Orson Welles, Vol I (83 page)

Having allayed the anxieties of students of English literature, he next addresses those concerned with the box office: ‘Story appeal: Welles and the girl … Mr Welles is a handsome young man as you know,
and we feel that it is important in advertising that he is a broad, muscular, tanned, and handsome leading man … we feel once we get them in the theatre they will go away completely thrilled and satisfied by the film even though it is not exactly in the boy-meets-girl tradition.’ In a description that would certainly have surprised Conrad, Drake avers that the ‘Theory of the story is two moderns
who have a hell of an adventure in the dark places of the earth. The idea is more or less that this is the God-damnedest relation between a man and a woman ever put on the screen. It is definitely not “Love in the Tropics”. Everyone and everything is just a little bit off normal, just a little bit oblique – all this being the result of
the strange nature of their work – that is, operating as exploiters
in surroundings not healthy for a white man.’

They were feeling their way; the script as finally realised abandoned a great deal of this, and added sequences of great visual audacity. The one thing that didn’t change was the thing Drake held to the last – and even then he hesitated to come right out with it. ‘An important selling angle – not only the stars and the story but the
audience
play
a part in this film … it will be a definite experience, a completely unprecedented experience for the audience since it will see a story told in an entirely different way … as Welles develops his method, we will be able to talk about it, but it is still somewhat in the experimental stage so he doesn’t wish to mention it until we can find a convenient formula to express its meaning.’ The secret
innovation was that much discussed, almost never deployed technique of the Subjective Camera: the camera is an I. Welles became deeply intrigued by its possibilities, convinced that it was an essentially cinematic notion. This would show them! His final script is perhaps the most thorough-going attempt to realise the technique ever made.

What it is, in fact, is a literal translation of the
First Person Singular technique of the radio programmes; so Houseman’s assertion to Ward Wheelock that they would be translating the formula intact into film terms (‘Orson’s function as actor, director, master of ceremonies and narrator in this picture identical to his function on radio show’) was nothing but the truth. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is Orson Welles’
¹⁴
is the first line of the script,
over a black screen. ‘Don’t worry, there’s just nothing to look at for a while. You can close your eyes if you want to, but – please open them when I tell you to.’ This magician’s patter leads the audience, their eyes now open, into the notion of the subjective camera: they become a canary in a cage. On the screen is Welles’s mouth, enormously magnified, seen through the bars of the cage. An
enormous gun appears, is pointed directly at the camera and is fired; the screen goes to black again. ‘Everything you see on the screen is going to be seen through your eyes and you’re somebody else,’ Welles’s voice explains. The first somebody else is a prisoner being taken to the electric chair and executed. The screen goes into a blinding red stain; the camera blurs, there is a fade to black.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen, there is no cause for alarm. This is only a motion picture. Of course you haven’t committed murder and believe me, I wouldn’t electrocute you for the world. Give yourself your right name, please. It might help. All right, now, I think you see what I mean. You’re not going to see this
picture – this picture is going to see you.’ Frank Brady describes the rest of this introductory
section: ‘a human eye, Magritte-like, with clouds reflected in it, filling the entire scene and then transposing into the view of a golfer who hits a ball; an interior of a motion picture theatre seen from Welles’s perspective on the screen, so that all the members of the audience are cameras.’ Welles says: ‘I hope you get the idea.’ A human eye appears on the left of the screen, an equals
sign appears next to it, followed by a capital I. ‘Finally, the eye winks and we … Dissolve.’ Then, and only then, does
Heart of Darkness
itself actually take to the screen.

