This "Filmmaking Master Class" - University of Southern California made in 1981 was originally part of the unfinished making-of: "Filming The Trial" , which focuses on the production of his 1962 film The Trial.
Watch also Orson Welles' Film Directing Master Class - Cinémathèque française - Paris - 1982 - Restored 2024 - 4K on SN: https://dai.ly/x9597a4
Background
In 1978 Orson Welles directed Filming Othello. That film had mostly consisted of a monologue in which Welles discussed his 1952 adaptation of Othello. Encouraged by the result, he set out to make a similar documentary/essay film looking back at his own film of The Trial.
Filming
In 1981, Welles gave a 90-minute question-and-answer session at the University of Southern California after a screening of The Trial. He had his cinematographer Gary Graver film the session with a view to editing highlights of the footage into the projected film. Graver observed, "A lot of people were there in the audience that day who are successful filmmakers now", as well as several noted film critics such as Joseph McBride and Todd McCarthy.
However, Welles never got round to editing the raw footage. Its only use in Welles' lifetime was by BBC journalist Leslie Megahy for his 1982 Arena documentary on Welles; specifically, the documentary features a young man asking Welles whether he would agree he has been persecuted by The Establishment and the capitalist system, and Welles being somewhat bemused by the question.
Revival of the footage
After Orson Welles' death in 1985, all of his unfinished films were bequeathed to his long-term companion Oja Kodar, and she in turn donated many of them (including Filming 'The Trial') to the Munich Film Museum for preservation and restoration.
In the 2000s, the Munich Film Museum then edited together the complete footage into an 82-minute cut of the Q&A session. Since Graver had to change film cartridges approximately every 10 minutes, this created breaks in filming, which are noticeable in the final cut. Exclusive, New, Unique content uploads - fully re-edited-remastered. Educational Program.
Copyright - All rights reserved to their respective owners.
_______________________________
Read the unabridged plays online: https://shakespearenetwork.net/works/plays
Screen Adaptation - Co-Production : MISANTHROPOS – Official Website - https://www.misanthropos.net
Adapted by Maximianno Cobra, from Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens", the film exposes the timeless challenge of social hypocrisy, disillusion and annihilation against the poetics of friendship, love, and beauty.
IMDb page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6946736/
Watch also Orson Welles' Film Directing Master Class - Cinémathèque française - Paris - 1982 - Restored 2024 - 4K on SN: https://dai.ly/x9597a4
Background
In 1978 Orson Welles directed Filming Othello. That film had mostly consisted of a monologue in which Welles discussed his 1952 adaptation of Othello. Encouraged by the result, he set out to make a similar documentary/essay film looking back at his own film of The Trial.
Filming
In 1981, Welles gave a 90-minute question-and-answer session at the University of Southern California after a screening of The Trial. He had his cinematographer Gary Graver film the session with a view to editing highlights of the footage into the projected film. Graver observed, "A lot of people were there in the audience that day who are successful filmmakers now", as well as several noted film critics such as Joseph McBride and Todd McCarthy.
However, Welles never got round to editing the raw footage. Its only use in Welles' lifetime was by BBC journalist Leslie Megahy for his 1982 Arena documentary on Welles; specifically, the documentary features a young man asking Welles whether he would agree he has been persecuted by The Establishment and the capitalist system, and Welles being somewhat bemused by the question.
Revival of the footage
After Orson Welles' death in 1985, all of his unfinished films were bequeathed to his long-term companion Oja Kodar, and she in turn donated many of them (including Filming 'The Trial') to the Munich Film Museum for preservation and restoration.
In the 2000s, the Munich Film Museum then edited together the complete footage into an 82-minute cut of the Q&A session. Since Graver had to change film cartridges approximately every 10 minutes, this created breaks in filming, which are noticeable in the final cut. Exclusive, New, Unique content uploads - fully re-edited-remastered. Educational Program.
Copyright - All rights reserved to their respective owners.
_______________________________
Read the unabridged plays online: https://shakespearenetwork.net/works/plays
Screen Adaptation - Co-Production : MISANTHROPOS – Official Website - https://www.misanthropos.net
Adapted by Maximianno Cobra, from Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens", the film exposes the timeless challenge of social hypocrisy, disillusion and annihilation against the poetics of friendship, love, and beauty.
IMDb page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6946736/
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00:00Good evening. Thank you for coming. There are two bikes. Does that mean they're both
00:00:14mine or one is for the making of the trial? There were just a few stories about it and
00:00:22it would seem to me that this was the best place to get some questions and try some answers.
00:00:30And I hope not to bore you. My cinematographer, Mr. Gary Graver. All right, reel one, take
00:00:40one. Okay. Again. I never did that very well. All right. Okay. Any questions? Yes, sir.
00:00:54I noticed there were classical elements of the music in the score and also jazz. And
00:01:06I was wondering how you decided on the different elements and where each type of music would
00:01:10go in the film.
00:01:12Well, you know, that's a... There are two ways of answering that kind of question. One
00:01:21is pompously to pretend that I had a master plan and the other is to admit that I put
00:01:30it in where I thought it would sound good, you know? Which sounds like begging the question,
00:01:36but it's the truth. The basis, of course, is the Gesualdo, which is the basic music
00:01:44of it, which became a hit as a result of that. Nobody had ever heard it. And there was one
00:01:51very limited record of it and after that it was, in Europe, it was played all over like
00:01:56a hit tune. In fact, a lot more people heard that music than saw the movie anywhere. It's
00:02:05an extraordinary piece of music because it's got musical ideas in it that didn't turn up
00:02:12again for 200 years. And it's curiously romantic for Baroque music and full of doom and beauty.
00:02:26And I liked it for the picture. I don't know if I would now. As you notice, I came in afterwards.
00:02:32I never like to see my movies because I like to remember them as being so much better than
00:02:37they really were. And that's true. Sir?
00:02:44What inspired you to make the trial?
00:02:48Well that's a story. I take you to the mountains of Austria, where with my family I was enjoying
00:03:00the winter sports, hoping I would be able to pay the hotel bill at the end of it, and
00:03:08had just completed being interviewed by Oriana Fallaci, who had stated in the Italian press
00:03:16that I was undoubtedly the next American president. My constituency at the time consisted of my
00:03:27wife and daughter, so I didn't see much future in it for me and the White House. And I was
00:03:35waiting for the phone to ring, which is what all of you will be doing if all of you are
00:03:41rash enough to go into the film business. And a family of people called the Salkins
00:03:51came into my life. They are a dynasty of filmmakers. Old man Salkins, who was an adorable
00:04:02little old gentleman, who hadn't paid a bill in about 32 years, but loved movies, genuinely
00:04:12loved movies. And his son Alexander came to see me. Now the old man Salkin has gone
00:04:23to dwell beyond the morning stars, and Alexander is a sort of dean of the Salkin tribe because
00:04:30it's his son who has made the supermans and the millions and millions and so on that the
00:04:36Salkins have made. The old man, the adorable old man, had made a famous movie, at least
00:04:46in my youth in the textbooks on movies, it was considered a great movie, which was the
00:04:52Don Quixote of Charliapin. And he had made the first Garbo movie. And he had a distinguished
00:05:00career. They had then escaped from Europe and become Mexican film producers where they'd
00:05:06made about 40 Mexican pictures, the quality of which I'm not prepared to speak about.
00:05:18They arrived in this little tiny Austrian Alpine village in a taxi cab, which they had
00:05:27taken from Innsbruck, and for which they did not have the money to pay. This is really
00:05:37true. And that didn't come out till later. And they said, we want you to make Taras Bulba.
