanova (1976), and City of Women (1980).

Fellini's films were widely acclaimed, and four of his films won the Best Foreign Film Oscar: La strada (1954) ; Le Notti di Cabiria (1957) ; 8½ (1963) and Amarcord (1973). Another film, La dolce vita (1960) is considered a seminal film of the 1960's, and was voted the sixth greatest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly. La dolce vita also contributed the term paparazzi to the language. The term derives from Marcello Rubini's (played by Marcello Mastroianni) photographer friend Paparazzo. In 1990, Fellini won the prestigious Praemium Imperiale awarded by the Japan Art Association. Considered as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the award covers five disciplines: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Music, and Theatre/Film. Past winners include Akira Kurosawa, David Hockney, Pina Bausch, and Maurice Béjart.

Other work

In 1948 Fellini acted in Roberto Rossellini's Il miracolo with Anna Magnani. To play the role of a silent rogue who is mistaken by Magnani for a saint, Fellini had to bleach his black hair blond. Fellini also wrote scripts for radio shows and movies (most notably for Rossellini, Pietro Germi, Eduardo De Filippo and Mario Monicelli) as well as numerous and often uncredited gags for well known comic actors like Aldo Fabrizi. A gifted caricaturist, Fellini produced satirical drawings in pencil, watercolors and colored felt pens that toured Europe and North America, and which are now eagerly sought after by collectors. Much of the inspiration for his sketches was derived from his own dreams while the films-in-progress stimulated drawings for decor, costumes and set designs (just as it was for Sergei Eisenstein whose own drawings share striking affinities with Fellini's work).

In 1991 Fellini's graphic novel Trip to Tulum was translated into English by Stefano Gaudiano and published in the magazine Crisis with artwork by Milo Manara. Elizabeth Bell supplied additional English translation for the Catalan Communications edition, selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best trade paperbacks of 1990.

In 1992, Fellini worked in close collaboration with Canadian director Damian Pettigrew on a long final interview for the cinematic portrait Fellini: I'm a Born Liar (2002) that has been described as the maestro's "spiritual testament" by Fellini biographer Tullio Kezich.

Influence and legacy

A unique combination of memory, dreams, fantasy, and desire, Fellini's films are deeply personal visions of society, often portraying people at their most bizarre. The term "Felliniesque" is used to describe any scene in which a hallucinatory image invades an otherwise ordinary situation. Important contemporary filmmakers such as David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, Pedro Almodovar Terry Gilliam and Emir Kusturica have all cited Fellini's influence on their work.

Polish director, Wojciech Has (1925-2000), whose two major films, The Saragossa Manuscript (1965) and The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (1973) are outstanding examples of modernist fantasies, has often been compared to Fellini for the sheer "luxuriance of his images" (Gilbert Guez in Le Figaro).

In 2001, singer Fish released an album titled Fellini Days, taking inspiration for the lyrics and music from the works of Fellini

Filmography as director

• Luci del Varietà (1950) (co-credited with Alberto Lattuada)
• Lo Sceicco Bianco (1951)
• I Vitelloni (1953)
• L'amore in città (1953) (segment Un'agenzia matrimoniale)
• La strada (1954) Oscar (best foreign language film)
• Il bidone (1955)
• Le Notti di Cabiria (1957) Oscar (best foreign language film)
• La dolce vita (1960) Oscar (best costumes)
• Boccaccio '70 (1962) (segment Le tentazioni del Dottor Antonio)
• 8½ (1963) Oscar (best foreign language film and best costume design)
• Giulietta degli Spiriti (1965)
• Histoires extraordinaires (1968) (segment Toby Dammit)
• Satyricon (1969)
• I clowns (1970)
• Roma (1972)
• Amarcord (1973) Oscar (best foreign language film)
• Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1976) Oscar (best costume design)
• Prova d'orchestra (1978)
• La città delle donne (1980)
• E la Nave Va (1983)
• Ginger and Fred (1986)
• Intervista (1987)
• La voce della luna (1990)

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

Born - April 7, 1939 (1939-04-07) (age 68)
Detroit, Michigan, U.S.

Spouse(s) - Eleanor Coppola (1963-)

Children - Gian-Carlo Coppola (1963-1986)
Roman Coppola (b.1965)
Sofia Coppola (b.1971)

Parents - Carmine Coppola (1910-1991)
Italia Coppola (1912-2004)

Francis Ford Coppola (born April 7, 1939) is a five-time Academy Award winning American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Coppola is also a vintner, magazine publisher, and hotelier. He earned an M.F.A. in film directing from the UCLA Film School He is most renowned for directing the highly regarded Godfather trilogy, The Conversation, and the Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now.

Life and career (1960 to 1978)

Francis Ford Coppola was born to Carmine Coppola, at the time first flautist for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and his wife Italia in Detroit, Michigan on April 7, 1939, the second of three children (his sister is actress Talia Shire). Two years later Carmine became first flautist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra and the family moved back to suburban Long Island, New York where Francis spent the remainder of his childhood. Coppola had polio as a boy, leaving him bedridden for large periods of his childhood, and allowing him to indulge his imagination with homemade puppet theater productions. Using his father's 8mm movie camera, he began making movies when he was 10. He studied theatre at Hofstra University prior to earning an M.F.A. in film directing from UCLA Film School where he made numerous short films. While in UCLA's Film Department Francis met Jim Morrison, whose music was used later in Apocalypse Now.

