Orson Welles | "DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!"

(thanks, felixxxx999!)

Orson Welles may have not directed Journey Into Fear, but it sure looks and feels as if he was behind the lens or at least had a hand in setting up a few scenes. Featuring a bunch of Mercury Productions actors (Cotten, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloane, Agnes Moorehead and others), a snappy, script by Welles, Joseph Cotten, Richard Collins and Ben Hecht (based on the Eric Ambler novel), the film is a spy drama with a fun cast and some great, memorable sequences that keep you hooked in right from the clever pre-credit opening sequence.

Cotten plays Howard Graham, an American munitions expert (or is that arms dealer?) who has to go on the run from a rather pesky Nazi assassin after an attempt is made on his life. Well, by “on the run”, the film means Graham has to temporarily separate from his wife (Ruth Warrick) and travel by steamship from Istanbul to Batumi (a Russian port city) to finalize a deal with the Turkish Navy. Wait, Turkey had a Navy back then? You learn something new every day, I suppose… Continue reading →

OK, I’ll admit I fell asleep the first two times I saw this astounding “documentary” (and final directorial effort) by the late, great Orson Welles… but not because the film was boring. Hell, Welles’ own “trailer” for the film clocks in at over nine minutes… for a film that’s under an hour and a half long. Even more amazing, it’s not even a trailer, but a separate film shot around the same time that ended up not being shown to promote the film before it vanished for a bit and was later found and restored (*whew!*).

Um, where was I again? Oh yeah: On the contrary, dear readers, I’d been really looking forward to seeing this film each time, but in both cases, it was shown very late at night (actually, very early in the morning) and I’d been awake both times for a bit longer than I’d expected. The third time wasn’t the charm, either, as it was on again at a very late hour and I took a nap in front of the TV so I’d be refreshed and ready to go. Of course, guess who slept through the first hour of the film? Did I mention that I don’t have a TiVO or other fancy (or dated) video recording device? *Sigh*…

And so it went until attempt number four…

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