00:05:48And well, Taras Bulba is a wonderful story. Gogol is my favorite Russian writer. I thought
00:05:55that's absolutely wonderful. These people have come all the way up into the Alps. They're
00:05:59all ready to make Taras Bulba. Splendid. I started to write a script of it. And then
00:06:08I must stop and say that they had to borrow the money to get in the cab back to Innsbruck.
00:06:15But that was supposed to be because of problems with the exchange. They hadn't been able to
00:06:22get Austrian shillings or something. Later I was to discover that they didn't have any
00:06:27money at all, which I think is admirable. You know, here they were making a trip across
00:06:36Europe coming to ask me to make a movie for which they didn't have a cent. They didn't
00:06:41even have to eat. And they came back again in another taxi. And they said, we've just
00:06:50read that Yul Brynner is making Taras Bulba in the Argentine, which indeed he did. I saw
00:06:57a little piece of it for the first time the other night on television. It was pretty bad,
00:07:03but there it was, Taras Bulba. They said, we can't have two of them. I said, that's
00:07:10true. They said, we have here a list of movies we are ready to finance. You pick out the
00:07:19one you like. They didn't say, what do you want to make? They said, here is our list.
00:07:26And I said, I couldn't add to this list any. No, they said, here they are. And there were
00:07:31about 82 titles, most of which were impossible, and the most likely of which was the trial.
00:07:42So I said, we'll do the trial. So we made the trial. And I know that kind of answer
00:07:53is very disappointing because you want to think of a filmmaker as having studied at
00:07:59his library the work which sings the most perfect song to him, and that I had spent
00:08:07my life wanting to realize Kafka on the screen. I'd never given a thought to it.
00:08:13But it was a book I admired, a writer I admired, and I was a challenge I was very happy to
00:08:22accept. And challenge indeed it was because we went to Yugoslavia to shoot it and I designed
00:08:30all the scenery, which was going to be physically a very different movie. The scenery was going
00:08:40to come, begins coming slightly apart all the time so that it was sort of flying away
00:08:46into the darkness. It was very elaborate and I think interesting, maybe pretentious visual
00:08:55idea for it. And all of this was to have been built by the Yugoslavs. And we did those
00:09:01Yugoslav scenes, which did not require sets. We needed an enormous building where we could
00:09:08do that office scene where all the people are typing, you know. And they did indeed
00:09:14get from Olivetti 10,000 typewriters and 10,000 desks and all that. We shot that. And
00:09:23then the Yugoslavs did a trick, which they sometimes do. I don't mean the Yugoslavs
00:09:28as a race, I mean the Yugoslavs as producers. Because like all people who have lived under
00:09:35occupation for a long time, the Irish for instance and particularly, the Yugoslavs had
00:09:46lived for 400 years under the Turks. And we must understand that all people who are
00:09:54occupied for a long time learn as an act of honor to steal from strangers, quite seriously.
00:10:05In other words, they won't steal from each other, but it's a stranger comes with a lot
00:10:08of money from Hollywood or whatever it is, steal if you can. And in the case of the trial,
00:10:17they did what they did to hundreds of Italian co-producers. They got us right up to the
00:10:23day when we were going to be in the studio, which we never got to see for some mysterious
00:10:28reason. It was always a breakdown of a car or so. We never got to look at it. Finally,
00:10:34they came to that day and they said, we made a miscalculation in the money and we need
00:10:39another $300,000. Well, the Salkins didn't have the money to pay our hotel bill in Zagreb,
00:10:48much less for these sets which had not even begun to be built. And the Yugoslavs believed
00:10:56that they had us by the well-known situation, as indeed they'd done with many co-productions
00:11:06and so on. And I said to old man Salkin, get a train, the night train, tickets on the night
00:11:14train. Don't say anything. We're all leaving town. So we all left town. To the astonishment
00:11:22of the Yugoslavs, who had expected that they'd be able to get the other half of the picture
00:11:29and own it in order to provide the sets. So we arrived back in Paris. There were no sets,
00:11:35there was no money. I should explain that in my reading of the book, and of course everybody
00:11:44reads the book as a different book, and my reading is probably more wrong than a lot
00:11:50of people's. I see the monstrous bureaucracy, which is the villain of the piece, as not
00:12:01only Kafka's clairvoyant view of the future, but his racial and cultural background of
00:12:15being occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And I see a curious combination of the book
00:12:26of an unthinkably sterile future combined with an unthinkably dusty accumulation of
00:12:39those traditions which bureaucrats set up in order to perpetuate their monstrous lives.
00:12:46If I sound like our president, I profoundly apologize.
00:12:55So I have made a parenthesis here about that style to explain how it was that we came to
00:13:05do it. We came to do it because I picked it out of a list and we shot most of it in Paris
00:13:15because I wanted a 19th century look to a great deal of what would be, in fact, expressionistic.
00:13:25And on the first night in Paris, I was in a hotel near the Seine, and I am very, very...
00:13:34I hate to use the word superstitious because I take it more seriously. I'm awfully serious
00:13:39about the moon. I think that Robert Graves was right when he said that the most blasphemous
00:13:48thing that has happened since Alexander cut the Gordian knot was when we landed on the
00:13:57moon. And having let loose with a piece of eccentricity of that kind, you'll see who
00:14:05you're dealing with. A point there is that the only name on the moon is Nixon and that
00:14:15they played golf. Anyway, we are in Paris and I am looking out of the window at three
00:14:25in the morning wondering how we can shoot, and I see two moons, two full moons. And I
00:14:37go out on the balcony of my hotel room and I see that there are the two clocks on the
00:14:43Gare d'Orsay. I went downstairs, got in a cab, went to the Gare d'Orsay, which was empty.
00:14:52It only had two trains that came in a day. And I wandered around and I saw that that
00:14:57was where the picture could be made. So that is how it happened to be picked and why it
00:15:04happened to be made that way. I'll try and give you a fast answer to the next one. Yes,
00:15:10ma'am?
00:15:11This might give you a chance for a short answer. In this film, Joseph Kay runs down that hallway
00:15:18with those alternating arched mirrors. And in Citizen Kane, that famous sequence in
00:15:26that archway where she appears in between. Oh, yes. And you get the mirrors and Lady
00:15:31from Shanghai and in Citizen Kane. I wonder if you would comment on maybe on the frequency
00:15:39of multiple mirrors that you use in a number of your films in which a man, usually a man,
00:15:46but a character in distress, sees himself over and over and over in these mirrors.
00:15:52I can give you an impressive answer, which will embarrass me. And I can also remind you
00:16:03that I'm a magician and that people say that everything a magician does is done with mirrors,
00:16:09you know, which is a frivolous answer. And then I can try to give a serious answer, which
00:16:16is that the camera is a peculiar kind of mirror and that turning the mirror on it seems to
00:16:27me a kind of a magical thing to do. I can't tell you why. Way in the back.
00:16:35I was wondering whether you thought there was enough sympathy for the main character
00:16:39in this film. Were you satisfied? I didn't hear that. Enough difference between...
00:16:44Do you think that there was enough sympathy for the main character in this film? Were
00:16:48you satisfied? No, that's an interesting question. And I'm
00:16:52glad you asked me that. A strange thing happened with that movie. It got wonderful press all
00:17:01over the world, even in America, even in Time and Newsweek and everything, wonderful press.
