Parky at the Pictures (DVD 13/8/2015)

Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963) is a deeply personal meditation on the film business. Having fretted himself into a creative cul-de-sac in a bid to match the success of La Dolce Vita (1960), Fellini decided to abandon the allegorical avenue and simply pass his struggle to an on-screen alter ego and let him come up with a solution to his crisis of inspiration. Fortunately, co-writers Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Brunello Rondi were on the same wavelength and the resulting picture went on to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, as well as Best Costume Design (Black-and-White) for Pierre Gherardi (who also doubled as art director). Subsequently, the outline concept has been borrowed by Paul McCartney for Peter Webb's Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984) and Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit's musical Nine, which was adapted for the screen by Rob Marshall in 2009.

Marcello Mastroianni is a 43 year-old film-maker in pre-production for his latest picture. He is supposed to be making a science-fiction epic, but he is running low on inspiration and decides to go to a spa to rejuvenate his batteries and enjoy a little peace and quiet away from the personal and professional pressures besetting him. However, his whereabouts are soon discovered and producer Guido Alberti, production supervisor Cesarino Miceli Picardi and production director Bruno Agostini all have a million and one questions that need immediate answers. Moreover, both wife Anouk Aimée and mistress Sandra Milo have checked into his hotel and demand his attention.

As Mastroianni tries to escape from the demands being placed upon him, he lets his imagination wander and he dreams of his long-deceased conservatively Catholic parents, Giuditta Rissone and Annibale Ninchi, as well as fantasising and reminiscing about the people, places and events that have shaped him as a man and as an artist. At one point, he even imagines himself cracking a whip to the various troublesome women in his life. Slowly, an idea begins to form. But assistant Mario Conocchia, critic-cum-screenwriter Jean Rougeul and French actress Madeleine LeBeau all need a quick word, and even best friend Mario Pisu is more interested in showing off new girlfriend Barbara Steele than supporting his pal. Even esteemed film star Claudia Cardinale causes Mastroianni grief, as he has cast her as an idealised woman in the film and she has yet to report for work.

Realising it's becoming more difficult to distinguish between the thoughts and the reality happening around him, Mastroianni concludes that he has lost control and is all ready to announce he is quitting the picture when Alberti hosts a press conference on the set of the spaceship launch pad that has been constructed at the studio. The assembled are perplexed that Mastroianni seems to detached from his project and they file away muttering about his artistic demise after he crawls under a table and puts a gun to his temple. But, as they leave, it dawns on him that the travails he has been going through would be the ideal subject for his film and that it should feature everyone who has played a part in his life. Suddenly, he sees himself as a ringmaster surrounded by his past, his present and a conditional future in which anything would be possible. And, as he leads his cast of characters on a merry dance to the tune of his flute, he realises that art does not merely imitate life, it is life.

Such a brief synopsis can do scant justice to the freewheeling audacity of a film that was titled to reflect the fact that the six features and three shorts that Fellini had directed to this point in his career amounted to 7½ full-length pictures. Majestically photographed by Gianni Di Venanzo and drifting with deceptive insouciance to the catchy melodies of Nino Rota, Mastroianni's flights of fancy touch upon numerous topics with a skittish superficiality that Fellini uses to mock the shallow world of the movies and the fallacy that worthwhile entertainment has to centre on SFX-laden escapism set in outer space rather than individuals and ideas and memories and emotions.

Dismissed by some as self-indulgent and chauvinist, this is very much a reflection of the Italian male psyche in the early 1960s and it has to be remembered that, even though Mastroianni represents his alter ego, Fellini is commenting upon types and attitudes rather than condoning them. Indeed, Fellini makes himself the butt of several jokes, as he allows everyone from the humblest member of the crew to Mastroianni's friends and lovers to point out his shortcomings. Moreover, he mischievously alludes to the iconic image of the flying Christ statue at the start of La Dolce Vita in the opening shot and even has his conflicted director rising as if from the dead after three days of entombment.