In the early 1960s, Coppola started his professional career making low-budget films with Roger Corman and writing screenplays. His first notable motion picture was made for Corman, the low-budget Dementia 13. After graduating to mainstream motion pictures with You're a Big Boy Now, Coppola was offered the reins of the movie version of the Broadway musical Finian's Rainbow, starring Petula Clark, in her first American film, and veteran Fred Astaire. Producer Jack Warner was nonplussed by Coppola's shaggy-haired, bearded, "hippie" appearance and generally left him to his own devices. He took his cast to the Napa Valley for much of the outdoor shooting, but these scenes were in sharp contrast to those obviously filmed on a Hollywood soundstage, resulting in a disjointed look to the film. Dealing with outdated material at a time when the popularity of film musicals was already on the downslide, Coppola's end result was only semi-successful, but his work with Clark no doubt contributed to her Golden Globe Best Actress nomination. During this period, Coppola lived for a time with his wife and growing family in Mandeville Canyon in Brentwood, California, according to author Peter Biskind in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (Touchstone Books, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1998). In 1971, Coppola won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Patton. However, his name as a filmmaker was made as the co-writer and director of The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), which both won the Academy Award for Best Picture — the latter being the first sequel to do so.

In between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Coppola directed The Conversation, a story of a paranoid wiretapping and surveillance expert (played by Gene Hackman) who finds himself caught up in a possible murder plot. The Conversation was released to theaters in 1974 and was also nominated for Best Picture, resulting in Coppola being one of the very few filmmakers to have directed two films competing for the same Best Picture Oscar since the annual number of nominees was cut down to five in 1945. While The Godfather Part II won the Oscar, The Conversation won the 1974 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

During this period he also wrote the screenplay for the critically and commercially unsuccessful 1974 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby (starring Mia Farrow and Robert Redford) and produced George Lucas's breakthrough film, American Graffiti. Also during this period, Coppola invested in San Francisco's City Magazine, hired an all-new staff, including mob daughter and writer Susan Berman, and named himself publisher. Although critically acclaimed, it was short lived. The magazine floundered until 1976 when Coppola published its last issue.

Coppola often worked with family members on his films. He put his two sons into The Godfather as extras during the street fight scene and Don Corleone's funeral. His sister, Talia Shire, played Connie Corleone in all three Godfather films, the first and last of which his daughter Sofia also appeared in. His father Carmine co-wrote much of the music in The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now. His nephew, Nicholas Cage, starred in both Rumble Fish and Peggy Sue Got Married.

Career: 1979 to present

Following the success of The Godfather, The Conversation and The Godfather Part II, Coppola set about filming Apocalypse Now, a version of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, with the setting changed from colonial Africa to the Vietnam War. Before setting off to make the film, Coppola went to his mentor Roger Corman for advice about shooting in the Philippines, since Corman himself was familiar with shooting a film in that area. It was said that all Corman advised Coppola was "Don't go". The creation of the film went into Hollywood's history books as one of its most notorious fiascos when the production was a disaster from the start, being beset by numerous problems, including typhoons, nervous breakdowns, Martin Sheen's heart attack, and an unprepared Marlon Brando with a bloated appearance (which Coppola attempted to hide by shooting him in the shadows). It was delayed so often it was nicknamed Apocalypse Whenever. The film was equally lauded and hated by critics when it finally appeared in 1979, and the cost nearly bankrupted Coppola's nascent studio American Zoetrope.

However, like Citizen Kane, its reputation has grown in time and Apocalypse Now is regarded by many as a masterpiece of the New Hollywood era. Roger Ebert considers it to be the finest film on the Vietnam war and included it on his list for the 2002 Sight and Sound poll for the greatest movie of all time.

The 1991 documentary film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, directed by Eleanor Coppola (Francis's wife), Fax Bahr, and George Hickenlooper, chronicles the difficulties the crew went through making Apocalypse Now, and features behind the scenes footage filmed by Eleanor.

After filming Apocalypse Now Coppola famously stated:

"We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane."

Despite the setbacks and ill health Coppola suffered during the making of Apocalypse Now, he kept up with film projects, presenting in 1981 a restoration of the 1927 film Napoléon that was edited and released in the United States by American Zoetrope. However it wasn't until the experimental musical One from the Heart (1982) that he returned to directing. Unfortunately, the film was a huge failure, although it developed a cult following in later years. In 1986 Coppola, with George Lucas, directed the Michael Jackson film for Disney theme parks, Captain Eo, which at the time was the most expensive film per minute ever made.

In 1990 he completed the Godfather series with The Godfather Part III which, while not as critically acclaimed as the first two movies, was still a box office success. Some reviewers criticized the casting of Coppola's daughter Sofia, who stepped into a role abandoned by Winona Ryder just as filming began.

His eldest son, Gian-Carlo Coppola, was in the early stages of a film production career when he was killed on May 26, 1986 in a speedboat driven by Griffin O'Neal. Coppola's surviving son, Roman Coppola, is a filmmaker and music video director, directing his first feature film, CQ and videos for The Strokes.

Coppola's daughter, Sofia Coppola, has gone on to become a director in her own right. She became the first American woman to nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. Her films include the critically-acclaimed The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation.