00:17:07And Perkins got very bad press all over the world. And the entire blame for that is mine,
00:17:14because he is a superlative actor and he played the character that I saw as gay and paid the
00:17:23price because nobody else sees it my way. I find in the book repeated indications that
00:17:32Kay is a pusher on his way up the bureaucracy, not Mr. Zero in the adding machine, not little
00:17:41Mr. Nobody, not the poor little faceless accountant, but a young man very anxious to get ahead
00:17:48in this awful world and doing his best to do that and therefore in a state of real neurosis,
00:17:58because he is both terrified of and anxious to conquer the same thing.
00:18:04I recognize that I did Tony, who is one of the best actors we have, a great disservice
00:18:13because he deserved to have made a tremendous success. And if he didn't with the critics,
00:18:20the blame is 100% with me. Yes, sir. In the filming of Othello, you said you believed in
00:18:28the existence of evil. And in this film, the evil seems to come from within man,
00:18:33from his people, from his buildings, from his laws. They seem to control this man of society's
00:18:40life and destiny. Are you saying then that evil comes from within man and not from outside,
00:18:45from nature? Wow. Wow. I do indeed believe in the existence of evil. And to that extent,
00:19:02I'm at odds with most of the people, especially of my generation. I think evil is a force so great
00:19:13that it is beyond me to decide whether it is generated entirely within man or whether it is
00:19:23a condition, a contagion, as well as something that we generate within ourselves. The power of
00:19:33it is so great that it humbles me. The metaphysics are beyond me on that. I'd like to sit at a coffee
00:19:43table and argue it, but I wouldn't like to be on a distinguished dais of this kind in a great
00:19:50university saying something for a quotation on such a majestic theme.
00:19:58Did I make a new order with the story?
00:20:12I'm so sorry. I'm a little deaf and I have a mic and you don't. Your English is very good.
00:20:27That's nothing to do with that. I really am a little deaf.
00:20:32Did you reorder the chapters in the story for any particular reason?
00:20:37Reorder the what in the story?
00:20:38The chapters.
00:20:40The pattern.
00:20:41Everybody knows what's happening.
00:20:45Did I reorder the chapters? In other words, did I change the plot line, the narrative line? Of
00:20:57course. Of course. Every film is an original work. A film should never be an illustration of a book
00:21:04or of a play. It should be itself. And it cannot be itself unless it's creator, a word for which I
00:21:13apologize because I hear the word creator and creativity much too much nowadays. But the maker,
00:21:19the picture maker, is after all engaged in an art form which is entirely different from literature
00:21:27and the theater. And he has not only the perfect right, but the obligation to turn the work into
00:21:36something a little different than the author intended. Not to perfectly realize it. If he
00:21:43perfectly realizes it, we might just as well have lantern slides and somebody with a lovely voice
00:21:48reading the book.
00:21:52One of the things that I find most interesting about the film is again your use of architecture
00:21:57and how all the buildings seem to be connected except I guess for Kay's apartment. He seems to
00:22:04go through hallways and get to the different rooms even though the architecture is quite
00:22:09different. I'm wondering if you could comment more on this.
00:22:13It's part of the... I say in the picture that it's a dream.
00:22:20But I made a picture like a dream. I attempted to make a picture which is like some of the dreams
00:22:28I have had. I think it's pompous and silly to say what a dream is like because we're all dreamers
00:22:34and we all dream different ways. And I move from one kind of architecture to another in my dreams
00:22:43without any difficulty whatsoever. And it's a little harder to do with a camera and make you
00:22:51believe you're in the same movie. But that comes from years of hanky-panky and sidearm snookery.
00:23:01Do you think Kostner intended it as a dream?
00:23:04No. No, I don't. But I had to say something to a mass audience. I had to find a way to make this
00:23:15accessible to an audience of many millions of people. And the way to do that was to say it's
00:23:21a dream. So I've slightly evaded both questions. One of the changes you made in the story was at
00:23:32the very end when Joseph K is killed. He's killed in a very alarmingly different way than in the
00:23:39book. And I was really curious as to why you changed both the way he was killed and the way
00:23:45he was acting when he died. Because the book was written before the Holocaust.
00:23:55And I couldn't bear the defeat of K in the book after the Holocaust.
00:24:03I'm not Jewish, but we are all Jewish since the Holocaust.
00:24:07And I couldn't bear for him to submit to death, as he does in Kafka, masochistically submit to
00:24:17death. It stank of the old Prague ghetto to me. And I had to let him, I had to let him shout out
00:24:27defiance until he was blown up. There's also an embarrassing thing in the picture, which is the
00:24:34mushroom-shaped cloud. Well, it turns out that any big explosion you could make ends up in the
00:24:40shape of a mushroom. So we spent an afternoon trying to get a cloud that wouldn't end up looking
00:24:46like a mushroom, because I hate symbolism. But there it was. So I said, all right, there's gonna
00:24:51be symbolism whether we like it or not, you know.
00:24:55Yes, sir.
00:24:56In this film, the computer is portrayed as sort of a dumb adding machine. The people
00:25:01manipulating it are the ones evil. Is that your belief about the computer,
00:25:05that it's merely a big adding machine and that it's not intrinsically evil itself?
00:25:11Well, the question is interesting, because there's an enormous scene
00:25:17in which the computer is being manipulated by the people manipulating it.
00:25:21The question is interesting because there's an enormous scene in the picture
00:25:26which was cut out by me two hours before the opening night in Paris,
00:25:34which was a scene about the computer, which would have more fully explained
00:25:38my attitude at that time about computers. My attitude has changed slightly, but only slightly
00:25:45since then. And I believe that what that scene did, which had played almost nine minutes,
00:25:57and as I say, I cut it out in the afternoon of the opening, what that scene did was to show
00:26:05man's slavish relationship to something which is really only his tool.
00:26:11That was a splendid thing to say, but it turned out to be rather a drag in the picture,
00:26:15so I took it out.
00:26:40you
00:27:10you
00:27:40you
00:28:10you
00:28:28Why is the condemned man attractive? After 19 years, do you have anything to add to that?
00:28:34Why is the condemned man attractive?
00:28:40Attractive?
00:28:41You comment in the film about, you know, the women find him attractive,
00:28:45and then your character says that people seem drawn to him, and he's fascinating.
00:28:50Yeah, well, you know, my character is, you don't believe a word I say, do you, in the movie?
00:28:55You're not supposed to. That's the real, that's a real masochistic,
00:29:03that's the craft of a masochist that is most narcissistic, you know.
00:29:11Look at my beautiful blood, you know, as it streams down.
00:29:16But of course, nothing the advocate says is meant to be true.
00:29:22What is the reason that you like to dub the voices of minor characters in your films,
00:29:26and which characters did you dub in the trial?
00:29:29I don't like to dub the minor characters, but by the time we get to dubbing,
00:29:37there usually isn't any more money, particularly if you're working with the Salkinds at that period.
00:29:43And as in the case of Othello, where I did play practically the whole, my supporting cast,
00:29:51it was economic, because you don't get a good actor for free to go into a dark room and spend
00:30:01all day trying to lip-sync, you know. It's a thankless job.
00:30:08Why did you choose for yourself the role of the advocate and not one of the accused?
00:30:14Well, I thought that, I didn't want to play the advocate, I didn't want to be in it,
00:30:20and you would be astonished at the different people I offered it to, including Gleason. I did.
00:30:30I played the advocate because there was no other actor of my caliber that I could afford.
00:30:37But I enjoyed doing it. Once I saw Romy in that white nurse's uniform, I enjoyed every minute of it.
00:30:55Yes? How did you cast the actors in the trial?