In setting the climax on a futuristic soundstage, Fellini is also contrasting the vast sets of the superspectacles that had put Italian cinema on the map in the 1910s with the more intimate stories of the neo-realist era and suggesting that, while blockbusters might draw the crowds and make money, cinema will only have artistic relevance if it remains a personal statement by its maker. Thus, while Fellini employs zooms and jump cut to pay homage to the nouvelle vague, he appropriates its self-reflexive techniques (most notably in the scenes depicting the paraphernalia of movie-making that draw attention to the very filmicness of 8½) to explore his own preoccupations with ageing, regret, love, responsibility, reputation, authorship, collaboration and legacy. In the process, he creates a cerebral spectacle about the evolution of a new aesthetic that was daringly ambitious for its day and remains pretty much unsurpassed five decades later.

If frustration is the watchword of Fellini's thesis, excess is key to Marco Ferreri's scathing satire, La Grande Bouffe (1973). As it was denied a certificate because of its perceived perversions and affronts to good taste when it was first submitted to the BBFC 42 years ago, this enduringly controversial picture had never been on general release in the UK until earlier this year. Fortunately, Arrow have righted a cinematic wrong that is all the more mystifying for the fact that censor Stephen Murphy took his stance at a time when he was blithely passing copious amounts of softcore pornography (a good deal of which found its way to Studio X on Walton Street). However, he was not the only one to take offence at a picture that is now available on DVD. Mastroianni's then-partner Catherine Deneuve was so dismayed by his participation that she reportedly refused to speak to him for a week after she saw the picture.

After seeming to fall out with his wife, chef Ugo Tognazzi has decided to commit suicide. His judge friend, Philippe Noiret, is no more content with life, as he is so under the thumb of childhood nanny Michèle Alexandre that she uses him to ease her sexual frustrations, while prohibiting him from seeing other women. Rakish Alitalia pilot Marcello Mastroianni has no problem finding dates and it is clear that the stewardess carrying a large Parmigiano off his plane is one of his recent conquests. He is heading for a weekend at Noiret's villa, where the party will be completed by effeminate TV producer Michel Piccoli, who is tired of existence after struggling to get over his divorce.

Caretaker Henri Piccoli has filled the house with ingredients for a grand feast and the quartet are left alone after Noiret politely declines a post in China offered to him by visiting embassy official Simon Tchao. Left to their own devices, the friends raid the provisions, with Mastroianni and Tognazzi stuffing themselves with oysters. However, they quickly decide that they need a little female companionship at their banquet and they make arrangements for three prostitutes to join them.

The following morning, breakfast is interrupted by middle-aged teacher Andréa Ferréol, who wishes to show her class the lime tree in the garden that was reputed to have inspired a French poet. Seeming to welcome the distraction, the four men show the guests around the grounds and invite them to lunch. They takes a shine to Ferréol and ask her to stay for dinner and she agrees, even though Noiret feels it would be inappropriate for her to share her table with working girls Solange Blondeau, Florence Giorgetti and Monique Chaumette.

As Tognazzi prepares the meal, Noiret tries to flirt with Ferréol and proposes marriage. However, events take an unpleasant turn when Piccoli becomes so bloated with food that he causes the waste pipe from the toilet to explode and the entire villa is flooded with excrement. The incident causes the prostitutes to flee at first light. But Ferréol seems aware that the friends have made a bizarre pact and, after some discreet negotiation, she agrees to help them.

Mastroianni spends the day repairing an old Bugatti roadster he has found in the garage. Yet, despite enjoying the challenge of working on the car, he vows to drive out into a snowstorm in the dead of night and the remaining trio find him frozen in the driver's seat the following morning. They debate whether to bury him, but Noiret says it would be illegal to inter him without the proper documentation and they decide to prop him up in the cold room in full view of the dining table, so he can continue to be part of things. He soon has company, however, as Piccoli gets the giggles thinking about the toilet episode and collapses on the terrace during an excruciating bout of flatulence.

That evening, Tognazzi reveals a magnificent model of St Peter's basilica made from three types of paté. However, Noiret and Ferréol are reluctant to indulge and Tognazzi announces that he will consume the entire dish himself. Noiret retires to bed in disgust, but he is roused some time later when Ferréol pleads with him to help her stop Tognazzi eating himself to death. He refuses to listen to them, however, and eventually succumbs while being genitally and gourmetically satiated on the kitchen table. Ferréol suggests leaving him in his domain and sets about baking a cake for Noiret in the shape of a pair of breasts.