Coppola's father, Carmine, was a renowned composer and musician, and wrote the scores of many of his son's films; his nephew Nicolas Cage is an acclaimed actor. While another nephew is Jason Schwartzman of Rushmore fame. He also has a nephew, and is brother to Jason Schwartzman, Robert Schwartzman. Robert Schwartzman appeared in the movie Virgin Suicides done by Francis Ford Coppola's daughter, Sophia Coppola. Robert Schwartzman also appeared in The Princess Diaries as Michael Moscovitz and now has his own successful band Rooney. In recent years, Coppola with his family has extended his talents to winemaking in California's Napa Valley at the Rubicon Estate Winery in Rutherford, California. With his company "Francis Ford Coppola Presents," he also owns a winery in Geyserville, Sonoma County, Francis Ford Coppola Presents Rosso & Bianco winery, produces a line of specialty pastas and pasta sauces under the brand name Mammarella, and has resorts in Guatemala and Belize, inspired by his accommodation in the Philippines during the making of Apocalypse Now, with decor supervised by Eleanor Coppola.

In 1997, Coppola founded Zoetrope All-Story, a flashy literary magazine that publishes short stories. The magazine has published fiction by T.C. Boyle and Amy Bloom and essays by David Mamet, Steven Spielberg, and Salman Rushdie. Since its founding, the magazine has grown in reputation to become one of the premier American journals of literary fiction. Coppola serves as founding editor and publisher of All-Story.

In 2001, Coppola re-released Apocalypse Now as Apocalypse Now Redux, restoring several sequences lost from the original 1979 cut of the film thereby expanding its length to 200 minutes.

The director is based in the San Francisco Bay Area where he co-owns the Rubicon restaurant along with fellow San Franciscan Robin Williams, and Robert De Niro. In addition to his restaurant, Coppola serves as the Honorary Ambassador of the Central American nation of Belize in San Francisco, California. On their official roster of worldwide honorary consulates found on their official website, he is referred to as "His Excellency Ambassador Francis Ford Coppola," although he is not a Belizean citizen.

In November 2005, Coppola took part as a special guest at the 46th International Thessaloniki Film Festival in Greece.

Filmography

• The Terror (1963, uncredited director)
• Dementia 13 (1963, director & writer)
• You're a Big Boy Now (1966, director & writer)
• Finian's Rainbow (1968, director)
• The Rain People (1969, director & writer)
• Patton (1970, writer)
• THX 1138 (1971, executive producer)
• The Godfather (1972, director & writer)
• American Graffiti (1973, producer)
• The Conversation (1974, director, writer & producer)
• The Godfather, Part II (1974, director, writer & producer)
• Apocalypse Now (1979, director, writer & producer)
• The Black Stallion (1979, executive producer)
• Kagemusha (1980, executive producer)
• One from the Heart (1982, director & writer)
• Koyaanisqatsi (1982, executive producer)
• The Outsiders (1983, director)
• The Black Stallion Returns (1983, executive producer)
• Rumble Fish (1983, director, writer & producer)
• The Cotton Club (1984, director & writer)
• Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985, executive producer)
• Captain Eo (1986, director)
• Peggy Sue Got Married (1986, director)
• Lionheart (1987, executive producer)
• Gardens of Stone (1987, director & producer)
• Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988, director)
• Powaqqatsi (1988, executive producer)
• The Godfather: Part III (1990, director, writer & producer)
• Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992, director & producer)
• The Secret Garden (1993, executive producer)
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994, executive producer)
• My Family, Mi Familia (1995, executive producer)
• Jack (1996, director & producer)
• The Rainmaker (1997, director & writer)
• Sleepy Hollow (1999, executive producer)
• The Virgin Suicides (1999, executive producer)
• Lost In Translation (2003, executive producer)
• Kinsey (2005, co-producer)
• Marie Antoinette (2006, executive producer)
• Youth Without Youth (2007, writer/director)

James Ivory

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James Francis Ivory (born June 7, 1928) is an award-winning American film director, best known for the results of his long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, which included both Indian-born producer Ismail Merchant and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Their films won six Academy Awards.

Background

Ivory was born in Berkeley, California to Edward Patrick Ivory (Irish) and Hallie Millicent DeLoney (French-American).

He was educated at the University of Oregon, majoring in Architecture and Fine Arts and then at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, where he directed the short film "Four in the Morning" (1953).

Then he wrote, photographed, and produced "Venice: Theme and Variations" a half-hour documentary submitted as a thesis film for his degree in cinema at USC. The film was named by The New York Times in 1957 as one of the ten best non-theatrical films of the year.

Merchant Ivory Productions

In 1961, Ivory created the film production company, Merchant Ivory Productions, with Indian-born producer Ismail Merchant and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala who served as the screenwriter for many of their productions. Until Merchant's death in 2005, the company produced a number of award winning films. Of this collaboration, Ismail Merchant once commented: "IT IS a strange marriage we have at Merchant Ivory...I am an Indian Muslim, Ruth is a German Jew, and Jim is a Protestant American. Someone once described us as a three-headed god. Maybe they should have called us a three-headed monster!".

Merchant was also Ivory's long-term life partner. Their professional and romantic partnership lasted from the early 1960s until Merchant's death in

Accolades

In 1985 A Room with a View, based on the E. M. Forster novel, was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three, for Jhabvala’s adaptation of Forster’s novel as well as for Best Costume and Best Production Design. A Room With a View was also voted Best Film of the year by the Critic’s Circle Film Section of Great Britain, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the National Board of Review in the United States and in Italy, where the film won the Donatello Prize for Best Foreign Language Picture and Best Director. In 1987, Maurice received a Silver Lion Award for Best director at the Venice Film Festival as well as Best Film Score for Richard Robbins and Best Actor Awards for co-stars James Wilby and Hugh Grant.

This was followed in 1990 by Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, which was adapted by Ruth Jhabvala from the novels by Evan S. Connell. This film received an Oscar nomination for best Actress (Joanne Woodward), as well as Best Actress and Best Screenplay from the New York Film Critics Circle.

