The best Orson Welles’s comedy movies

Orson Welles

Orson Welles

06/05/1915- 10/10/1985
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Orson Welles’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Orson Welles.
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Casino Royale

Casino Royale
5/10
Sir James Bond is called back out of retirement to stop SMERSH. In order to trick SMERSH, James thinks up the ultimate plan - that every agent will be named 'James Bond'. One of the Bonds, whose real name is Evelyn Tremble is sent to take on Le Chiffre in a game of baccarat, but all the Bonds get more than they can handle.

History of the World: Part I

History of the World: Part I
6.8/10
  • Genre: Comedy
  • Release: 12/06/1981
  • Character: Narrator
An uproarious version of history that proves nothing is sacred – not even the Roman Empire, the French Revolution and the Spanish Inquisition.

Chimes at Midnight

Chimes at Midnight
7.6/10
The culmination of Orson Welles’s lifelong obsession with Shakespeare’s robustly funny and ultimately tragic antihero, Sir John Falstaff; the often soused friend of King Henry IV’s wayward son Prince Hal. Integrating elements from both Henry IV plays as well as Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Catch-22

Catch-22
7.1/10
  • Genre: ComedyDramaWar
  • Release: 24/06/1970
  • Character: Brigadier General Dreedle
A bombardier in World War II tries desperately to escape the insanity of the war. However, sometimes insanity is the only sane way to cope with a crazy situation.

The Muppet Movie

The Muppet Movie
7.6/10
A Hollywood agent persuades Kermit the Frog to pursue a career in Hollywood. On his way there he meets his future muppet crew while being chased by the desperate owner of a frog-leg restaurant!

La Classe américaine

La Classe américaine
7.9/10
  • Genre: ComedyTV Movie
  • Release: 31/12/1993
  • Character: Self (archive footage)
George Abitbol, the classiest man in the world, dies tragically during a cruise. With his last breath, he whispers: “Shitty world.” The director of an American newspaper, wondering about the meaning of these intriguing final words, asks his three best investigators, Dave, Peter and Steven, to solve the mystery… (16 French actors dub scenes from various Warner Bros. films to create a parody of Citizen Kane, 1941.)

Don Camillo

Don Camillo
7.6/10
  • Genre: Comedy
  • Release: 28/03/1952
  • Character: Voice of Christ
In a village of the Po valley where the earth is hard and life miserly, the priest and the communist mayor are always fighting to be the head of the community. If in secret, they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it is dividing the country. And when the mayor wants his "People's House"; the priest wants his "Garden City" for the poor. Division exist between the richest and the poorest, the pious and the atheists and even between lovers. But if the people are hard as the country, they are good in the bottom of there heart.

Ro.Go.Pa.G.

Ro.Go.Pa.G.
6.8/10
  • Genre: ComedyDrama
  • Release: 19/02/1963
  • Character: The 'Director' (segment "La ricotta")
This consists of four short films by different directors. Rosselini's 'Chastity' deals with an attractive air hostess who receives the unwelcome attentions of a middle aged American. Godard's 'New World' illustrates a post-apocalypse world the same as the pre-apocalyptic one but for an enigmatic change in attitude in most people, including the central character's girlfriend. In Pasolini's 'La Ricotta' (Curd Cheese), a lavish film about the life of Jesus Christ is being made in a poor area. The impoverished people subject themselves to various indignities in the name of moviemaking in order to win a little food. The central character is hoisted up on a cross for filming, and dies there. Finally comes Gregoretti's 'Free Range Chicken' in which a family of the materialist culture inadvertantly illustrate the cynical, metallic voiced doctrine of a top sales theorist.

Royal Affairs in Versailles

Royal Affairs in Versailles
6.8/10
Witty narration follows the history of Versailles Palace; founded by Louis XIII, enlarged by autocratic Louis XIV, whose personal affairs and amours, and those of his two successors, are followed in more detail to the start of the Revolution, after which the story is brought rapidly up to date. A huge cast plays mainly historical persons who appear briefly.

Start the Revolution Without Me

Start the Revolution Without Me
6.4/10
  • Genre: ComedyHistory
  • Release: 14/08/1970
  • Character: The Narrator
An account of the adventures of two sets of identical twins, badly scrambled at birth, on the eve of the French Revolution. One set is haughty and aristocratic, the other poor and somewhat dim. They find themselves involved in palace intrigues as history happens around them. Based, very loosely, on Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities," Dumas's "The Corsican Brothers," etc.

Follow the Boys

Follow the Boys
5.9/10
During World War II, all the studios put out "all-star" vehicles which featured virtually every star on the lot--often playing themselves--in musical numbers and comedy skits, and were meant as morale-boosters to both the troops overseas and the civilians at home. This was Universal Pictures' effort. It features everyone from Donald O'Connor to the Andrews Sisters to Orson Welles to W.C. Fields to George Raft to Marlene Dietrich, and dozens of other Universal players.

