Orson Welles: Hello Americans (20 page)

What he was now filming was highly contentious, however. His run-in with Shores and Dr Pessao had done nothing to modify his approach. ‘I have had to lie and
the for the last two or three weeks to keep the local reporters away from the studio,’ wrote Tom Pettey. ‘If they ever got in and saw some of the shanty life we are doing they would write Orson out of town.’ Welles was shooting sequences – ‘dynamite in Rio’ – involving
macumba
, the Brazilian version of voodoo. ‘We have a closed set full of jigiboos and a little set depicting a hut in the hills,’
added Pettey. ‘Relations between Welles and the crew are still bad. There are days when it looks like everything is going to be happy and then he will pull some sudden stunt such as picking up a gal and vanishing in his car for a couple of hours or getting in a row with the person nearest to him and everything is bad for the rest of the day.’ Welles had fired the first assistant director, Leo Reislor,
for causing trouble with the Brazilians with ‘dictatorial tactics’. Shores retaliated by keeping Reislor on the payroll for office work, a carefully calculated piece of provocation. The atmosphere was heavy with suspicion and counter-suspicion. ‘Somebody has been turning in a detailed report on Welles in Rio and it has not been flattering, I am told,’ continued Pettey. ‘Everyone is a suspect
… and I am of the opinion that I’m on the list.’ His job, he tells Drake, is becoming almost impossible. Welles has had so much publicity ‘that he feels he can push any of the newspapermen – Brazilian and American – around and that he is above criticism. He’ll find out.’ Now even Pettey wants to go home. ‘Apparently he wants to handle his own public relations with the aid of Dick and Meltzer. I
never did get into the family. My knees creak too loudly when I bend them.’

The atmosphere had become poisonous, on the brink of physical violence. Lynn Shores had told Meltzer, ‘if he didn’t stop doing things he wasn’t supposed to do that he was going to “punch him in the nose’”. Then he told Dick Wilson that ‘this whole thing has gone far enough’, adding, for good measure, that Welles was trying
to prolong his stay in Brazil just to avoid the draft. Welles,
Shores
continued – the gloves now off for good and all – was ‘just a vagabond who could live out of a trunk, but the rest of the men in the group had responsibilities and homes and people they cared about and no one gave a damn about Welles’. He’d seen fifteen directors like Welles, he said; he’d seen them come and go. He was feeding
half of them right now in Hollywood.

The them-and-us division was now complete. The Mercurians – ‘the family’ – were indeed drawing ever closer together, newly invigorated by Welles’s sudden clarity about the project, evolving the film day by day during gaps in shooting and without reference to any of the crew. Shifra Haran kept the minutes of a series of their brainstorming sessions (those ‘meaningless
conferences’ so despised by Lynn Shores), which give a vivid account of how Welles worked with his team. The atmosphere was entirely democratic, with Welles functioning as a sort of chairman. The occasion for this particular set of meetings was to discuss the use of
chôros
in the film. Are they to be heard during Carnival time? Welles argues that ‘since all of our sex appeal so far is presented
in violent and vigorous form, one interlude is required presenting element of straight
romance
. If this can be included legitimately in a carnival sequence, it should be.’ Meltzer is assigned the task of collecting all available
chôro
recordings and, where possible, sheet music. Since Welles’s point in wanting
chôros
will be visual, his job is to figure out the location for this sequence. The
group then breaks up to continue filming; the discussion resumes the following night. Meltzer spends two hours giving examples of suitable
chôros
with records and at the piano. The evening after, Welles outlines his idea for the proposed sequence, feeling strongly that romance is an absolutely necessary element. He wants an opportunity to show ‘spooners in the moonlight, young people holding hands,
equivalent to couples drifting away from country club dance back in the States’. Later that evening, Welles and Meltzer continue the discussion. Welles has had further ideas about the sequence: ‘orchestra playing at Clube Baile during carnival breaks for a smoke; part of band moves into garden, starts idly playing. Work into Carinhoso.’ Welles has found a girl in Minaes, he says, who has just
arrived in Rio at her own expense. He suggests that she should sing the vocal: ‘not actually singing it, lipping it’. She starts to sing with the combo. Elsewhere in the garden a good-looking boy hears her voice, deserts his girl to look for the girl singer, singing himself as he goes. The boy
and the girl join up and complete the
first
chorus; the girl
singer deserts her boyfriend to sing with
the boy singer. The jilted
boy
and girl then join up for a fast
chôro
dance. The orchestra – now complete – changes tempo.