She feeds him a slice under the shade of the lime tree and the diabetic magistrate dies in her arms. As Ferréol looks up, a truck arrives with another delivery of meat. She orders the men to leave the animal carcasses in the garden, as, understandably, she doesn't want them to see the cold storage, and the picture ends with chickens and geese strutting around between dogs attracted by the aroma of the discarded sides of pork and beef.

From the moment a fight broke out during its Cannes premiere Marco Ferreri's critique of society's suicidal folly has divided audiences. Some found the focus on bodily functions to be unnecessarily sordid, while others accused the provocative Italian of shocking for shock's sake. This is certainly a film with something to offend everyone. Its bleak, bawdy humour is anything but subtle, with each character carefully designed to reflect what Ferreri considered to be modern evils - the injustice perpetuated by the corrupt judicial system; the cultural inanity encouraged by television; the greed of the developed world when much of the planet was starving; and the restless urge to travel, both to escape from domestic reality and to bring about a global village that could be more easily conquered and exploited.

No wonder Pier Paolo Pasolini was inspired by the erupting bottoms and toilets to create his own savagely scatalogical assault on the Fascist mentality in Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975). The ensemble performances are truly remarkable and whether they're world-wearily cursing their lots or engaging in food fights, Mastroianni, Piccoli, Noiret and Tognazzi abandon their egos and place implicit trust in Ferreri's audacious design. Yet, the impious Mastroianni (in the fourth of his seven collaborations with Ferreri) inevitably stands out, as his controlling sensuality continuously overcomes his despondency and he fetishises over the statue in the garden and the vintage Bugatti before indulging himself with both the prostitutes and Ferréol. Indeed, it's with something approaching relief that his comrades bundle his corpse into the fridge to resume their funereal repast in peace. But his impish charm is much missed and there is something processional about the final phases of this lethal Buñuelian bacchanal.

Decadence also has its part to play in Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight (1965). Welles first played Sir John Falstaff in a school production and his fascination with the incorrigible rogue inspired the bold attempt to meld eight Shakespearean plays into the stage epic Five Kings, which bankrupted the Mercury Theatre in 1939. Twenty-one years later, Welles opened in Belfast with the equally ambitious Chimes at Midnight, which combined extracts from Holinshed's Chronicle with elements from Richard II, both parts of Henry IV, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor to cover the 13-year period from 1400 and create a lament for the passing of Merrie England.

As Sir John Falstaff (Orson Welles) and Justice Swallow (Alan Webb) sit beside a roaring fire in the Boar's Head Tavern, owned by Mistress Quickly (Margaret Rutherford), Narrator Ralph Richardson explains that Henry IV (John Gielgud) has been having problems since overthrowing Richard II. In particular, the Earl of Northumberland (José Nieto), his son Henry `Hotspur' Percy (Norman Rodway) and the Earl of Worcester (Fernando Rey) threaten rebellion unless the king releases Richard true heir, Edmund Mortimer from captivity in Wales.

As the crisis deepens, Henry curses that his heir, Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), wassails at the tavern with Falstaff and his disreputable friends. He warns the old knight that he will eventually be called to do his duty, but seems quite content to indulge in larks, as he allies with Ned Poins (Tony Beckley) to ambush Falstaff after he has waylaid some pilgrims and stolen their valuables with his mischievous sidekicks Bardolph (Patrick Bedford) and Pistol (Michael Aldridge).

Much to the amusement of the Prince of Wales, Falstaff returns to the inn and spins an increasingly far-fetched yarn to explain the loss of his loot. However, they all drink to celebrate when Hal reveals that he was the blaggard who duped him and the pair start doing impressions of King Henry. Falstaff chides Hal for consorting with common criminals, but reminds him that he will always have a trusted friend in Sir John. But Hal admonishes Falstaff for setting a bad example, even though he is secretly grateful to him for introducing him to teasing prostitute, Doll Tearsheet (Jeanne Moreau).