Twelve Plus One

Twelve Plus One
5.8/10
  • Genre: Comedy
  • Release: 07/10/1969
  • Character: Markan
Mario, a young philanderer, receives 13 antique chairs in a bad state by inheritance and decides to sell off them to get some money. Afterwards he gets to know that one of them contains documents worth a lot of money. So he begins an adventurous trip to regain possession of the chair. On the way he meets many strange people who would like to help or to swindle him.

Slapstick (Of Another Kind)

Slapstick (Of Another Kind)
2.5/10
A rich, beautiful couple give birth to deformed alien twins who, when their heads are together, are the smartest kids on the planet.

Too Much Johnson

Too Much Johnson
5.7/10
  • Genre: Comedy
  • Release: 11/11/1938
  • Character: Keystone Kop
This film was not intended to stand by itself, but was designed as the cinematic aspect of Welles' Mercury Theatre stage presentation of William Gillette's 1894 comedy about a New York playboy who flees from the violent husband of his mistress and borrows the identity of a plantation owner in Cuba who is expecting the arrival of a mail order bride. The film component of the performance was ultimately never screened due to the absence of projection facilities at the venue. Long-believed to be lost, a workprint was discovered in 2008 and the film had its premiere in 2013.

Hot Money

Hot Money
6.4/10
  • Genre: ComedyCrime
  • Release: 01/01/1983
  • Character: Sheriff Paisley
Burt, a clever ex-con, has changed his identity and has managed to land a job as a deputy in small town in upstate New York. On the 4th of July, while the drunken Sheriff Paisley is busy with the local parade and festivities, Burt quietly steals a million dollars in cash from the cellar safe in the local rich old widow's house. Unsuspected, Burt makes plans to live the rest of his life in the lap of luxury in a far off place with his attractive girlfriend, local hash house waitress Jeanette. But when a crisis of conscience hits him like a wave of ice cold water, he starts to think twice about his dastardly deed, and how that purloining of the old lady's money is wrongly affecting his friends as well as innocent locals. But will Burt do the right thing?

Someone to Love

Someone to Love
5.9/10
  • Genre: Comedy
  • Release: 11/09/1987
  • Character: Danny's Friend
A Hollywood film director assembles a group of friends and strangers for a social gathering on Valentines Day in a deserted movie theater where he interviews each one on their opinions on love and loneliness.

Get to Know Your Rabbit

Get to Know Your Rabbit
5.3/10
  • Genre: Comedy
  • Release: 01/06/1972
  • Character: Mr. Delasandro
A young businessman goes to a magic expert to learn hardness and skill with his cynical and greedy collaborators. He becomes a very good tap dancer, but will he be able to get free of his old boss?

Man, Beast, and Virtue

Man, Beast, and Virtue
6.6/10
  • Genre: Comedy
  • Release: 01/01/1952
  • Character: Captain Perella, the Beast
Paolino is having an affair with Assunta Perella while her husband, Captain Perella, is away. Disaster strikes when Assunta becomes pregnant just as her husband suddenly returns. In order to avoid his wrath, Paolino plans for Captain Perella to spend the night with her so he thinks the child is his. [Based off Wikipedia]

I'll Never Forget What's'isname

I'll Never Forget What's'isname
6.2/10
  • Genre: ComedyDrama
  • Release: 18/12/1967
  • Character: Jonathan Lute
Advertising golden boy Andrew Quint is fed up with his fabulously successful life. In very dramatic fashion, he quits his job to return to writing for a small literary magazine. He wants to leave his former life behind, going as far as saying good-bye to his wife and mistresses. He finds, however, that it's not so easy to escape the past.

It Happened One Christmas

It Happened One Christmas
6/10
  • Genre: ComedyTV Movie
  • Release: 11/12/1977
  • Character: Henry F. Potter
It's Christmas Eve 1944 in the small town of Bedford Falls, New York. A despondent and suicidal Mary Bailey Hatch is praying for guidance on what to do about an incident no fault of her own which threatens her name and the community standing of her longtime family business, the Bailey Building and Loan, which she took over after the passing of her father. What Mary does not know is that most in town, including her husband George Hatch and their children, are also praying for her. All the prayers are heard by Joseph, God's gatekeeper of prayers. As there are no other angels available on such a busy day, Joseph assigns Clara Oddbody, angel second class (i.e. she has yet to receive her wings), to Mary's case, which he reluctantly does as Clara has never been assigned a case on her own in the two hundred years she's been in heaven for good reason.

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