@BShark
Kane is at least an odd film.
But then all of Welles' films are odd.
Without their oddity, they are not compelling.
Welles said his movies are not about what characters say, or the plot.
They are about cinematic experience.
His persisting value is that he set the standard in a couple of his movies for telling the entirety of the story cinematically. No other popular director, except perhaps, Stan Kubrick, or Disney in Fantasia, has ever come close to telling even one film entirely cinematically.
In Citizen Kane there are many scenes where you think you are listening to exposition and conventional plotting but what you are looking at is taking off into the purely cinematic realm of story told through motion, varying depths of focus, modulated lighting in real time, etc.
I believe almost everyone goes through a phase of saying Welles and CK are not quite as important and brilliant as they once appeared to be. But at some point, when one begins to recognize the cinematic lapses and flawed decents into mundane narrative exposition in other great films, one goes back and watches CK and says to one's self: OH. MY. GOD. He did it for a whole movie? Its insane. It something on the scale of Shakespeare sustaining his language for the entirety of Hamlet, or King Lear.
Alas, Welles was a transitional figure in movies that like Charlie Chaplin got caught straddling two eras and two political periods. When he came to Hollywood, the studio system and the drive to make many films and make some great ones still was functioning and a priority. Uncle Sam and the eastern financial underworld still wanted to fill America and the world with American optimism and values through film. Wholesome propaganda to get us ready for going around the world kicking ass and spreading our empire. By the end of his Hollywood years Uncle Sam and the eastern financial underworld had decided that Hollywood was too powerful and crucial to be left in diversified control. So all the mavericks like Bill Hearst, and Joe Kennedy were forced out by the Lookout Mountain Laboratory crowd and the eastern financial underworld, along with all the New Dealers, Communists and Bellamy clubbing national socialists. It was a huge wake clearing that went way beyond Communist witch hunt. Everyone not directly connected to Uncle and the producer oligopoly was run.The idea was to reduce Hollywood to a producer oligopoly subsidized by Uncle Sam's propaganda agenda for the post WWII era. Great artists like John Ford were literally forced to make propaganda westerns as brilliantly as they could.
Welles made the mistake of wearing his New Deal Heart on his sleeve; that was why he made CK in my opinion. It was really not his style of story. But he appeared to have been encouraged to take Hearst on for the New Dealers and the New Dealers were supposed to protect him. But instead, Uncle, taken over by the National Security state crowd from Yale decided to clear their wakes of the New Dealers. Thus Welle's couldn't work for them and he couldn't work for either Hearst, or Kennedy, because he was a New Dealer. He tried a couple of post war efforts, but each one was taken from him and butchered. He needed also needed sound stages and sizable budgets to stay cinematic. The big money was weaning Hollywood off sound stages and big budgets. TV took westerns. Noir and Horror took the low budget production monies. Welles went to Europe and made proto indie films. .What happened to Welles as he peaked in talent and early experience is analogous to what has happened to Self in college basketball. By the time he peaked and was ready to dominate, the system began denying him the players one would have to have to compete with elite schools being given the long stacks. Welles and Self made some great products based on their hamstrung resources. But neither guy was ever going to be allowed to fulfill his promise.
Welles was the greatest cinematic genius of talking films, IMHO, until Kubrick and Kubrick may hit a slump in appreciation.also. One shot in The Stranger of Welles playing chess and the clock tower out the window in reflection is incomparably brilliant and almost a throw off. Welles seemed unable NOT to tell stories cinematically. Kubrick kept two movies cinematic start to finish: 2001 and Clockwork. Welles did it with CK, Ambersons, and most of Touch of Evil. Both Welles and Kubrick appear to have made some compromises with Uncle Sam to get their budgets political permission from the National Security complex.
But Welles only matters if you value cinematic story telling as the highest accomplishment of movies.Many others have made far better stories. John Huston's The Maltese Falcon, The Asphalt Jungle, and The African Queen dwarf anything Welles did narratively. But Huston never tried to be particularly cinematic.
Regarding Sword of Doom, I am mightily respectful of samurai and sword movies skill in making, but except for some of Kurosawa's movies they just don't stay with me. But oh how I love Toshiro Minfune in anything.