The scene they are evolving is a very conventional Hollywood one; it could be from almost any Fred and Ginger movie. The only significant difference – and it is an all-important one – is authenticity. Welles and his team are trying to make an old form new, but also to honour
the culture they are depicting. The use of non-professional local talent (even if, as here, there might seem to be some ulterior motive) suggests a very different kind of film from the studio-made RKO musical romances, with their stock casts and conventional sets. The search for suitable locations was a crucial part of the discussion, too: apart from anything else, they could not afford to build
sets. Welles was deputed to check in the files which clubs had extended invitations to them during Carnival – or perhaps, Welles suggests, they can use the Cinedia studio buildings and gardens, choosing camera angles carefully and putting up a sign saying ‘Petropolis Tennis Clube’; all that’s needed is to decorate the gardens with bunting and string up brightly coloured lights. Welles will spend
a couple of hours late the following night, after shooting, working out the angles. There is nothing earth-shaking about these discussions, nothing startlingly visionary: it is a highly recognisable process of group work, collaboration at its most useful and democratic. No doubt Welles made the final decisions and strongly articulated the overall gesture of the film, but he had to do his share of
leg-work, checking the list of clubs that had extended invitations to them for example; as the visual aspect is what concerns him most, he must, likewise, sort out locations. In the discussions, he’s trying to save money and improvise cleverly, something with which during the rest of his career he would become very familiar. Everyone in the group has his say; there is no sign of Lynn Shores, of
course, or even Harry Wild. This is the kitchen cabinet, the Cabal, the inner sanctum. Welles is scarcely slacking, either: the meetings take place all day; then he shoots; then he works out angles. Improvisation was second nature to Welles; the adrenalin engendered was intoxicating to him, and it was an elusive commodity in a studio.

At about this point, at the beginning of May 1942, two months
after Welles’s arrival in Brazil, the group put down in writing for the first time what kind of film they thought
It’s All True
might turn out to be. Herb Drake had already had a few stabs at it: this
was
the official version that they passed on to the front office. The film, the blurb said, would mix comedy and drama. ‘Fact and fiction are served forth in unusual combination in Orson Welles’s
It’s All True
.
²⁶
This screen anthology of varied themes and stories marks a new departure. For the first time a full evening’s entertainment, arranged with the diverse themes and subjects of a popular magazine’s make-up, is combined in one picture …’ In their recapitulation of the story of
Bonito
, the blurb stresses again the original notion of veracity contained in the film’s title:

‘It’s a true
story, this story of Bonito and the little boy who loves him. And the story of the
jangadeiros
who sailed a raft from the Equator to the Tropic of Capricorn is also true – a matter of recent history … burned black from the sun, worn thin as skeletons by hardship and privation, the four fishermen of Fortaleza find themselves heroes. They obtain instant audience with President Vargas, and through
his intervention, they win full union rights and pensions. The Carnival becomes a fête in their honour. Then their mission accomplished, the four
jangadeiros
return to their little fishing village by train, their fares paid by the republic of Brazil.
My Friend Bonito
and
Jangadeiros of Fortaleza
are stories of people.
Carnaval
is music and colour, song and gaiety; a cross section of what goes
on in the very hottest latitude of human hilarity.

The blurb is at great pains to emphasise the film’s accessibility. ‘It is cinema in the grand manner, combining the entertainment features of real life in Brazil with musical comedy, human interest values and constant action … the music of carnival is samba – it’s the soul of the city in hot licks.’ In the film, Welles will follow the course
of the samba:

He takes us to the hills from where the samba comes, the hills above Rio where the poor people of the city have their homes … then comes the opening day of carnival and this samba and other sambas, take possession of the city … the city rocks to their dancing and roars with the reverberations of the drums and the sound of singing. It’s carnival. It is the Samba … in the street outside
is Otelo, the gamin leader of a samba band, who has for these four days of merriment dedicated every fibre of his being to singing and to partisanship.

The cameras follow a little boy around the carnival. As darkness comes over the city, the samba music subsides. The crowds trickle away and, in the deserted square of Praça Onze, Otelo and the little boy are left alone. They are sleeping. The
little boy’s cheeks are wet with tears and Otelo, exhausted, lies beside a broken drum. It is the end of Carnival. ‘Next year it will have its rebirth, with new sambas and new crowds and new frenzy to make wild the streets of Rio.’ All in all, it is a plain, coherent account of an entertaining but scarcely radical film. The core of the film – its claim to importance – would have to be the epic of
the
jangadeiros
, and that was all to come, still being dreamed of.