Hal visits the court and learns about the threat posed by the rebels. He promises Henry than he will eliminate Hotspur and prove himself a worthy son. However, as Falstaff joins the army in a parade through the streets, Henry tries to avert war by meeting secretly with Worcester and promising to overlook everyone's treachery if the revolt is called off. But Worcester returns to camp and informs Hotspur that the king intends showing no mercy to his enemies and, thus, the forces engage the next day at the Battle of Shrewsbury.

Falstaff takes cover in the bushes to avoid the fighting and watches on as Hal and Hotspur meet on the field. Their duel is desperate and savage, but Hal triumphs and he leaves is rival for dead. Meanwhile, Henry leads his troops to victory and condemns Worcester and his confederates to death. But he is less than convinced when Falstaff arrives with Hotspur's corpse and claims to have personally slain him in combat. The king shoots his heir a disapproving glance and realises that he will not be able to resist the temptation of rejoining the rogue and his band.

By 1408, however, Henry's health has started to fail and Hal is distressed to see him in such a feeble condition. He promises his father that he will be a good and noble king and Henry passes on his advice for ruling firmly and fairly. As Henry dies, Hal accepts that his youth is over and he presents himself to his subjects as Henry V.

Joined by Justice Silence (Walter Chiari), Falstaff and Swallow sit in the tavern and toast the passing of the monarch. Falstaff is excited to learn that the coronation will take place that morning and he hastens to the castle expecting to be welcomed as an old friend and offered a position of power and influence. As the ceremony begins, Falstaff is so proud of his protégé and is so eager to receive his reward for his faithful friendship that he interrupts the service and is aghast when Hal disowns him as a `fool and jester' and curses that he ever wasted his time with such a knave.

Banished from the court, Falstaff looks on with dismay as the procession returns to the castle. He tries to put on a brave face and reassures his cronies that he will be summoned after nightfall. But Falstaff dies of a broken heart at the Boar's Head and, as his friends mourn his passing, the narrator concludes that Hal lived up to the promise he made on his father's deathbed and ruled well as a warrior king.

Although it harked back 450 years, this

study of maverick potential being crushed by Machiavellian pragmatism was very much about Orson Welles, who clearly equated the Lancastrian monarchy with the Hollywood studio system that had cast him adrift. Moreover, it's possible to draw comparisons between Welles's final triumph and his first, Citizen Kane (1941), as the disappointment and dejection that Falstaff feels in his old age recalls that of Charles Foster Kane after the failure of his bid to mentor second wife Susan Alexander and turn her into an opera singer.

What's even more apparent is that, despite his customary battles with budgets and schedules, Welles had lost none of his vitality, either as an actor or director. There are flaws here, most notably the stylistic clashes between the meticulously mannered John Gielgud, the laconic Keith Baxter, the fulsome Margaret Rutherford and the anachronistically modern Jeanne Moreau. But nothing detracts from the melancholic majesty of this maligned masterpiece.

Having burst through the screen as the reckless roister-doister, his display of quiet dejection as Hal severs his ties is deeply touching, while the use of Edmund Richard's roving, deep-focussed camera around the Spanish sets and locations scouted by production designer Mariano Erdoiza is sublime. What's more, the depiction of the confusion and carnality of combat in the Battle of Shrewsbury sequence (which took Elena Jaumandreu, Frederick Muller and Peter Parasheles three weeks to edit) ranks alongside anything achieved by Sergei Eisenstein in Alexander Nevsky (1948) or by Akira Kurosawa in his own Shakespearean ventures, Throne of Blood (1957) and Ran (1985).

If Falstaff was perhaps Welless favourite role, his most famous is Harry Lime. Far and away the best British film ever made, Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) returns to disc as part of the celebrations to mark Welles's centenary. Adapted from an idea that novelist Graham Greene had scribbled on the back of an envelope and developed when producer Alexander Korda had a sudden hankering to make a film in postwar Rome or Vienna, the story of an innocent searching for his supposedly deceased friend in a city occupied by a quartet of mistrustful allies combines the best elements of the German `rubble film' and the French film noir. But, despite its American leads and the perpetual tinkering of Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, this remains a quintessentially British picture that laces the frequently disconcerting action with a gallows humour that proves as crucial to its enduring success as the chiaroscuro lighting and the haunting zither theme.

