The third volume of Simon Callow’s monumental Orson Welles biography, which carries our hero from 1947, when he left the US behind and became a permanent globetrotter, to 1965, when he made Chimes at Midnight, which Callow with some justification, both artistic and biographical, sees as his opus magnum and all things coming full circle. (And of course it was the last movie (minus the mockumentaries like F for Fake) he actually got to finish, while living on another twenty years desperately trying to finish over projects.) The article which alerted me to the publication of One Man Band assumes Callow will present volume IV , covering the last twenty years, but I could understand it if Callow leaves it here; artistically, it’s just so tempting, not to mention that the theatre and film projects description are a great part of the appeal of the biographies, and without these, with “just” the life to describe, part of the motivation must be lost.

(Mind you: if The Other Side of the Wind, aka the nearly finished Welles movie with copies slumbering in archives of money men for decades and then fought over by heirs, actually finally gets released in the next few years, as has been announced there should be a LOT of new material to analyze.)

( Meanwhile, here are the impression of Welles: The European Years )