Meanwhile, a thousand miles away,
The Magnificent Ambersons
and
Journey into Fear
, which Armour had so confidently written off from a financial viewpoint even before they were released, were being respectively mutilated and abandoned by RKO.

WELLES CONTINUED TO
regard
Journey into Fear
as a rather stylish
jeu d’esprit
. Herb Drake had reported to him enthusiastically that the film was ‘a 100% natural and Dolores is marvellous, which I may as well confess is a surprise to me … I think you will be proud of Norman’s work.
¹
Altogether, everything looks successful, elegant and happy.’ But Welles knew
that everything wasn’t quite working as it should have been, and felt that the ending still needed something – that elusive ‘tag’, which would have to be shot in Rio. He communicated his suggestions directly to Norman Foster, praising him extravagantly –
THERE ISN’T A BETTER DIRECTOR ON EARTH THAN YOU ARE AND I LOVE YOU
– and ending by asking Foster with unexpected plaintiveness to record a track
where they all say hello to him when they do the reshoot.
²
I
’
M
LONELY
. Foster replied compliantly –
COMPLETELY AGREE WITH CABLED INSTRUCTIONS FORTUNATELY HAVE ALTERNATE SHOTS COVERING EVERYTHING
– and playfully, as was their wont:
I KNOW A BETTER DIRECTOR AND HOW CAN YOU BE LONELY WITH SO MANY REFLECTORS
.
³
To Jo Cotten, Welles wrote: ‘Everything I have seen of
Journey into Fear
surpasses anything
we had any right to expect for it. You are even better than you were supposed to be … I miss you disastrously.’
⁴
By the same post he wrote to Norman Foster with his proposed rewrite: ‘The dialogue, you will immediately note, is as flawless and sparkling as a rich diamond. There is really nothing to be said of this by way of criticism except, perhaps, that it stinks. In case you think so, wire
what you think and see what that gets you.’
⁵
His spirits are obviously high. ‘Why don’t you ever write me long persuasive and informative letters like this one? I miss you seriously and I love you more than I let on.’

The new end he suggested has an interesting, classically Wellesian flourish: after some outrageous new plot twists, Haki is found in a lobby with Josette (‘This is just a corner
of the lobby such as comes within the capacities of Brazilian set-builders,’ states the stage direction.) A journalist ‘who resembles nobody so much as Richard
Wilson’
asks Haki who she is. ‘A young lady who’s been sporting enough at the last minute to consent to join me for dinner,’ he replies. (‘Need I promise that all this will flow along at a pleasant clip?’ Welles interjects.) ‘Is that the
story?’ asks the journalist. ‘No,’ Haki says, ‘that’s not the story’ – at which he steps into an elevator, turns to the camera and continues, ‘but I sincerely hope it’s a good enough end for the story’. Looks at the audience for a minute, then smiles: ‘Good night, everyone!’ This cheeky little sequence, whose success would entirely depend on Welles’s own outrageous charm, was never shot.

What
is striking about the letter is its merriness, at a point when
The Magnificent Ambersons
was beginning to slip completely out of his control and the Brazilian shoot was in the grip of all-pervading tension and panic. Meanwhile the preview of
Journey into Fear
in Pasadena, as part of a Koernerian double bill with the whimsical Charles Laughton comedy
The Tuttles of Tahiti
, produced an excellent
response. Jack Moss wired Welles that he had overheard very favourable comments.
THEY LOVED EVERYBODY,
he said,
EVEN BANAT
(the part he played himself);
⁶
one card-filler cited ‘fat man with glasses’ as his favourite character. ‘We should have more pictures like these,’ another had said; ‘it is a relief to see something besides army and navy pictures.’ Foster, in a measured letter after the preview,
suggested that some cuts might be in order: the audience seemed to want ‘Jo to turn into Dick Tracey and outwit the Gestapo single-handed’.
⁷
He was also unenthusiastic about Welles’s proposed ending, which he found simply too long. En passant he remarks, quite casually, that he liked
Ambersons
very much at a preview, and is sure that it will be a fine picture – a worryingly cool response from
such a warm and expressive collaborator. ‘We all really miss you every minute,’ Foster continues, lightly slipping in the information that he has been off salary since 26 March. ‘Not that I care as long as I’m a Mercury jerkery. Will you please make a tag of Col Haki, nose and all … but keep it brief unlike this letter.’ Welles replied, ‘I can’t be very intelligent about
Journey
because I haven’t
seen it … also it does seem to me as though I can’t agree with anybody about anything any more.
⁸
The rest of the world must be going crazy. I think the tag I sent you was a perfect catharsis, but then as I say I haven’t seen the film put together …. I love you with all my heart.’