The subjective eye is Marlow’s, and a dozen amusing tricks are played as he lights cigarettes, gets down onto the floor, and is even, at a certain crucial point, glimpsed in a mirror. Marlow, was, of course, to be played
by Welles, as was Kurtz; add to that the whimsically didactic introduction, and you are never out of Welles’s presence, whether vocal or physical. ‘One-man picture’ indeed. Welles was simultaneously trying to reinvent the camera, do justice to a great story, make a film that was highly entertaining and politically provocative, and provide himself with several very interesting roles. So much artistic
ambition is astonishing. Certainly no one else in Hollywood was capable of a tenth as much. His ability to fulfil all these ambitions is in some question: the screenplay itself, while full of extraordinarily stimulating directions, has newly written dialogue of numbing dreadfulness, replacing Conrad’s mystery with melodrama. Kurtz finally confronts Marlow in these words: ‘Understand this much
– Everything I’ve done up here has been done according to the method of my government – Everything. There’s a man now in Europe trying to do what I’ve done in the jungle. He will fail. In his madness he thinks he can’t fail – but he will. A brute can only rule brutes. Remember the meek. I’m a great man, Marlow, really great – greater than great men before me – I know the strength of the enemy its
terrible weakness –’ and so on, for some pages. This could come from the weaker passages of
The Green Goddess
. The introduction to the subjective camera, though absolutely charming in itself, is a curious way in which to start a film as complex and sombre as
Heart of Darkness
. It is almost impossible to see how that story could follow that wink of Welles’s. As for the subjective camera technique
in general, though it is developed, as Jonathan Rosenbaum points out, with some complexity and carefully planned not to draw attention to itself (though the introduction of course does just that), it is anyone’s guess as to whether it could have actually been made to work. None the less, the screenplay was a fearless, provocative
and immensely talented achievement. It was also, of course, very
expensive, which proved to be its undoing.

At first, however, he got a go-ahead, Schaefer and the RKO board approved the project. He started casting immediately. There was difficulty in finding the right actress for the part of Elsa. His ideal, Dita Parlo, the incandescent star of
L’Atalante
, was in Europe and hard to get hold of; Ingrid Bergman, newly arrived in Hollywood, demanded too much
money; Carole Lombard turned the part down. They continued to search. This was the only casting problem, however: all the other roles had been specifically conceived for ‘his’ company, that informal troupe who had been with him on and off on his three-year meteoric journey, in triumph and in disaster, on stage and in the studio, loosely called the Mercury Company. Not one of them had ever stood
in front of a camera. He made a big feature of bringing a group of fresh new faces to the screen, calculating at the same time, of course, that directing experienced movie actors when he had never stood in front of a camera himself might have been a challenge even to
his
confidence. The roles were distributed to actors from various areas of his working life: Edgar Barrier, John Emery, Erskine
Sandford, Gus Schilling, Frank Readick from the recently disbanded
Five Kings
company; Everett Sloane and Ray Collins from radio work, Norman Lloyd and George Coulouris from the Mercury, and Chubby Sherman (having forgiven him, presumably, and been forgiven) from boyhood days. Another cooled friendship was restored in his concept of the Steersman (the African who falls overboard, whose life Marlow
in the original story calls a greater loss than that of Kurtz); he wrote the role for Jack Carter, his Macbeth and Mephostophilis, companion of those steamy Harlem nights. The character is written up into a sort of Charon figure – as he had written all the roles with the specific actors’ qualities in mind, quirky characters encountered along the way, as Marlow chugs steadily closer to the nameless
horror.

All the actors were duly contracted, while Welles worked closely with his art director, the story-board artists and the make-up department. Locations in Louisiana were scouted, and found wanting; tests to explore the subjective camera went ahead (none too successfully); more conventional screen-tests for make-up were undertaken, revealing Welles’s wild-eyed, scarred and bearded Kurtz;
the casting department wrestled with Welles’s request for 3,000 black extras. There were, they reckoned, no more than a thousand black extras in the whole of Los Angeles, and the cost of convincingly making up white people was considered prohibitive. RKO threw
itself into preparing to realise the extraordinary and complex document that was the screenplay for
Heart of Darkness
with its usual thoroughness,
despite alarm bells from the accounts department, which foresaw costs of over a million dollars. Suddenly, in the midst of all these preparations, Welles had a telegram from Schaefer, then in Europe: the date was 1 September 1939. The German army had just marched into Poland; France and England were about to declare war. Schaefer, like the good businessman that he was, was worried about
business. Blackouts, curfews: it could only spell bad news for sales.