In 1992 Ivory directed another Forster-adapted film, Howards End. The film was nominated for nine Academy awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won three: Best Actress (Emma Thompson), Best Screenplay - Adaptation (Ruth Prawer Jhabvala), and Best Art Direction/Set Decoration (Luciana Arrighi/Ian Whittaker). The film also won Best Picture at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards, as well as awards for Best Picture, Best Actress for Emma Thompson and Best Director for Ivory from the National Board of Review. The Directors Guild of America awarded the D.W. Griffith award, its highest honor, to Ivory for his work.

Howards End was immediately followed by The Remains of the Day, which in turn was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Filmography

As Director

• Four in the Morning (1953) (Short)
• Venice: Theme and Variations (1957) (Short)
• The Sword and the Flute (1959) (Short)
• The Householder (1963) starring Shashi Kapoor
• The Delhi Way (Documentary) narrated by Leo Genn(1964)
• Shakespeare Wallah (1965) starring Felicity Kendal, Shashi Kapoor * also co-writer
• The Guru (1969) starring Michael York, Rita Tushingham *also co-writer
• Bombay Talkie (1970) starring Jennifer Kendal, Shashi Kapoor * also co-writer
• Adventures of a Brown Man in Search of Civilization (1972) (BBC-TV Documentary)
• Savages (1973) starring Sam Waterston, Asha Puthli
• Autobiography of a Princess (1975) starring Madhur Jaffrey, James Mason
• The Wild Party (1975) starring James Coco, Raquel Welch
• Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures (1976) starring Peggy Ashcroft, Larry Pine
• Roseland (1977) starring Christopher Walken, Geraldine Chaplin, Lilia Skala
• The Europeans (1979) starring Lee Remick, Lisa Eichhorn
• The Five Forty-Eight (1979/TV) starring Laurence Luckinbill, Mary Beth Hurt
• Jane Austen in Manhattan (1980) starring Anne Baxter, Robert Powell, Sean Young
• Quartet (1981) starring Isabelle Adjani, Alan Bates, Maggie Smith
• Heat and Dust (1983) starring Julie Christie, Greta Scacchi, Shashi Kapoor, Zakir Hussein
• The Bostonians (1984) starring Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Reeve, Madeleine Potter, Jessica Tandy
• A Room with a View (1985) starring Helena Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith, Daniel Day Lewis, Judi Dench
• Maurice (1987) starring James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves, Billie Whitelaw * also co-writer
• Slaves of New York (1989) starring Bernadette Peters, Mary Beth Hurt, Mercedes Ruehl, Steve Buscemi, Stanley Tucci
• Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990) starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Robert Sean Leonard
• Howards End (1991) starring Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave
• The Remains of the Day (1993) starring Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Christopher Reeve, Hugh Grant
• Jefferson in Paris (1995) starring Nick Nolte, Greta Scacchi, Thandie Newton, Gwyneth Paltrow
• Lumière and Company (1995, segment)
• Surviving Picasso (1996) starring Anthony Hopkins, Natascha McElhone, Joan Plowright
• A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (1998) starring Leelee Sobieski, Kris Kristofferson, Barbara Hershey, Jane Birkin *also co-writer
• The Golden Bowl (2001) staring Jeremy Northam, Uma Thurman, Kate Beckinsale, Nick Nolte, Angelica Huston
• Le Divorce (2003) starring Kate Hudson, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, Leslie Caron, Stockard Channing, Melvil Poupaud *also co-writer
• The White Countess (2005) starring Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave, Lynne Redgrave, Hiroyuki Sanada
• The City of Your Final Destination (2008, based on Peter Cameron novel) starring Anthony Hopkins, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Laura Linney, Omar Metwally and Hiroyuki Sanada

Other credit

• Helen, Queen of the Nautch Girls (1973, short, directed by Anthony Korner) - screenplay
• The Courtesans of Bombay (1983, documentary, directed by Ismail Merchant) - devised

ROMAN POLANSKI

ROMAN POLANSKI

Birth name - Roman Liebling

Born - August 18, 1933 (1933-08-18) (age 74)
Paris, France

Years active 1953 - present

Spouse(s) - Barbara Lass (1959 - 1962)
Sharon Tate (1968-1969)
Emmanuelle Seigner (1989-present)

Children - Morgane Polanski (b. 1993)
Elvis Polanski (b.1998)

Roman Polański (born August 18, 1933) is an Academy Award winning film director, writer, actor, and producer. After beginning his career in Poland, Polanski became a celebrated arthouse filmmaker, and Hollywood director of such films as Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974).

He is also known for his tumultuous personal life. In 1969, his wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson Family. In 1978, after pleading guilty to having unlawful sexual intercourse with a thirteen year old girl, Polanski fled to France, where he now resides.

Unwilling to return to the United States and face arrest, he has continued to direct films in Europe, including Frantic (1988), the Academy Award-winning and Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or-winning The Pianist (2002), and Oliver Twist (2005)

Early life

Polanski was born Rajmund Roman Liebling in Paris, France, the son of Ryszard Liebling (aka Ryszard Polański), a painter and plastics manufacturer, and Bula (née Katz-Przedborska). Polanski's parents were agnostics; his father was a Polish Jew and his mother, a native of Russia, was raised Catholic and had a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother

The Polański family moved back to Poland in 1937. Thereafter, in 1939, Poland was invaded and occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union troops by what is now known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact. On November 13, 1939, the Polish city of Kraków became the seat of office of Hans Frank. The General Government surrounded parts of the Polish state, which had not been annexed to Germany. The declared goal of the German occupiers was to make the General Government judenfrei, and expel the Poles so Germans could settle there.