00:30:59How did I cast the actors in the trial? The same as I cast in any movie, but I don't want my answer
00:31:11to sound condescending by picking the people that seem to be best adapted for it. In the case of the
00:31:21trial, of course, I had a co-production. And a co-production means that you have different
00:31:27nations involved. So I had to have some Germans, and some French, and some English. And therefore,
00:31:40there are some German actors who might not have been German otherwise, but I think all the Germans
00:31:45are very good at it. I had to get Tameroff in, who was an American, so we had to have plenty of
00:31:52French actors. So I had a very good actor, Maurice Tenac, who played the manager. So I was very happy
00:32:00to have him. I was limited by the nationalities, but that's not such a terrible limitation.
00:32:08The world is full of wonderful actors who luckily speak our language, although they are getting
00:32:14fewer and fewer, because after the war, every young actor quickly learned English, thinking
00:32:21that was the only way to get ahead. And nowadays, actors of your age do not speak English.
00:32:29In all the countries in the world, very few bother to. And you're left with those same old
00:32:36faces, because they don't, pictures have ceased to be international. Think how few international
00:32:44pictures play here, or in London, or in Berlin. So I had to adapt. I had to adapt, and I had to
00:32:56adapt. I'm not speaking of festivals, I mean in theaters. So when everybody thought they're going
00:33:06to make English-speaking pictures forever, everybody learned English. So it was much
00:33:11easier 20 years ago to cast across the European continent as well as you could,
00:33:21and not be disappointed with the result. I miscast, of course. Every director does that.
00:33:28Every director makes terrible mistakes, and there's nothing you can do about it.
00:33:34But I don't remember that, except for my controversial reading of Kay,
00:33:44that there's anything that could possibly be called bad casting in it. But I don't know.
00:33:51Is there, would somebody say if they think somebody else was badly cast?
00:33:57Interesting to hear. It won't hurt my feelings a bit.
00:34:00I think Kay was very well cast.
00:34:03You do?
00:34:04Yes.
00:34:04Hooray for you.
00:34:07How much obligation do you feel to a mass audience?
00:34:11How much obligation do I feel?
00:34:13How much would you modify your vision so that people will...
00:34:16There's a missing word here on between what I feel and to a mass audience.
00:34:19Just stand up.
00:34:21Obligation.
00:34:27I would love to have a mass audience.
00:34:31You're looking at a man who's been searching for a mass audience.
00:34:35And if I had one, I'd be obliged. That's all I can say.
00:34:50Here comes a man who looks like he's about to shoot me.
00:34:57Talking about money, do you think if you'd had a great deal of it,
00:35:00it would have made your films better? Or did your poverty help your creativity in any way?
00:35:10Did my poverty help my creativity?
00:35:14No.
00:35:20No.
00:35:20I think, however, that it is possible to spoil a young director
00:35:27by giving him too much money so that he does not learn one of the main arts of directing,
00:35:36which is the ability to walk away from something when it is not perfect.
00:35:44No fine movie was ever made by a director who wants everything to be perfect.
00:35:50Any more than... because every bad painting has every leaf in the tree.
00:35:56And every great painting makes you see a tree.
00:36:02And there are great lessons to be learned by not using money,
00:36:07by not using the studio largesse unquestioningly.
00:36:13The studio largesse unquestioningly.
00:36:18But there is no advantage in having to reach in your pocket
00:36:22and pay Madeleine Robinson her salary at the end of every week,
00:36:26otherwise she'd leave the picture, which is what happened in the trial.
00:36:33A number of your films, obviously this one, but a number of other ones,
00:36:37generate a sort of a palpable feel of oppression.
00:36:40Are you as pessimistic as that seems to indicate, or is that just what you like to say?
00:36:43Am I as what?
00:36:44As pessimistic as would seem to be indicated by the feeling of oppression in the trial
00:36:50and the sort of visual oppression that comes over in a number of your other pictures.
00:36:55Yes, I am a profound pessimist
00:37:01with a sentimental inclination to hope that Pangloss was right and that I'm wrong.
00:37:17I have a sentimental inclination toward hope.
00:37:21I believe in bravery and
00:37:30worship it.
00:37:31To me, it's one of the greatest virtues there are.
00:37:36And the fact that I'm a pessimist is part of what gives bravery such an importance to me.
00:37:42Don't call me a macho, that's not what I'm talking about.
00:37:47Yes.
00:37:47Every time I see this film, I'm so struck by the brilliant use of space
00:37:52in so many of the environments.
00:37:53And yet in the Kafka story, all the spaces seem very cramped.
00:37:58I wondered if you would talk about what led you to change the conception of space.
00:38:03Was it the different medium or your own vision or anything else?
00:38:07I mean, in terms of moving it away from the kind of space that was in the novel
00:38:12and the kind of space that you have in the film?
00:38:14That's a better question than I have an answer for.
00:38:18Honestly, it is.
00:38:21I don't know.
00:38:22I would want to think about it.
00:38:23I think my answer would be frivolous.
00:38:26And I'd like to think about it.
00:38:28It's a worrisome question.
00:38:31I don't know.
00:38:33I thought that I was being faithful to my reading of the book.
00:38:39To my reading of the book.
00:38:42And I know that nobody agrees with me,
00:38:45including those people who like the picture as well as those who dislike it.
00:38:49But I did not consciously change what I thought was its essential meaning.
00:39:00But that's as far as I can go, as big a boast as I dare to make.
00:39:08Yes.
00:39:09What do you see as the role of seduction in bureaucracy?
00:39:14There seem to be lots of sexual symbols or sexuality is almost the antagonist
00:39:24along with the bureaucratic oppression.
00:39:28But that's Kafka.
00:39:31That really is Kafka.
00:39:32It's part of the fascination of the book.
00:39:35Is that insistent and almost onanistic eroticism.
00:39:44I find that in the book.
00:39:46It's not an obsession or a specialty of mine.
00:39:56I would be happy to make a movie in which...
00:40:00I would be happy to have 40 years of movie making ahead of me
00:40:03in which it would never be necessary for me to ask the leading man to take his pants off.
00:40:10But the eroticism in Kafka is inevitable.
00:40:16It's there.
00:40:18And it's very strong, I think.
00:40:21Yes.
00:40:23It is my turn.
00:40:27You have been quoted in an interview that was taken before the trial was filmed
00:40:32that you did not think that you would be the man to film the trial.
00:40:36Tonight you have said that you took the trial on own
00:40:39practically because it was the least intolerable prospect offered to you.
00:40:43Not least tolerable.
00:40:45Least intolerable.
00:40:46Least intolerable.
00:40:47No, I didn't find...
00:40:48No, if I said that I was making a bad joke and I've expressed myself badly.
00:40:54The best of the 80 or the most likely, you said, of the 80 that you were offered.
00:40:58It was the title I liked.
00:41:01Um, anyways, I would say that the main character is
00:41:05somewhat less passive than the characters I've read in Kafka.
00:41:12Taking all that together, do you think that your world vision is close to Kafka's?
00:41:18And do you think that's something to take into consideration
00:41:21for you to make a movie out of his work?
00:41:25You know, I didn't follow that.
00:41:26Help me out.
00:41:27Oh, I'm sorry.
00:41:28I mean...
00:41:29What?
00:41:34My world vision close to Kafka?
00:41:35Of course not.
00:41:37Not at all.
00:41:38I, you know, he was a creature born entirely of the Austro-Hungarian empire,
00:41:47of his own people, his own religion,
00:41:51between the two world wars.
