So much has been written about Orson Welles in the last twenty years that it almost feels as though he were a character created by Scott Fitzgerald, a wonderful idea of something worth aspiring to in an attempt to explain a lost moment of time when the United States still felt new. The legend of Welles is built on a castle made of sand; we’ve seen very little of what is written about most rhapsodically. Much of his greatest work, particularly on the stage, but also his two famously ‘lost’ films, The Magnificent Ambersons and Chimes at Midnight, are only able to be seen as fragments, if at all. The original Welles cut of Ambersons will never be known; butchered and burned by the suits at RKO who found it too ‘arty’. Chimes is available on a dodgy videotape but its true cinematic majesty is only an idea, a whisper. When Welles was at his creative peak, on the stage, we can only be satisfied by rumors, and the remembrances of people who were there, as though it was a Bigfoot sighting.

Credit, then, is due to Richard Linklater for his attempt to portray Welles at the apex of his theatrical fame, during the legendary 1936 staging of ‘Julius Caesar’ for the Mercury Theater. lt was Welles’s idea to present ‘Caesar’ as a harbinger of the fascist movements gaining hold in Europe, as a warning to those who still may have dismissed Hitler as a nuisance, that what was happening in Germany, and elsewhere, was utterly real, and utterly frightening. The beginnings of this production are the backdrop to this charming, if very slight, film, which concerns a young novice, Richard Samuels (Zac Efron, doing his best) who, through sheer luck, is hired by Welles (Christian McKay, in an effective portrayal) to play a small part in the production. Once inside the Mercury, where he is soon smitten by another member, Sonja Jones (Claire Danes), we watch as Richard watches many of the names who would soon become famous either through their own talents (Joseph Cotten), or to their connection to Welles via the Mercury (John Houseman, Norman Lloyd). He swoons a bit at the indifferent Jones, and tags along with Welles when he can.

Much of the action backstage entails the sort of theatrical extravagance that has gotten many a high school drama student beaten up; people trying to outwit, out charm and out seduce the other members of the company. Samuels is a bit of a cipher, which Linklater seems to get very early. While Efron is ostensibly the ‘star’ of the film (likely because it was his name that got this film green lit in the first place), the film is at its best when the camera focuses on Welles, as he bullies his cast, eyes the ladies, and performs in a radio play. A great credit goes to McKay for never allowing his portrayal of Welles to become a caricature; in Tim Robbins’ dreadful Cradle Will Rock, it showed Welles as a lout, and a blowhard, and nothing more.

This film was barely released to theaters last year, then quickly thrown in the garbage by the good people at Warner Brothers, who undoubtedly had a talking dog movie to promote. While it is hardly a lost masterpiece, Me & Orson Welles is a very smart film, similar in look and feel to a mid-period Woody Allen film, small in stature but heartfelt in both its presentation of a time when the American theater presented major works instead of hopeless trivialities, and in its reminder of when artistic ambition was used for the sake of the audience, instead of the investors. – [DVD]

Drama

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 8/31/10

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