The best Orson Welles’s documentary movies
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.
A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
8.5/10
Martin Scorsese celebrates American movies from the silent classics to the Hollywood of the seventies.
Lost in La Mancha
7.3/10
Fulton and Pepe's 2000 documentary captures Terry Gilliam's attempt to get The Man Who Killed Don Quixote off the ground. Back injuries, freakish storms, and more zoom in to sabotage the project.
F for Fake
7.7/10
Documents the lives of infamous fakers Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving. De Hory, who later committed suicide to avoid more prison time, made his name by selling forged works of art by painters like Picasso and Matisse. Irving was infamous for writing a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Welles moves between documentary and fiction as he examines the fundamental elements of fraud and the people who commit fraud at the expense of others.
Night of 100 Stars
7.1/10
The most glittering, expensive, and exhausting videotaping session in television history took place Friday February 19, 1982 at New York's Radio City Music Hall. The event, for which ticket-buyers payed up to $1,000 a seat (tax-deductible as a contribution to the Actors' Fund) was billed as "The Night of 100 Stars" but, actually, around 230 stars took part. And most of the audience of 5,800 had no idea in advance that they were paying to see a TV taping, complete with long waits for set and costume changes, tape rewinding, and the like. Executive producer Alexander Cohen estimated that the 5,800 Radio City Music Hall seats sold out at prices ranging from $25 to $1,000. The show itself cost about $4 million to produce and was expected to yield around $2 million for the new addition to the Actors Fund retirement home in Englewood, N. J. ABC is reputed to have paid more than $5 million for the television rights.
Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles
6.9/10
The extraordinary life of Orson Welles (1915-1985), an enigma of Hollywood, an irreducible independent creator: a musical prodigy, an excellent painter, a master of theater and radio, a modern Shakespeare, a magician who was always searching for a new trick to surprise his audience, a romantic and legendary figure who lived only for cinema.
They'll Love Me When I'm Dead
7.4/10
As his life comes to its end, famous Hollywood director Orson Welles puts it all on the line at the chance for renewed success with the film The Other Side of the Wind.
Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind
7.1/10
Explore the personal and professional triumphs and challenges of actor Natalie Wood, which have often been overshadowed by her premature death.
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
7.1/10
Period music, film clips and newsreel footage combined into a visual exploration of the American entertainment industry during the Great Depression.
Rita
7.2/10
Biography of 1940's sex goddess Rita Hayworth.
The Great Buster: A Celebration
7.5/10
A celebration of the life and career of one of America's most influential and celebrated filmmakers and comedians—Buster Keaton—whose singular style and fertile output during the silent era created his legacy as a true cinematic visionary.
Show-Business at War
7/10
A multi-studio effort to show the newsreel audience the progress of the Hollywood war effort.
The Man Who Saw Tomorrow
6/10
Hosted by Orson Welles, this documentary utilizes a grab bag of dramatized scenes, stock footage, TV news clips and interviews to ask: Did 16th century French astrologer and physician Nostradamus actually predict such events as the fall of King Louis XVI, the rise of Napoleon, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? And are there prophecies that have yet to come true?
Directed by John Ford
7.7/10
A documentary about the life and films of director John Ford.
Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff
7.7/10
In 2001 Jack Cardiff (1914-2009) became the first director of photography in the history of the Academy Awards to win an Honorary Oscar. But the first time he clasped the famous statuette in his hand was a half-century earlier when his Technicolor camerawork was awarded for Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus. Beyond John Huston's The African Queen and King Vidor's War and Peace, the films of the British-Hungarian creative duo (The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death too) guaranteed immortality for the renowned cameraman whose career spanned seventy years.
Genocide
7.3/10
The mass murder of Jewish people by the Nazi regime is chronicled, with a warning that anti-Semitism is on the rise and the events of the Holocaust could happen again. The history of European Jewish culture and events before and during the Holocaust are seen in newsreels, photographs, and animated segments. The words of the victims of the era are read, and footage from the liberation os a concentration camp is shown.
The Battle Over Citizen Kane
7.7/10
Documentary about the battle between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst over Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Features interviews with Welles' and Hearst's co-workers also as a relative complete bio of Hearst.
CELEBRAÇÃO - 100 ANOS DO CINEMA NACIONAL
"Portraits and excerpts from Brazilian films from all times. Actors, directors and images that affirm cinema."
A Final Cut for Orson: 40 Years in the Making
7.2/10
A documentary detailing the effort dedicated filmmakers went through to bring Orson Welles final feature film, The Other Side of the Wind into the public conscience
Filmmakers vs. Tycoons
7.1/10
How the cinema industry does not respect the author's work as it was conceived, how manipulates the motion pictures in order to make them easier to watch by an undemanding audience or even how mutilates them to adapt the original formats and runtimes to the restrictive frame of the television screen and the abusive requirements of advertising. (Followed by “Filmmakers in Action.”)
Filming Othello
7.4/10
Filming Othello is a 1978 documentary film directed by and starring Orson Welles about the making of his award-winning 1952 production Othello. The film, which was produced for West German television, was the last completed feature film directed by Welles.
