The Cinema of Orson Welles

New York: Museum of Modern Art. Poor. (c.1961). First Edition. Softcover. [a reading/reference copy only, worn and soiled and heavily tape-repaired along the spine (externally and internally)]. (B&W photographs) A16-page monograph, published in conjunction with MoMA's retrospective of Welles's films -- essentially just an annotated filmography, covering all the director's features from CITIZEN KANE through TOUCH OF EVIL (eight films, plus a short bit on JOURNEY INTO FEAR), with a brief summary of his major unrealized film projects. CITIZEN KANE - - then a mere 20 years old -- already must have seemed like ancient history to its creator, whose Hollywood career was by then in a shambles. (It's almost unbearably poignant to read, as Bogdanovich writes, that "now completing a modern film version of 'Don Quixote,' Welles at 46(!) is at the height of his creative powers. Asked of his future projects, he says, 'My only project is to find money to work. I need money to make movies -- film is the most expensive paintbox ever invented -- if I were a writer or a painter I'd only need a pen or a couple of tubes of paint. I have made only eight films in twenty years. I will go wherever there is work.'") This little booklet, the first of three such monographs that Bogdanovich produced under the MoMA imprint, was his first stand-alone publication. He was then 22, and just getting started as a critic/ historian -- with his own somewhat Wellesian career arc, of early directorial triumphs followed by lesser works and personal struggles, still ahead of him. .