When American writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives in Vienna shortly after the Second World War, he discovers a city that has been divided into five zones - a neutral area and sectors respectively controlled by Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union. Martins is in Austria to take up a post with the medical charity established by his best friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). But he is appalled to discover that Lime recently perished in a car accident and he arrives at the Zentralfriedhof cemetery in time to learn from British military policeman, Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), that Lime was a racketeer who exploited the poor and helpless in order to make a quick buck.

Having been deposited at the Hotel Sacher by Sergeant Paine (Bernard Lee), Martins is persuaded to stay by Crabbin (Wilfrid Hyde-White), who runs the British Cultural Re-education Centre and is prepared to pay for Martins's lodging if he gives a lecture on his literary technique. Martins is a hack writer of dime Westerns, but he is too preoccupied with discovering the truth about his friend to realise he is wholly unsuited to conducting such a seminar.

Instead, he makes contact with Baron Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch), who assures Martins that Lime's last words related to his well-being. Kurtz also reveals that Lime was romancing actress Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli) and Martins tracks her down to the Josefstadt Theatre. He confides that something rings hollow about Lime's death and they revisit the scene, where the building porter Karl (Paul Hörbiger) contradicts Kurtz by insisting that Lime died instantaneously and that his body was carried to a waiting vehicle by not two, but three men. Sensing a conspiracy, Martins accompanies Anna to her flat, where Calloway is busy confiscating her correspondence and documentation. She complains that she faces deportation to the Russian zone because she is Czechoslovakian, but Calloway merely shrugs and avers that he is only doing his duty as he takes her away for questioning.

Tipped off by Anna, Martins pays a visit on Dr Winkel (Erich Ponto), who confides that Lime could easily have been murdered. He also goes to the Casanova Club, where Kurtz introduces him to Popescu (Siegfried Breuer), who claims to know nothing about the third man mentioned by Karl. Later that night, however, Kurtz, Winkel and Popescu rendezvous with a shadowy figure on a bridge and Martins is horrified to learn that Karl has been killed.

Returning to his hotel, Martins is bundled into a vehicle. But any fears he has been abducted are allayed when he is wheeled in front of an expectant audience at the British Cultural Centre. Crabbin makes a fawning fuss of him and the meeting descends into chaos when Martins notices that Popescu is skulking around at the back of the hall. Managing to slip away, Martins reports his suspicions to Calloway. However, the major counters any suggestions that Lime is an innocent victim by explaining that hundreds of children have been affected by the batches of adulterated penicillin that Lime has been selling on the black market.

Confused by this turn of events, Martins gets drunk and foolishly declares his love for Anna. She jilts him and he is feeling at a low ebb when he notices a cat brushing against a man's legs in a nearby doorway. He calls out and a woman opens a window to see what is causing the commotion. The light from her room pierces the shadow and Martins catches a glimpse of Lime's sardonic smile before he runs off into the night. Summoning Calloway, Martins shows him the street along which Lime disappeared and the major orders an exhumation when he discovers an entrance to the Vienna sewers beneath a roadside kiosk.

The corpse in the Zentralfriedhof turns out to be a medical student who was helping Lime acquire supplies and Calloway arrests Anna on the strength of a letter to the deceased among her papers. Martins informs her that Lime is alive and he exits headquarters to send a message to Lime via Kurtz to meet him under the Ferris wheel in the Prater Park. Amused to see his old friend again, Lime ushers him into a compartment and admits that he is operating on the wrong side of the law. However, he points to the people on the ground below and confesses that he has no qualms about risking the lives of such insignificant dots in the grander scheme of things. When Martins tries to protest, Lime jokes that the world would be a dull place if everyone abided by the rules and contrasts Italy at the time of the Borgias with a peaceful Switzerland whose main contribution to civilisation has been the cuckoo clock.

Angry at being patronised and aghast at being offered a percentage of the scam, Martins betrays Lime's whereabouts to Calloway. Initially, he refuses to help capture his erstwhile buddy, but relents when Brodsky (Alexis Chesnakov) arrives from the Russian zone to initiate the process to repatriate Anna. However, when she discovers that Martins has traded her life for Lime's, she tears up the papers that would have enabled her to stay in the West and hisses her contempt for Martins, as she disembarks from the train bound for safety.