The Polański family was the target of Nazi persecution and forced into the Kraków Ghetto, along with thousands of other Polish Jews. Roman Polanski's mother subsequently died in Auschwitz concentration camp. His father barely survived the Austrian concentration camp Mauthausen-Gusen. Polanski himself escaped the Kraków Ghetto, surviving the war with the help of a Polish Roman Catholic farmer, on whose farm he had to sleep in a cow stall. After the war he found out from his sister that his mother had died.

He was educated at the film school in Łódź, Poland, from which he graduated in 1959. Polanski speaks six languages: Polish, Russian, English, French, Spanish, and Italian. Despite his Polish origins, he only has French nationality.

Several short films made during the study gained considerable recognition. His first major film Knife in the Water (1962) was the first significant Polish film after the war that did not have a war theme. It was Polanski's first nomination for the Oscar.

Indictment on charge of rape and other sex offenses

In 1977, Polanski, 44, became embroiled in a scandal involving 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. It ultimately led to Polanski's guilty plea to the charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

According to Geimer, Polanski asked Geimer's mother if he could photograph the girl for the French edition of Vogue. Her mother allowed a private photo shoot. According to Geimer in a 2003 interview, "Everything was going fine; then he asked me to change, well, in front of him." She added, "It didn't feel right, and I didn't want to go back to the second shoot."

However, subsequent to the first photo shoot, she agreed to a second session, which took place on March 10, 1977, in the Mulholland area of Los Angeles, near Jack Nicholson's estate. "We did photos with me drinking champagne," Geimer says. "Toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized he had other intentions and I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn't quite know how to get myself out of there." Geimer alleged that Polanski sexually assaulted her after giving her a combination of champagne and quaaludes. In the 2003 interview, Geimer says she resisted. "I said no several times, and then, well, gave up on that," she says.

Polanski was initially charged with rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious act upon a child under 14, and furnishing a controlled substance (methaqualone) to a minor, but these charges were dismissed under the terms of his plea bargain, and he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor.

In his autobiography, Roman by Polanski, Polanski alleged that Geimer's mother had set up the daughter as part of a casting couch and blackmail scheme against him.

A fugitive

On February 1, 1978, Polanski fled to France, where he retained citizenship. He had been given a tip that the judge was going to disregard the plea bargain, in which case he would likely have been sent to prison for up to 50 years. France refuses to extradite its own citizens, which is consistent with the extradition treaty between France and the United States. In consequence, the American extradition request was not granted. The United States government could have requested that Polanski be prosecuted on the California charges by the French authorities, but this option was not pursued.

The United States could still request the arrest and extradition of Polanski from other countries should he visit them. As a consequence, Polanski has since avoided visits to countries that were likely to extradite him, such as the United Kingdom, mostly travelling between France and Poland.

In a 2003 interview, Samantha Geimer said, "Straight up, what he did to me was wrong. But I wish he would return to America so the whole ordeal can be put to rest for both of us." Furthermore, "I'm sure if he could go back, he wouldn't do it again. He made a terrible mistake but he's paid for it."

Polanski cannot return to the United States since the events of 1977/1978, but he made it clear in his autobiography that he never permanently resided in the USA. At the time of his 1977 arrest, he was travelling on a visitor's visa and the arrest actually took place in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where he was staying. At that time, he had directed nine films, but only two were shot in the U.S. A regular visitor to the U.S., Polanski once rented a Los Angeles house—where the infamous Manson Murders took place (he, however, was at home in London at the time)—but by his own account, Polanski had resided in Britain (apart from a short time in Italy) for many years when he fled Los Angeles for Paris in 1978.

Later career

Polanski received another Academy Award nomination for Tess (1979). Polanski dedicated the movie Tess to Sharon Tate because, after spending time with Polanski in London, Tate left a copy of the novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles on Polanski's nightstand, along with a note saying it would make a good film. She returned to the United States and was murdered soon after. Pirates (1986), a lavish period piece, was a commercial and critical failure. This was followed by Frantic (1988), which features actress and model Emmanuelle Seigner, whom the director married in 1989. She starred in several of his films including Bitter Moon, in 1992, and The Ninth Gate (1999). They have two children, Morgane and Elvis, the latter named after his favourite singer, Elvis Presley.

In 1997, he directed a stage version of The Fearless Vampire Killers, a musical, which debuted on October 4, 1997 in Vienna as Tanz der Vampire, the German title of the film version. After closing in Vienna, the show had successful runs in Stuttgart and Hamburg, Germany.

On March 11, 1998 Polanski was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

In May 2002, Polanski won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) award at the Cannes Film Festival for The Pianist, for which he also later won the 2002 Academy Award for Directing. He did not attend the Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood. After the announcement of the "Best Director Award", Polanski received a standing ovation from most of those present in the theater. In 2004 he received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

During the summer and autumn of 2004, Polanski shot a new film adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. The shooting took place at the Barrandov Studios in Prague, Czech Republic, based on Ronald Harwood's screenplay. The actors included Barney Clark (Oliver Twist), Jamie Foreman (Bill Sykes), Harry Eden (the Artful Dodger), Ben Kingsley (Fagin), Leeanne Rix (Nancy), and Edward Hardwicke (Mr. Brownlow). Besides the cast, the director gathered some collaborators from his previous movies: Ronald Harwood (screenplay), as noted, Allan Starski (production designer), Pawel Edelman (director of photography), and Anna Sheppard (costume designer).

