When going into a biographical film about an already widely-acknowledged genius-level artist, it’s hard not to expect that it could, at any moment, dip into the realm of hagiography—especially one that appears to proudly wear its hero worship on its sleeve, putting both “magician” and “astonishing” in the title. Perhaps the title is a shrewd maneuver by director Chuck Workman, in that Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles, his bio-cum-filmography of the celebrated American auteur actively works against those immediate expectations.
Though not a formally inventive documentary in any sense, Magician culls footage from Welles’ films, archival material (TV and audio clips), and new filmed interview segments with those who lived, worked with, or were inspired by the man once known as a “boy wonder.” The only misstep here is the inclusion of clips from movies that reference or feature Welles—Ed Wood, Heavenly Creatures, RKO 281, Me and Orson Welles. This plays as a sort of pop culture survey that doesn’t add anything particularly illuminating to Welles’ biography.
Magician is chronologically organized, from his birth and upbringing in Kenosha, Wisconsin to his years as a nationally recognized theatre producer, to his eventual foray in to filmmaking with Citizen Kane, to his troubled relationship with studio politics, and to his final moments during an interview on The Merv Griffin Show in 1985, mere hours before his fatal heart attack. In between, Workman constructs a portrait of a man who both bristled against the notion that he was some sort of genius wunderkind, but who was not afraid to explicitly play up his talents to get his way. Or, as Welles himself explains, “I didn’t want money, I wanted authority.”
It is evident that Workman is firmly on the side of the Welles-as-genius camp (and rightfully so). But the director is careful to undercut much of the at-times fawning praise with skepticism about the means Welles used to wield his authority. The best of these is acclaimed theatre and film director Julie Taymor remarking that, though Welles worked his Mercury Theatre troupe like dogs to great effect, it’s hardly an achievement if you have to work your employees to the brink of exhaustion.
Stacking up a lifetime of work in 90 minutes, Magician also reveals Welles as a man acutely aware of his own shortcomings. Be it the overconfidence and downfall of Charles Foster Kane, or the Shakespearean tragedies Macbeth, Othello, and the heretofore unreleased Falstaff adaptation Chimes at Midnight, or even the despicable charm of Harry Lime in Carol Reed’s The Third Man, Welles’ oeuvre (both in front of and behind the camera) is one that explicitly challenges American masculinity. The message may be that perhaps the romantic notion of blustery male genius is not always enough to claw one’s way out of obsolescence.