Desperate not to alienate Anna, Martins dashes back to the British base to beg Calloway to call off the ambush. But the major scolds him that he is out of his depth and detours en route to the airport to show Martins evidence of the suffering caused to young children by Lime's heartless avarice. Suitably chastened, Martins agrees to set Lime up at a café rendezvous. But Anna warns her lover as he enters and Lime flees into the sewers.

Calloway and Paine follow with reinforcements, but Paine is fatally wounded and Lime staggers away after being winged by Calloway. As he tries to climb back to street level, Lime is cornered by Martins, who fires without remorse. At the cemetery, Martins hopes to patch things up with Anna. He waits on a long, tree-lined avenue as she walks towards him. But, such is her loathing of his treachery, that she passes without acknowledgement and heads towards the divided city and a terrifyingly uncertain future.

Graham Greene and Carol Reed made three films together, although The Fallen Idol (1948) and Our Man in Havana (1960) are nowhere near as well known as this intricate and superbly executed thriller. Cinematographer Robert Krasker's inkily angular evocation of post-imperial Vienna is certainly crucial to its classic status, as is Anton Karas's chillingly jaunty score. But the often over-looked contributions of production designers Joseph Bato, John Hawkesworth and Vincent Korda and editor Oswald Hafenrichter should also be highlighted, along with the exemplary playing of the supporting cast.

Joseph Cotten was never the most animated of actors and this could have been a very different film if Reed had succeeded in casting Cary Grant as Martins. But Reed exploits Cotten's stiffness both to satirise the blundering incomprehension of Americans abroad (whether individually or en uniformed masse) and to contrast this well-meaning interference with the conscience-free capitalist cynicism of Orson Welles's urbane villainy. In many ways, Cotten is the embodiment of one of his own Western heroes, who rides into town only to discover that his old-fashioned frontier morality has no place in the brave new urban world.

But, for once, the audience is much more interested in the man in the black hat and the picture is undoubtedly more compelling whenever Welles is on the screen. No wonder Reed rejected Selznick's numerous alternative suggestions for the role and then put up with Welles's frequent absences (as he tried to raise funding for an adaptation of Othello) and his typically conceited attempts to direct his own scenes. Indeed, without such foresight, we would not be marking the 66th anniversary of The Third Man with quite the same reverence if Noël Coward, David Niven, Robert Taylor, Kirk Douglas or Robert Mitchum had played Harry Lime.

Chuck Workman revisits these and other landmark pictures in Magician: The Astonishing Life and Works of Orson Welles. This workmanlike tribute leaves a good deal to be desired in its exploration of the iconic actor-director's private life and psychological make-up. But it more than atones with the rarity and quality of the clips unearthed from archives across Europe and America. Indeed, this could be described as a cine-archaeological masterclass and it marks Welles's centenary with an affection and an enthusiasm that is refreshing at a time when most biodocs strive to expose their subject's feet of clay.

The facts of an extraordinary life are well enough known for a précis to suffice here. Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin on 6 May 1915, George Orson Welles endured a tough childhood after his parents divorced and his mother died when he was just nine. His alcoholic father refused to settle in one place and Orson's education suffered until he came under the benign influence of Todd School teacher, Roger Hill, who fostered his nascent love of acting and fascination with the possibilities presented by radio. Yet Hill refused to act as his guardian when his father died in 1930 and Welles rebelled against his advice to go to Cornell College and set off for Ireland, instead.

Arriving in Dublin, Welles convinced Gate Theatre manager Hilton Edwards that he was a Broadway star and he cast the upstart as Duke Karl Alexander of Württemberg in an adaptation of Jew Suss in October 1931. However, after he failed to find work in London, Welles returned Stateside, where he joined the repertory company run by actress Katharine Cornell and her director husband, Guthrie McClintic. He also began appearing on radio and made his first film, The Hearts of Age, in 1934. The same year, the 19 year-old Welles married actress Virginia Nicolson and began his fabled partnership with theatre producer John Houseman on Archibald MacLeish's verse play, Panic.