00:41:53There's every possible difference between us.
00:41:55We could not possibly have the same vision.
00:41:58Even if our genes were the same.
00:42:00There's no way we could see the world the same
00:42:05at this different moment in the turning of the globe.
00:42:10And therefore, you will say I shouldn't have made the picture.
00:42:12And there's no answer to that either.
00:42:16Yes, sir.
00:42:16Could you tell us about your work as a cinematographer in planning the look of this film?
00:42:23My work as a cinematographer?
00:42:25Your work with the cinematographer in planning the look of this film.
00:42:30I never sit down and plan with a cinematographer.
00:42:35No storyboards?
00:42:36No, no, no.
00:42:38I had storyboards in Caine only because I was made to.
00:42:43Right. Did you go to the set each day not knowing what you were going to,
00:42:48where you're going to pop the camera down or...
00:42:51I do, I do.
00:42:52I think, I believe I'm the only director that I know of
00:43:00who does this particular thing, which is probably the worst way to go about it.
00:43:05I didn't begin this way, but I have developed this way.
00:43:09I light a set before I decide where anybody will go with the cameraman.
00:43:16And then when the set looks right to me, I put the actors where I think they ought to be.
00:43:21I don't put the actors and then light the set.
00:43:25It's the exact opposite.
00:43:28Because the set is all we have besides the actors and it ought to have a chance.
00:43:34And the only way to give it a chance is to begin with it.
00:43:38That's my theory anyway.
00:43:41How much did the trial cost to make?
00:43:44How much did the trial?
00:43:45That will never be known.
00:43:48It cost me about $80,000.
00:43:52I never made any money.
00:43:53It cost me about $80,000.
00:43:55In fact, it's cost me a lot more money to be a film director than I've ever made.
00:44:01That's literally true.
00:44:05So let that be an encouragement to you all.
00:44:11In the program notes, it mentions that the film was not as great a critical success
00:44:19in Britain and in America as it was on the continent in Europe.
00:44:24That's wrong.
00:44:25We got wonderful reviews except for the character of Kay.
00:44:31Then my question's tossed out.
00:44:34No.
00:44:35What I was going to comment on was that while I was watching the film,
00:44:40I had a feeling of a very, what I would consider something that comes from
00:44:45American traditions of law and British traditions of law.
00:44:51This can't happen.
00:44:52It's European.
00:44:54Exactly.
00:44:54This can't happen.
00:44:56And that I thought that maybe that was a very American thing and a very British thing.
00:45:00It may account.
00:45:01And not a European thing.
00:45:02Yes.
00:45:03Well, it is a very European film.
00:45:05It was made by me really as a European director.
00:45:13It was made with a Europe, essentially European cast.
00:45:19There was no attempt to stick into it things which would make it seem as though it's also
00:45:26America because I don't think there's anything in Kafka which will support that.
00:45:31To me, he is middle Europe, middle Europe, middle Europe and no escape from it.
00:45:37It's part of his prison.
00:45:38It's part of his enchantment.
00:45:44You will use the same actor today or what actor you will choose today to make the trial?
00:45:51To make K?
00:45:52Yeah.
00:45:53If I were going to do it again?
00:45:54You mean given the difference of age?
00:45:59I think Pacino.
00:46:07But then I think Pacino in almost anything I can think of.
00:46:11Such a fan of his.
00:46:14But I think he'd be marvelous.
00:46:15Yes.
00:46:16But that's accounting for the difference of age.
00:46:18Of course, Tony's too old now.
00:46:20We're not running him down.
00:46:24We've got somebody there.
00:46:27They were the easiest one to reach.
00:46:29Isn't it unfair?
00:46:31All right.
00:46:31With all the escapist movies that have come out in the last few years, is there some topic
00:46:38that you would like to make into a movie to retaliate against all of this BS?
00:46:44To retaliate against escapist movies?
00:46:48I love escapist movies.
00:46:51I love them.
00:46:53I see no obligation on the part of a filmmaker to be serious or even to be adult.
00:47:06I think it's very nice to make movies for children and to make movies for the child
00:47:12which is in every grown person.
00:47:16My difficulty with science fiction movies, I used to write it for my living when there
00:47:24was a thing called the Pulps, which only the most elderly of you will even recognize as
00:47:29a word.
00:47:30But I was a pulp writer and I used to write Lobstermen from Mars and all that.
00:47:36And I have a certain notoriety in the science fiction field.
00:47:43But it's never been anything I like very much because I don't believe in the future.
00:47:50That doesn't mean I think where everything's going to end at this moment.
00:47:54But I think the future is a total hypothesis.
00:47:58I believe in the present insofar as we can grab it and the past.
00:48:03And if anything about the future, I don't believe.
00:48:05All I've got to do is put on one of those bike helmets, you know, and silver things
00:48:11and start off into the world of optical printing and I'm up the aisle, you see.
00:48:20And not because they're bad movies, but because I don't respond.
00:48:23I didn't like westerns until I was about 50 years old.
00:48:28And I began to see them rerun on television.
00:48:30I never went to them as a child.
00:48:33And now I adore them.
00:48:35And I might learn to like, you know, Zing Zing and Up in Outer Space.
00:48:40But for the moment, it doesn't say anything to me.
00:48:42But I'm in favor of them.
00:48:44I think it's fine.
00:48:45I don't think as long as they are not violent for the sake of violence or in any way fascistic
00:48:54in their tone, as long as they partake of a myth or of the mythic quality which a film can
00:49:04can call upon, I think it's a marvelous exercise in virtuosity.
00:49:10And I immensely admire the people who make them.
00:49:18Are there any childlike aspects to the trial?
00:49:21And if you made it again, would you insert any?
00:49:27Do you think so?
00:49:28I have a great difficulty finding them.
00:49:35Yes, I don't think there are.
00:49:37But there must be because nobody is completely grown up and no work of art.
00:49:45God, what a terrible thing have I said.
00:49:47No movie.
00:49:51No movie.
00:49:52No movie is made by a complete adult, you know.
00:50:01First of all, I don't know any complete adults in civilian life.
00:50:05So why?
00:50:06How could they have infiltrated movies?
00:50:08You know, it's unthinkable to me.
00:50:13Yes, sir.
00:50:14In regard to that gentleman's last comment, I did find some a lot of childlike aspects
00:50:19in it, especially in relation to certain kinds of fairy stories in the trial, especially
00:50:24Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz and your big scene when you're booming to Akim
00:50:28Tamaroff.
00:50:29I was wondering if you were thinking of that to some degree.
00:50:32Yes, they are.
00:50:34Perhaps they're childlike.
00:50:36Perhaps that's the right word for them.
00:50:38I thought of them as simple-minded and
00:50:43I thought of them as being related to Grimm, you know, and that, of course, takes us to
00:50:52childhood.
00:50:53But, you know, the great fairy tales which were invented by people living in forests
00:51:02before the electric light still live on.
00:51:08And our reactions to certain kinds of horror and delight and even to cruelty, which is
00:51:18in this picture you've seen, is, I suppose, childlike, yes.
00:51:25But I hadn't thought of it.
00:51:27You're teaching me things I didn't know.
00:51:32Yes.
00:51:32Having seen Citizen Kane and the trial, it seems that both films seem to adopt a sort
00:51:37of Brechtian view of man and society or man versus man.
00:51:40And I was very curious, had you ever thought of doing a Brecht piece or did that ever?
00:51:45Well, Dick Wilson here, who was my partner for a long time, was sitting in the front
00:51:52here and I were going to do the first production of Galileo.