‘All this severe blow as you of course know,’
¹⁵
wired Schaefer, ‘and puts us in position where I must make personal plea to you to eliminate every dollar and nickel possible from heart of darkness script and yet do everything to save entertainment value stop never in my twentyfive years in industry have we been so confronted
with need using our ingenuity and eliminating all material not necessary for story value stop of course this is not encouraging to your good self but believe there is nothing else I can do … we must be prepared for the worst sincere regards’. Welles rallied to this heartfelt request with equal charm (but a fortnight later): ‘dear mr schaefer: you have my word because of conditions as you explained
every cent will be counted twice in heart of darkness stop no single luxury will be indulged only absolutely essentials to effectiveness and potency of story stop because you have entrusted me with full authority in this i will be the more vigilant and painstaking about costs have already cut two production sequences from script and am working on innumerable changes in production method and
approach stop please believe every possible effort will be made to justify confidence expressed in times when confidence is expensive stop am trying very hard to be worth it regards orson’
¹⁶
which is Welles at his most boyishly ingratiating; it must have sealed their friendship. It is interesting to note the form of address: Orson/Mr Schaefer – the correct way for a nicely brought-up young man
to address an older man. ‘Thanks so much for your wire of the 19th,’
¹⁷
wrote back Schaefer. ‘It heartens us very much and comes at a time when we appreciate such assurances of co-operation … wishing you the best of success in your undertaking … I am sincerely yours, G.J. Schaefer.’ They would return to the original budget ceiling of $500,000.

Their perfect understanding was not enough to prevent
rumbles from the outside world. The European crisis was a threat to all the Hollywood studios. The general tightening of belts and trimming
of programmes caused widespread anxiety, which inevitably led to renewed focus on the fledgling outsider, the smart-ass who hadn’t even managed to announce the subject of his first offering. Wilkerson, editor of the influential industry paper,
The Hollywood
Reporter
, wrote in his column ‘Trade Views’: ‘If Mr George Schaefer had come out with an announcement … that the Orson Welles picture was too much of a gamble to take during these critical times … the RKO president would have been a big guy in town yesterday. But Mr Schaefer evidently does not think that an investment of $750,000 or more with an untried producer, writer, director, with a questionable
story and a rumored cast of players who, for the most part, have never seen a camera, is a necessary cut in these critical times.’
¹⁸
The sniping continued. Herb Drake wrote sharply to a columnist who had implied that Welles was twiddling his thumbs by the poolside, describing how he had gone about producing
Heart of Darkness
screenplay: pasting the pages in the book, the discussions of shooting
and character, the sketches for the art director; and the final shooting script. ‘I would say Welles has produced between 700 and 800 pages of double-spaced typing on 8 × 10 paper and another book of sketches. When I saw him on Sunday he said he had only four hours’ work left on the script.’ Drake was a pro, not a man to waste his time; he wrote at such length in such detail because it was crucial
to counteract the growing rumours that the script was either unfilmable or – even more widespread – that it did not exist at all.

Welles still had no relationship with the movie community as such. Whispers about his private life had been stilled by his new relationship with Dolores del Rio, the first in a succession of iconically beautiful consorts who were always to be found at his side for
the rest of his life. They met at a party thrown by Jack Warner; he had, he told her, been in love with her since the age of eleven, and knew that one day they would be lovers (this pattern was repeated with his second wife, Rita Hayworth, whom he had determined to marry after seeing her photograph on the cover of
Life
magazine, making him some sort of serial fetishist). Del Rio’s image had exerted
such a powerful hold on him that, spotting her in a New York night-club, he had followed her out of the club and some way down the street. She was married to the famous art director Cedric Gibbons, some years older than her; finding herself violently drawn to the twenty-four-year-old Welles, her junior by ten years, she determined immediately to divorce her husband. Her friend Fay Wray notes
that ‘she apparently didn’t consider having an
affair with Orson, but thought she must leave Cedric, get a divorce. She seemed herself a lady of purity.’
¹⁹
She did, of course, start an affair with Welles, but only after informing her husband that it was all over between them; divorce followed in the fullness of time. Sexual attraction, though undoubtedly strong, does not seem to have been the
essential ingredient in the relationship between her and Welles; she seemed to have had all too much of that with Gibbons. ‘He wants only to talk about sex,’ she told the judge when filing her application for divorce. Welles reported to Barbara Leaming that del Rio was as perfectly composed in bed as out of it. What was inspiring for Welles was to be associated with her glamour and beauty. ‘He was
goggle-eyed that she would even hang around,’
²⁰
said James Morcom, Welles’s set designer on
Five Kings
. But equally, ‘she was so in awe of him and his genius, and he
loved
that, lapped it up.’ She gave him two things Virginia could no longer provide: glamour plus adulation; Virginia knew him too well, had known him too long. She did not sufficiently confirm the image of him in which he needed
so deeply to believe.