Polanski's next film will be Pompeii about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It is based on the bestselling book of the same name by Robert Harris, who is also writing the screenplay. Orlando Bloom and Scarlett Johansson were rumored to star, but the film's start date has been pushed back and both actors were forced to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. He appeared in Rush Hour 3 as a French police official.

In 2007, a novel by the Dutch writer A. F. Th. van der Heijden was published based on parts of Roman Polanski's life. In the novel called Schervengericht (the ancient Greek practice of voting using shards of pottery, also known as ostracism), set in 1977, a famous Polish movie director called Raymond is put under psychological surveillance in a fictional Californian prison called Choreo, after being accused of having raped a thirteen-year-old girl. In the prison he spends his time with a man covered in bandages, who calls himself Scott Maddox and who later on turns out to be the man behind the murder of Raymond's wife, which took place eight years before.

Style

Most of Polanski's films are intelligent psychological thrillers. A recurring theme in his work is the relationship between victim and predator (Death and The Maiden, Bitter Moon, Cul-de-Sac, Rosemary's Baby). Death and the Maiden star Stuart Wilson said of Polanski, "Roman is very deep water pretending [to be] shallow water."

Filmography

Film director

• Zaczarowany rower (aka Magical Bicycle) (1955)
• Morderstwo (aka A Murderer) (1957)
• Uśmiech zębiczny (aka A Toothful Smile) (1957)
• Rozbijemy zabawę (aka Break Up the Dance) (1957)
• Dwaj ludzie z szafą (aka Two Men and a Wardrobe) (1958)
• Lampa (aka The Lamp) (1959)
• Gdy spadają anioły (aka When Angels Fall) (1959)
• Le Gros et le maigre (aka The Fat and the Lean) (1960)
• Ssaki (aka Mammals) (1961)
• Nóż w wodzie (aka Knife in the Water) (1962)
• Les plus belles escroqueries du monde (aka The Beautiful Swindlers) - segment: "La rivière de diamants" (1964)
• Repulsion (1965)
• Cul-de-Sac (1966)
• The Fearless Vampire Killers (aka Dance of the Vampires) (1967)
• Rosemary's Baby (1968)
• The Tragedy of Macbeth (1971)
• What? (aka Diary of Forbidden Dreams) (1973)
• Chinatown (1974)
• Le Locataire (aka The Tenant) (1976)
• Tess (1979)
• Pirates (1986)
• Frantic (1988)
• Bitter Moon (1992)
• Death and the Maiden (1994)
• The Ninth Gate (1999)
• The Pianist (2002)
• Oliver Twist (2005)
• To each his cinema (2007)
• Pompeii (2008)

Actor

• Trzy opowiesci (aka Three Stories) as Genek 'The Little' (segment "Jacek") (1953)
• Zaczarowany rower (aka Magical Bicycle) as Adas (1955)
• Rower (aka Bicycle) as the Boy who wants to buy a bicycle (1955)
• Pokolenie (aka A Generation) as Mundek (1955)
• Nikodem Dyzma as the Boy at Hotel (1956)
• Wraki (aka The Wrecks) (1957)
• Koniec nocy (aka End of the Night) as the Little One (1957)
• Dwaj ludzie z szafa (aka Two Men and a Wardrobe) as the Bad boy (1958)
• Zadzwoncie do mojej zony ? (aka Call My Wife) as a Dancer (1958)
• Gdy spadaja anioly (aka When Angels Fall Down) as an Old woman (1959)
• Lotna as a Musician (1959)
• Zezowate szczescie (aka Bad Luck) as Jola's Tutor (1960)
• Do widzenia, do jutra (aka Good Bye, Till Tomorrow) as Romek (1960)
• Niewinni czarodzieje (aka Innocent Sorcerers) as Dudzio (1960)
• Ostroznie, Yeti! (aka Beware of Yeti!) (1961)
• Gros et le maigre, Le (aka The Fat and the Lean) as The Lean (1961)
• Samson (1961)
• Nóz w wodzie (aka Knife in the Water) voice of Young Boy (1962)
• Repulsion as Spoon Player (1965)
• The Fearless Vampire Killers as Alfred, Abronsius' Assistant (1967)
• The Magic Christian as Solitary drinker (1969)
• What? as Mosquito (1972)
• Blood for Dracula (Andy Warhol) as Man in Tavern (1976)
• Chinatown as Man with Knife (1974)
• Locataire, Le (aka The Tenant) as Trelkovsky (1976)
• Chassé-croisé (1982)
• En attendant Godot (TV) as Lucky (1989)
• Back in the U.S.S.R. as Kurilov (1992)
• Pura formalità , Una (aka A Pure Formality) as Inspector (1994)
• Grosse fatigue (aka Dead Tired) as Roman Polanski (1994)
• Hommage à Alfred (aka Tribute to Alfred Lepetit) (2000)
• Zemsta (aka The Revenge) as Papkin (2002)
• Rush Hour 3 as Detective Revi (2007)

Writer

• A Day at the Beach (1970) after a novel by Simon Heere Heeresma from 1962

ORSON WELLES

ORSON WELLES

Birth name George Orson Welles

Born May 6, 1915(1915-05-06)
Kenosh, Wisconsin, U.S.

Died October 10, 1985 (aged 70)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Years active 1934-1985

Spouse(s) Virginia Nicholson (1934-1940)
Rita Hayworth (1943-1948)
Paola Mori (1955-1985)

Youth and early career (1915 to 1934)

Welles was born in 1915 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the second son of Richard Head Welles, then a manufacturer of vehicle lamps, and Beatrice Ives, a concert pianist and suffragette. He was raised a Roman Catholic. The family appears in the 1920 US Federal Census in Chicago, where his father was working as a salesman of automobile parts, working for wages and renting. This may suggest that the family was not wealthy as previously suggested.