00:51:58And I worked with Brecht and Lawton on it.
00:52:02And that's as far as I'm prepared to go on the subject of what is Brechtian and not
00:52:09because I admired him enormously and thought that he was two people.
00:52:15One, a Jesuit-trained
00:52:21literateur, a man who wanted all of his works published in the best leather and kept forever.
00:52:31And a dogmatist.
00:52:36And all of that was very superficial.
00:52:39He was essentially a very astute, seer to man.
00:52:47And his theory was mostly self-defense.
00:52:52Sex, sex, sex.
00:52:54All right.
00:52:56I was wondering what you did to affect really the dizziness of Kay in that movie, because
00:53:03I felt very closed in when he was getting dizzy inside that courtroom and when he was
00:53:09trying to escape.
00:53:12You felt very closed in when I was dizzy and trying to get out of the courtroom.
00:53:19Yes, that was the idea.
00:53:25I'm just wondering how you did that.
00:53:26Sorry if you hadn't.
00:53:28No, what did you do?
00:53:29Oh, how I did it?
00:53:32The mastery of the cinema.
00:53:38I'll tell you how we did it.
00:53:39We put entirely too many people in the room that there was, you see.
00:53:45It was, we made claustrophobia by overcrowding.
00:53:49Could you tell us a little bit more about the ending, how you arrived at it?
00:53:57You told us a little bit why, but how did you come upon the ending as you did?
00:54:03I don't know how I came upon it.
00:54:05I wanted Kay to make a final gesture, even if it was fruitless.
00:54:13You know, if we want to be, if we want to pin a label on it, it's existentialist.
00:54:21I couldn't bear for him to have his throat split like a pig, and he throws the grenade
00:54:30back, which is a way of saying no, and it seems to me, seemed to me that putting a man
00:54:41in a hole with a bomb, letting him try to throw the bomb out, expressed that as well
00:54:50as I could think.
00:54:50It was as simple a way of stating it as I could think of, and I haven't since then tried
00:54:58to think of a better one.
00:54:59Maybe I would have, but I, having done it, I, yes.
00:55:05I have a question about your coverage of scenes.
00:55:10You've been noted for many rather exceptional long takes, such as the boarding house sequence
00:55:14in Cane or the first sequence in the room in this film.
00:55:18Do you customarily cover everything in a master?
00:55:21I cover nothing.
00:55:23Okay.
00:55:24Cover nothing.
00:55:26Never cover.
00:55:27So you mean when we see on the screen a long take, does that mean that that's all you've
00:55:32shot?
00:55:32That's all there is.
00:55:34Okay.
00:55:35I was taught that by Jack Ford.
00:55:39Because when Ford finished a movie, he never cut it, you know?
00:55:46He had nothing to do with the editing.
00:55:48He never went into the movieola.
00:55:50He never saw a rough cut.
00:55:52He usually went on a big drunk.
00:55:56And the way he had of protecting himself was to give them nothing to go to.
00:56:01So if he wanted the, if he wanted the girl to say, yes, Duke, that was all she got to
00:56:09say.
00:56:10She didn't get to listen to all the rest of the scene or say the dialogue that he expected
00:56:15her not to say.
00:56:16That's all he shot.
00:56:18And he told me to do it, and I followed his instructions.
00:56:23Yeah.
00:56:23With respect to the opening long take, how did you determine exactly when you chose to
00:56:28cut away from it?
00:56:30When to cut away?
00:56:33It's midway through the scene where you begin to break it up into individual shots.
00:56:37What, what determined the change in the handling of the scene?
00:56:39I can't remember.
00:56:42I just, it's a, all I have is a dumb answer.
00:56:44I really can't remember.
00:56:45Because I believe it occurs right in the, right in the middle of a section.
00:56:49There's no special reason why the long take necessarily ends at that point.
00:56:52Maybe, maybe there's a mistake there of some kind.
00:56:54I, you know, I don't know.
00:56:56It seemed to me that we cut only when we went into the other room with a, with a woman.
00:57:05That was the intention.
00:57:06No, or what, I don't know.
00:57:08This, I really don't know when we cut.
00:57:09Short ends of film, maybe.
00:57:12Yeah, that may have been that short end of the film.
00:57:16Yes.
00:57:16As long as we're still talking about, as long as we're still talking about the long takes,
00:57:23I was wondering if that tendency in the films is more out of your roots in the theater and
00:57:29presenting something in real time, or was it more for an expressionist reason?
00:57:34No, a long take for me is, depends on two things.
00:57:41A very good technical crew, and there are less of them every day in the world,
00:57:46all over the world, because of television.
00:57:49And very good actors.
00:57:52The longest I've done, very long, I've done, I did the first real length takes that were ever made.
00:58:00And they ended up not that, because they cut into them in Ambersons, but they were real length.
00:58:05And in Macbeth, they are real length, full real length.
00:58:09I believe that it is an enormous help to a cast if they are good enough to play the rhythm of
00:58:18an entire sequence, rather than leaving it to the director entirely.
00:58:25Because the director has, I always suspect, a little bit too much power in movie making.
00:58:33I think the actor is, in film studies, the actor is underrated.
00:58:42The story and the director is, gets a little more credit than is deserved.
00:58:48Because actors keep showing us things we never suspected.
00:58:53Any good director is constantly astonished by something that his cast is giving him, you know?
00:59:01Yes?
00:59:02Maybe I'm an incurable optimist, but I got a lot of hope out of the picture,
00:59:06partly out of the character's integrity and that he was kind of a hero in his
00:59:12integrity and things, and he wouldn't stand for things.
00:59:14Did you mean for a lot of hope to come out of that?
00:59:16I'm the kind of optimist that believes in integrity.
00:59:20And in all these virtues which illuminate western civilization,
00:59:29and which are only, I hope, temporarily out of fashion.
00:59:33I don't believe that the physical outlook of mankind changes virtue.
00:59:49It only obliges us to behave better.
00:59:54Oh, that's awfully solemn.
00:59:57Can we do this first here and then go back?
00:59:59Look at her, she's way down there.
01:00:03Maybe we could pass the mic.
01:00:05How about, how about trying to shout it?
01:00:07I'll repeat it.
01:00:09I noticed a continuity between the trial and a lot of your films dating back to Citizen Kane,
01:00:18as your view seems to be opposed to some of the best interests of the corporate elite,
01:00:22of which you speak directly about in the trial.
01:00:27And I was wondering if you thought your personal financial position
01:00:31as a film director is directly related to the fact that a lot of your views
01:00:36and your films throughout these ages have not exactly expressed their interests.
01:00:50Would anybody like to answer that question?
01:00:52Well, my personal opinion...
01:00:57Good, stand up, let's hear it.
01:01:01My personal opinion is that it's true, and that from what I've read from your career,
01:01:08although I wasn't alive at the time you first were making films,
01:01:14that you've had a tremendous problem with the press and corporate bureaucracy dating back,
01:01:19you know, since the earliest portions of your career.
01:01:22And that this is continuing today, and that's one of the reasons
01:01:25why you've been unable to finish some of your more recent projects.
01:01:30Well, there are only two main projects which are unfinished.
01:01:36One is the other side of the wind, and when I tell you that my partner
01:01:42in that project is the brother-in-law of the late Shah of Iran,
01:01:47you will understand why we are having a little legal difficulty.
01:01:51The other unfinished film is Don Quixote, which was a private exercise of mine.
01:01:57And it will be finished, as an author will finish it, at my own good time,
01:02:01when I feel like it. It is not unfinished because of financial reasons.
