Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles

Cohen Media Group | Release Date: December 10, 2014

4.6	USER SCORE Mixed or average reviews based on 5 Ratings

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oDjentoJul 20, 2015

For a documentary about one of the most extraordinary directors of all time you’d expect a pretty extraordinary and interesting documentary. Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles is anything but that.
Going in to thisFor a documentary about one of the most extraordinary directors of all time you’d expect a pretty extraordinary and interesting documentary. Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles is anything but that.
Going in to this documentary you’d be thinking there would be an expansive plethora of facts and examples of what made his work stand out during the time he was directing, writing and acting. Instead of delving deep into his work and dissecting the anatomy of his scenes and directing magic, the documentary acts more as a bundle of random opinions and facts that make the documentary seem like it could be a person reading his Wikipedia page. There is no depth here, and there is no proper exploration of what he was trying to do as a director and how he accomplished his cinematic wonders
In addition to this facts were occasionally brought in and then not elaborated on, as if they were made as filler, and because of the junkyard of which the film was laid out the editing is nauseating to watch as it flicks from image to person at an almost incomprehensible speed that it is hard to keep up with. Because of this you end up not really digesting what is being told to you, especially when at times the editing happens so fast you can’t even read what was on screen. The whole editing process of the documentary feels clunky.
The documentary does luckily offer enough interesting tid-bits of information that it will warrant the viewer enough interest to watch and seek out more of his films, and maybe even do some more research on the film icon themselves; but that doesn’t help the documentary as we should be learning from it.
There are a few interesting facts that make the viewing almost tolerably average and luckily does show some good scenes from his films that give some visual insight into how ahead of the time they were. However, despite these clips they were never really followed up on and explained properly, they were more commented on briefly and in on some information given of Orson it could be seen almost anecdotally.
Best summed up by Jeannette Catsoulis from The New York Times:
Like one of those machines that can inhale a car and spit out a tidy cube of squashed components, Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles is a near-indigestible lump of clips and quips and snipped opinions
This documentary does not do the man justice.
4.5/10… Expand

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