Welles was declared a child prodigy by Dr. Maurice Bernstein, a Chicago physician infatuated with his mother Beatrice. When Welles was six, his parents divorced. Beatrice was a major influence in the formation of Welles's character, despite her death when he had just turned nine, teaching him Shakespeare, as well as the piano and violin. Not long after his mother's death, he began a period filled with international travel. When he was 11, Maurice Bernstein took him to Havana. The next year passenger records suggest that his father took him to Europe. By 1929, he was traveling alone. Records verify that he took trips to Europe alone in 1932 and 1933.

Chicago was at the forefront of creative life in America at the time and visited constantly by important European composers and artists. Beatrice Welles died of jaundice on May 10, 1924 in a Chicago hospital, four days after Welles' ninth birthday. After his mother's death, Welles would no longer pursue his interests in music. Richard Welles became an alcoholic and died when Orson was 15, the summer after Orson's graduation from the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois. Welles later revealed in interviews that he felt that he had neglected and betrayed his father, and a feeling of guilt stung him for the rest of his life.

Maurice Bernstein became his guardian. There is some question about Maurice's suitability as a guardian as evident by his history. Born in Russia, he came to Chicago in 1890, studied and became a successful physician. In a very few years, he had several wives, including Chicago Lyric Opera soprano, Edith Mason. Edith divorced company director Giorgio Polacco to marry Bernstein. Not long thereafter, they divorced and she remarried Polacco. In 1930, he was living in Highland Park as a wealthy physician with another wife and child, claiming to have been born in Illinois to parents from New York.

At Todd, Welles came under the positive influence and guidance of Roger Hill, a teacher who later became Todd's headmaster. Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to concentrate on subjects that interested him. Welles performed and staged his first theatrical experiments and productions there.

On his father's death, Welles travelled to Europe with the aid of a small inheritance. While on a walking and painting trip through Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. Gate manager Hilton Edwards later claimed he didn't believe him but was impressed by his brashness and some impassioned quality in his audition. Welles made his stage debut at the Gate Theatre of Dublin in 1931, appearing in Jew Suss as the Duke. He acted to great acclaim, acclaim that reached the United States. He acted in smaller supporting roles as well. On returning to the United States he found his brief fame ephemeral and turned to a writing project at Todd that would become the immensely successful Everybody's Shakespeare, and subsequently, The Mercury Shakespeare. Welles traveled to North Africa while working on thousands of illustrations for the Everybody's Shakespeare series of educational books, a series that remained in print for decades.

An introduction by Thornton Wilder led Welles to the New York stage. He toured in three off-Broadway productions with Katharine Cornell's company. Restless and impatient when the planned Broadway opening of Romeo and Juliet was cancelled, Welles staged a drama festival of his own with the Todd School, inviting Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards from Dublin's Gate Theatre to appear, along with New York stage luminaries. It was a roaring success. The subsequent revival of Romeo and Juliet brought Welles to the notice of John Houseman, who was then casting for an unusual lead actor and about to take a lead role in the The Federal Theatre Project. Houseman was especially impressed by Welles' youth, wed to what appeared to be an overabundant creative certainty and drive. By 1935 Welles was supplementing his earnings in the theater as a radio actor in New York City, working with many of the actors who would later form the core of his Mercury Theatre. He married actress and socialite Virginia Nicholson in 1934. They had one daughter, Christopher, known as Chris Welles Feder, an author of educational materials for children. [Simonson] Welles also shot an eight-minute silent short film, The Hearts of Age, with Nicholson.

Death

Welles died of a heart attack at his home in Hollywood, California at age 70 on October 10, 1985. He had various projects underway, including a planned film adaptation of King Lear, The Orson Welles Magic Show, and The Dreamers. His final interview had been recorded the day before, on The Merv Griffin Show and with his biographer Barbara Leaming. The last film roles before his death included voice work in the animated films The Enchanted Journey, on-screen in Henry Jaglom's film Someone to Love, released in 1987 and the 1986 film Transformers: The Movie providing the booming voice for the villainous transformer Unicron. Some credit his performance in this film as the introduction of the younger generation at that time to legendary filmwork, as many youths discovered the classic works of Welles and others of his generation through research about the voice of Unicron.

According to Welles' associates Gary Graver and Oja Kodar, Welles did not wish to be cremated, but his wife Paola and daughter Beatrice had the cremation performed, and his ashes were eventually placed in a dry well at a friend's estate in Ronda, Spain. According to some reports, some of his ashes have been scattered in the town's famous "Plaza de Toros", the oldest bullfighting ring in Spain still in use.

Unfinished projects

Welles' exile from Hollywood and reliance on independent production meant that many of his later projects were filmed piecemeal or were not completed. In the mid-1950s, Welles began work on the Cervantes' masterpiece Don Quixote, initially a commission from CBS television. Welles expanded the film to feature length, developing the screenplay to take Quixote and Sancho Panza into the modern age. Filming stopped with the death of Francisco Reiguera, the actor playing Quixote, in 1969. Orson Welles continued editing the film through the next few decades and had supposedly completed a rough cut in the mid 1970s. By his death however, the footage of many scenes had been lost around the world during Welles' travels. A search continues for Orson Welles' later edits and other missing footage, but they likely no longer exist. An incomplete version of the film was released in 1992.