01:02:06And when it is released, its title is going to be,
01:02:10When Are You Going to Finish Don Quixote?
01:02:12I appreciate so very much your use of depth of field, especially in this film.
01:02:26My question is, why do you think that it's being dropped in filmmaking today?
01:02:32You never get the same depth of field in color as you do in black and white.
01:02:35And secondly, a lot of the depth of field in Kane was fake. It was split screen.
01:02:49People, you know, we made up, we said we'd invented a new lens.
01:02:53That was just publicity. No truth to it at all. What was it called, Dick?
01:02:58We had some great word for it, I've forgotten. And it was a fake.
01:03:02Whenever the shot became impossible, we did the old split screen.
01:03:07That's it. That's it.
01:03:10Are you using that process in the films that you're working on now?
01:03:15I expect to use it. I'm going, I'm about to make two movies.
01:03:20And one will have no depth of field whatever.
01:03:24And it's a very romantic story. And depth of field is the enemy of romance.
01:03:32It is. And the other is a modern story about an American political candidate.
01:03:39And it'll have as much depth of field as we can get.
01:03:48Somebody that hasn't...
01:03:51Who's nearest the mic?
01:03:55Doesn't seem a fair way to go about it.
01:03:57Anybody who looks for justice in this world? Yes? Got somebody? Yes?
01:04:03Your implication, or your statement that this film is a dream as you express it,
01:04:07it seems to say that the conflict within the film is within the main character's mind.
01:04:13Would you care to define the conflict within his mind?
01:04:20You know, you're all above my head.
01:04:22You know, you're all above my head.
01:04:26Do you mean?
01:04:29Well, if this film's a dream, obviously it'd be the main character's dream.
01:04:35If you say...
01:04:35No, it's my dream.
01:04:36Okay, well, if it's your dream, then the conflict is within your mind.
01:04:40What is the mental conflict in the film?
01:04:43It's not just this one man against society. It's obviously something that's going on.
01:04:48I dreamt about him.
01:04:50Okay.
01:04:52I dreamt about him. And it's not a conflict with society. It's a failure to flourish
01:05:05and flower in society. He's not really in conflict with society.
01:05:13He's based... The man is basically a conformist.
01:05:18He's not in conflict with society. But you see that society is killing him,
01:05:24even though he's not fighting it. He doesn't put up much of a fight.
01:05:30Yes, in the back, way in the back, blue shirt.
01:05:35Wait for the mic.
01:05:43He fights as each issue comes along, but you don't see a man in a real
01:05:50aggressive position against society.
01:05:53Yeah. On that response, I'm wondering then, if you say that he's not really in conflict
01:06:01with his society, whether that makes him... If you say that he's not in conflict with the society...
01:06:09Society is in conflict with him.
01:06:11Okay. Would that make him an autobiographical character for you?
01:06:14No, I don't regard society as in conflict with me at all.
01:06:17At least in terms of your filmmaking career?
01:06:20No, no. Anybody who goes into films has to be a little crazy and has to be ready for every kind of
01:06:32disappointment and defeat and must be grateful for any kind of evening such as this that he
01:06:38can get out of it. It is an almost... It's mathematically almost an impossible medium
01:06:46to succeed in on any sort of important level, and to have achieved
01:06:56enough interest for you have come into this room is the answer to conflict with society.
01:07:04I'm in no conflict with society. I'm in conflict with the Reagan administration.
01:07:08I'm not sure in hell isn't society.
01:07:21Yes, ma'am, or sir, or what? Who's got a microphone near... Who's near a microphone?
01:07:30There. Yes.
01:07:32I was wondering why in the prologue to the film...
01:07:35I was wondering why in the prologue to the film you chose to use the pin screen technique
01:07:39when there really wasn't that much actual animation,
01:07:43instead of just using charcoal paintings or something.
01:07:46Oh, this is the attempt. This is the attempt to destroy him, to destroy his faith,
01:07:54to destroy his character. That fairy story is part of the plot against him. We are all told
01:08:02fairy stories. Some of those fairy stories are in TV commercials. Some of them are in presidential
01:08:08addresses. Some of them are in editorials. Some of them are in skywriting. And that prologue,
01:08:17which, by the way, was made by a couple of wonderful mad Russians living in Paris,
01:08:22and they make their pictures by putting pins into blocks of wood, little needles,
01:08:31and the needles are at different degrees of depth, so that when a light falls on it,
01:08:38you get the light and shadow from the pins or the needles. That's what those extraordinary
01:08:45pictures come from. And I thought they gave a... In other words, that was the marriage to the
01:08:53Brothers Grimm. And we repeat the story when I attempt again to corrupt him.
01:09:03I'm his chief corruptor. I'm the devil.
01:09:10If the fable is a lie, and what Hassler says are also lies,
01:09:16why do you tell the story at the beginning of the movie in character as yourself?
01:09:23Because the film is contained... The life of this man is contained within a lie.
01:09:35We do not have the kind of novel in which a character leaves a real or benign world
01:09:44and enters a world of nightmare. He was born into it, conceived in the womb of horror.
01:09:54That's where I begin with it. In other words, he can't escape because that's where he was born,
01:10:03any more than a baby in Bangladesh can escape dying of starvation.
01:10:11I don't know if this is a meaningful point, but when you were speaking at the beginning
01:10:15of the picture, you are not in character as Hassler. You are playing the voice of Orson
01:10:19Wells as you were playing at the end of the picture. Now, that's the magician.
01:10:23I'm tricking the audience into believing that that's a point of view,
01:10:29so that in a certain atmosphere, because that kind of trickery is legitimate, I think,
01:10:34I want the audience to feel the doom into which K is born,
01:10:43and to believe that it is there. It's the voice of the devil.
01:10:49But it's not my voice. It's not my dream.
01:10:54Yes? You've made today continuous references to Spain. When you talked about bravery,
01:10:58when you talked about Don Quixote, when you talked about your project as talking to Spain,
01:11:04I think I once read that you wanted to become even a bullfighter.
01:11:08I didn't want to. I was one.
01:11:11Hard to believe. I did it by buying the bulls.
01:11:16What I wanted to know is, what does Spain culturally represent for you?
01:11:22A great deal. Anybody of my generation, Spain means enormous things you cannot possibly
01:11:32appreciate, because the Spanish Civil War was the central tragedy of anybody's life,
01:11:45who is my age. And it's hard to explain to anybody who's younger, but there it is.
01:11:52And it's part of the subject of the political movie I'm,
01:11:55contemporary political movie I want to make, just called The Big Brass Ring.
01:12:04Are you just as politically engaged and politically minded now as you were in the
01:12:0830s and 40s? Because at the time you wrote a lot about politics.
01:12:11Yes, I'm not as politically engaged for two reasons. I'm as politically minded.
01:12:19I'm more interested in politics than in anything in the world, much more interested
01:12:23in politics than I am in movies or art or anything.
01:12:28The truth is that every work of art is a political statement.
01:12:33When you deliberately make it, you, are you, the audience is going to get dizzy.
01:12:40When you deliberately make it, you usually fall into the trap of rhetoric
01:12:44and the trap of speaking to a convinced audience rather than convincing an audience.
01:12:52I don't believe, I think some movies and some books and, God, some paintings,
01:13:00have changed the face of the world.
01:13:04But I don't think it is the duty of every artist to change the face of the world.
01:13:08He is doing it by being an artist.
01:13:12That just automatically goes with it.