In 1970 Welles began shooting The Other Side of the Wind, about the effort of a film director (played by John Huston) to complete his last Hollywood picture, and is largely set at a lavish party. Although in 1972 the film was reported by Welles as being "96% complete", the negative remained in a Paris vault until 2004, when Peter Bogdanovich (who also acted in the film) announced his intention to complete the production. Footage is included in the documentary Working with Orson Welles (1993).

Other unfinished projects include The Deep, an adaptation of Charles Williams' Dead Calm — abandoned in 1970 one scene short of completion due to the death of star Laurence Harvey — and The Big Brass Ring, the script of which was adapted and filmed by George Hickenlooper in 1999.

The 1995 documentary Orson Welles: One-Man Band, included on the Criterion Collection DVD release of F for Fake, features scenes from several of these unfinished projects, as well as footage from an adaptation of The Merchant of Venice starring Welles that was never aired due to vital footage being allegedly stolen; several short subjects such as the titular One-Man Band, a Monty Python-esque spoof in which Welles plays all but one of the characters (including two characters in drag); footage of Welles reading chapters from Moby Dick; and a comedy skit taking place in a tailor shop and co-starring Charles Gray. One short, also included in the documentary, is a comedy routine in which Welles (filmed in the 1970s) plays a reporter interviewing a king, also played by Welles, but in footage shot in the 1960s; Welles finished the skit and edited it together years later. The documentary is built around a college lecture given by Welles not long before his death, in which he displays frustration at being unable to complete so many projects. According to Oja Kodar, interviewed in the documentary, Welles always traveled with camera equipment and would shoot film whenever the mood struck him, even if there were no immediate prospects for commercial release of such material.

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards

• 1942: Best Picture — Citizen Kane (nominated)
• 1942: Best Director — Citizen Kane (nominated)
• 1942: Best Actor in a Leading Role — Citizen Kane (nominated)
• 1942: Writing, Original Screenplay — Citizen Kane (won)
• 1943: Best Picture — The Magnificent Ambersons (nominated)
• 1971: Honorary Award

BAFTA Awards

• 1968: Best Foreign Actor in a Leading Role — Chimes at Midnight (nominated)

Cannes Film Festival

• 1952: Palme d'Or — Othello

Golden Globe Awards

• 1982: Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture — Butterfly (nominated)

Venice Film Festival

• 1947: Golden Lion — The Stranger (nominated)
• 1970: Career Golden Lion

Grammy Awards

• 1982: Best Spoken Word Recording — Donovan's Brain (won)

AFI Life Achievement Award

• 1975 (won)

FILMOGRAPHY

Director

• Hearts of Age (1934) - Welles's first film, a silent one-reeler made at age 18.
• Too Much Johnson (1938) - assorted scenes to accompany stage play, all footage now lost
• Citizen Kane (1941) - won Oscar for Best Writing (Original Screenplay); nominated for Best Actor, Best Picture and Best Director.
• It's All True (1942) - director, producer
• The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) - nominated for Oscar for Best Picture; shortened and recut against Welles's wishes, excised footage lost
• The Stranger(1946) - nominated for Oscar
• The Lady from Shanghai(1947) - shortened and recut against Welles' wishes but with his cooperation, excised footage lost
• Macbeth (1948) - shortened and recut by Welles at studio's request, restored to original version in the 1970s
• Othello (1952) - won the Palme d'Or, 1952 Cannes Film Festival
• Mr. Arkadin (also known as Confidential Report) (1955) - shortened and recut against Welles' wishes, extended Criterion restoration released in April 2006.
• Touch of Evil (1958) - won the top-prize at the Brussels World's Fair; shortened against Welles's wishes, some of Welles' requested editorial changes made in 1998
• The Trial (1962)
• Chimes at Midnight (1965)
• The Immortal Story (1968)
• The Deep (1970) - abandoned after death of star Laurence Harvey
• The Other Side of the Wind (1970-76) - unfinished, restoration currently in progress
• F for Fake (also known as Vérités et mensonges) (1974)
• The Orson Welles Show (1979) - Welles directed as G.O. Spelvin. Unaired TV show with Burt Reynolds, Angie Dickinson, Frank Oz, Jim Henson

Other Roles

• Swiss Family Robinson (1940) - narration
• Journey Into Fear(1943) - producer, actor, rumored to be co-director with Norman Foster. Welles admitted directing some scenes
• Jane Eyre (1944) - actor (Rochester), co-producer
• Duel in the Sun (1946) - narration
• Monsieur Verdoux (1947) - story idea
• The Third Man (1949)- actor, dialogue
• Three Cases of Murder (1956)-actor
• Moby Dick (1956) - cameo role as actor
• Man in the Shadow (1957) - actor
• The Long Hot Summer (1958) Will Varner
• Compulsion (1959) - actor
• A Man for All Seasons (1966) - actor
• I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967) - actor
• Casino Royale (1967) - as Bond villain Le Chiffre ("Zero" or "The Cipher")
• Don Quixote (1969, version released 1992) - writer, director, actor
• The Battle of Neretva (1969) - as Chetnik senator
• Start the Revolution Without Me (1970) - narration, cameo role
• Catch-22 (1970) - actor
• Waterloo (1970) - actor
• Malpertuis by Harry Kumel (1972) - actor
• Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972) - actor
• Flame of Persia (1972) - Documentary narration
• Treasure Island (1972)
• Rikki Tikki Tavi (1975) - narration
• The Muppet Movie (1979) - cameo
• Shogun (1980) - narration
• History of the World, Part One (1981) - narration
• The Dreamers (1980-82, unfinished) - actor, writer, director
• Transformers: The Movie - voice actor of Unicron