01:13:16And he may be doing harm when he doesn't mean to.
01:13:21But, oh, God, deliver us from the people who tell us what is right and what is wrong.
01:13:27What is moral and what is immoral, from a political point of view,
01:13:32it's just as inexcusable as from a sexual point of view, it seems to me.
01:13:41Of course, we hate the real vices of the world.
01:13:44Of course, we hate racism and we hate oppression, all of that kind of thing.
01:13:48It goes without saying.
01:13:50If you didn't agree with that, you wouldn't be here.
01:13:53You wouldn't have sat through the trial.
01:13:55We wouldn't be getting along well together.
01:13:57I'm talking about that majority of people who can read a book and talk about something,
01:14:04who are in general agreement about what you have to call the basics,
01:14:13rather than the basics of the world.
01:14:15What you have to call the basics, rather than dogmas.
01:14:21Yeah.
01:14:22I was wondering what scene in the trial that you felt...
01:14:27What did you say?
01:14:32That's so cruel.
01:14:33It's just like a scene in a trial.
01:14:35Repeat, you know.
01:14:37Again?
01:14:39And in reviewing your prints now, years later,
01:14:43I wondered if you could give us some hint as to
01:14:47what you thought you would change in the trial,
01:14:49what scene that you feel the worst about that makes you cringe the most,
01:14:52and how you would change that to make it a better scene.
01:14:56I would be able to answer that question if I'd ever seen the trial since I made it.
01:15:04But I don't go...
01:15:05I never see my movies after I make them.
01:15:07You don't have any regrets about the trial at all?
01:15:11That's why I don't go to see it.
01:15:14There'd be one long regret, you know.
01:15:19There it is in a can, forever.
01:15:23I can't see where our microphone is,
01:15:25so I don't know who has the best fighting chance over there.
01:15:33I remember your eulogy to Jean Renoir a couple of years ago in the Los Angeles Times,
01:15:38and I was wondering if you'd share with us your feelings
01:15:41on the passing of Abel Gantz a couple of days ago.
01:15:44I'm so sorry, I don't have the wish...
01:15:49Your eulogy of Jean Renoir, and would you comment on the passing of Abel Gantz?
01:15:55Of Abel Gantz.
01:16:04It's a very painful, very painful question for me,
01:16:09because I have enormous respect for his inventiveness
01:16:13and his originality,
01:16:16but he is not in my top list of directors,
01:16:21and the fact that he died does not change that.
01:16:26Sorry.
01:16:29I made his last picture with him,
01:16:32and my opinion is not from that picture.
01:16:34It's based on Napoleon.
01:16:37He was a man obsessed.
01:16:38He had a magnificent obsession.
01:16:40He had an enormous visual sense.
01:16:43He contributed incredibly to our vocabulary in the cinema,
01:16:50but I'm much more interested in movies about people,
01:16:58and I don't think he made one.
01:17:02Napoleon is a big subject,
01:17:04and it can be dealt with with a cast of 20 people.
01:17:10Excuse me.
01:17:14Sir?
01:17:15Excuse me.
01:17:18Where is this person?
01:17:20Cast of Paul over the meeting, I know.
01:17:23I thought there was someone up here.
01:17:25An actor friend of mine once told me that he thought one of the great moments in film
01:17:28was in the third man, when the light falls on you and you're revealed.
01:17:32Oh, it is one of the great moments.
01:17:37But remember, I didn't direct it.
01:17:40Carol Reed directed it, and you know that we went...
01:17:43Do you know that every...
01:17:44We had that set built on another stage,
01:17:48and every afternoon for five days,
01:17:52at the end of the day's shooting,
01:17:54we went and shot it again until Carol had it exactly the way he wanted it,
01:17:59because he knew it was the key moment of the movie.
01:18:01My question is for you.
01:18:03What do you look for in actors, and what do you also expect actors to bring to the open?
01:18:13I think that you see...
01:18:16What do I look for in actors?
01:18:17And I think acting is like sculpture,
01:18:25not modeling, the kind where you carve it out of marble.
01:18:29I think that a performance, when it deserves to be considered great or important,
01:18:38is always entirely made up of the actor himself,
01:18:43and entirely achieved by what he has left in the dressing room
01:18:48before he came out in front of the camera.
01:18:51In other words, it's what you take away from yourself
01:18:55to reveal the truth of what you're doing that makes a performance.
01:19:03And if an actor doesn't have an ability to do that,
01:19:06I use him only if he has a good face for a few lines.
01:19:10I think I can tell those actors from others.
01:19:12I've made disastrous mistakes,
01:19:15but I think essentially there is no such thing as becoming another character
01:19:21by putting on a lot of makeup.
01:19:23Putting on a lot of makeup.
01:19:26You may need to put the makeup, but what you're really doing is undressing yourself,
01:19:32and even tearing yourself apart,
01:19:34and presenting to the public that part of you
01:19:39which corresponds to what you were playing.
01:19:42And there is a villain in each of us, a murderer in each of us,
01:19:46a fascist in each of us, a saint in each of us,
01:19:50and the actor is the man or woman who can eliminate from himself
01:19:59those things which will interfere with that truth.
01:20:04So I look for those kind of people, and I look for the right face,
01:20:07because after all, the camera makes pictures,
01:20:15and it likes people and dislikes people.
01:20:18You have to try to guess which ones it will like and which it won't.
01:20:22Yes, sir?
01:20:22Did you have any particular reason for updating the trial into the 1960s?
01:20:28When you made the movie, you made it as a present from the time you made it.
01:20:31Yes, I tried to do a rather tricky thing.
01:20:37I tried to make a picture which really existed in its own time,
01:20:42but which didn't abuse the eye of the audience,
01:20:46and not abuse, alienate the audience by becoming a costume picture.
01:20:52But I made it as though it were happening in its time,
01:20:56and the people were accidentally dressed in our own time.
01:20:59That was the intention, whether it was successful or not is for you to tell me.
01:21:05Sir?
01:21:06I'm working on a project like the trial,
01:21:08some of your other films where you have written and directed.
01:21:12Does Orson Welles, the director, ever get in the way of Orson Welles, the writer,
01:21:16or how closely does one follow the other?
01:21:20I think of it as a happy marriage.
01:21:26Seriously, no, I don't think so.
01:21:29I rewrite when I have an original script,
01:21:32and in Shakespeare, somebody didn't write it.
01:21:34I am rewriting all the time on the set,
01:21:38and the director never gives me any trouble at all.
01:21:42And I think, because I feel a sense of obligation to the script,
01:21:51which is rather more acute because it's my own.
01:21:55Do you find one more difficult than the other to do, writing or directing?
01:22:00Well, everybody finds writing the hardest thing in the world to do.
01:22:04You know, Hemingway used to describe to me how marvelous it was
01:22:10to have spent a morning when it was all true,
01:22:12and it was all coming right, and it was like the greatest lovemaking in the world.
01:22:17It was like a true moment in the arena and all of this.
01:22:21And about a week later, we were forced by our wives to go to the ballet.
01:22:27And I shared with Ernest, and I was his friend so long ago that I called him Ernest.
01:22:34He wasn't even Papa when I first knew him.
01:22:37But I shared with him an intense dislike of the ballet.
01:22:43I only like great ballet dancers at great moments.
01:22:46The rest of the time, nod, you see.
01:22:49And we were sitting there, and I felt him moving around like this, you know.
01:22:57And he suddenly said to me, Christ, I'd rather be writing.
01:23:07Good. That's it.
01:23:14Good night, and thank you very much, everybody.