They made their mark, however, within the Federal Theatre Project with such landmark productions as the voodoo version of Macbeth (1935), Marc Blitzstein's political operetta, The Cradle Will Rock (1937), and a bold interpretation of Julius Caesar (1938) set in Fascist Italy. Buoyed by their success, Welles and Houseman formed the Mercury Theatre troupe with actors like Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, William Alland, Joseph Cotten, Dolores del Río, Erskine Sanford and Everett Sloane, who would become familiar to millions of listeners through such productions as Les Misérables (1937) and The War of the Worlds, which caused a panic on 31 October 1938 when audiences thought they were listening to a news bulletin describing a Martian invasion.

As was often the case, Welles refused to let the facts stand in the way when rehashing a good story. But the broadcast did bring him to the attention of Hollywood. RKO president George Schaefer promised Welles complete artistic freedom, in spite of the fact that the only prolonged shoot he had been involved in had been for an unused film-within-a-play for a 1938 stage revival of William Gillette's Too Much Johnson. However, he nixed his plans to make a subjective camera version of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Welles turned his attention to a film à clef inspired by the life of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst.

Unsurprisingly, he took offence at Citizen Kane (1941) and did his best to sabotage the release. Its disappointing box office did nothing to reassure the RKO front office, however, and, when Welles went to South America to make It's All True at the behest of US Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs Nelson Rockefeller, the studio ordered Robert Wise to make drastic cuts to Welles's ambitious adaptation of Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and its lukewarm critical reception and poor commercial performance ensured that Welles wasn't entrusted with another picture until Sam Spiegel asked him to step in for John Huston on The Stranger (1946). Welles also played the fugitive Nazi villain in this underrated thriller and Columbia boss Harry Cohn was persuaded to allow Welles to co-star with and direct second wife Rita Hayworth in The Lady From Shanghai (1947). However, the twisting noir failed to find an audience and Welles started acting in pictures like Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) in order to fund such personal projects as Macbeth (1948), Othello (1952) and Mr Arkadin (1955), which were made during a prolonged period of European exile.

On his return to California, Welles made the short teleplay, The Fountain of Youth (1956), for Lucille Ball's Desilu production company and its warm reception led to Charlton Heston convincing Universal to let the now corpulent Welles direct, as well as co-star in Touch of Evil (1958). We shall revisit this fine film and its shameful treatment by the studio next week. But it did little to improve Welles's standing and he was forced to return to Europe to adapt Franz Kafka's The Trial (1962) and combine several Shakespeare plays into Chimes at Midnight (1966). However, having made The Immortal Story (1968) from a Karen Blixen short story for French television, Welles started to find funding harder to come by and cherished projects like Don Quixote, The Deep, The Merchant of Venice, The Other Side of the Wind and The Dreamers were left in various stages of incompletion.

Now living with Oja Kodar and no longer as prolific as an actor for hire, Welles was as likely to be seen on chat shows or in commercials as he was in one of his own films. But the spellbinding documentary, F For Fake (1973), about art forger Elmyr de Hory and biographer Clifford Irving, proved to be his swan song, even though he lived until 10 October 1985. Ultimately, the Boy Wonder had failed to fulfil the promise he had shown in his early stage and radio performances and there are critics who believe he never found his métier in cinema, despite Citizen Kane being hailed for as the most stylistically ambitious and influential film of all time.

Workman is very much a fan and he is joined cheering on the sidelines by such high-profile devotees as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Paul Mazursky, Costa-Gavras, Walter Murch and William Friedkin. It might have helped make Welles more relevant to younger audiences to have had more trendy contributors like Richard Linklater, although the most useful interjections come from the likes of Peter Bogdanovich, Buck Henry and Henry Jaglom, who knew Welles in his later years. The contrasting recollections of Norman Lloyd and Robert Wise are also worth noting.

But, while Workman proves himself to be an intrepid archive delver and canny editor, there's little new in this strictly chronological survey and it pales beside The Orson Welles Story (1982), which was made for the legendary BBC series, Arena. Serious cineastes will miss some in-depth assessment of Welles's achievement from the likes of actor-biographer Simon Callow, while more might have been done to tone down the taller tales. Welles was a maverick who was always going to find the strictures of the studio system a burden, but he could also be arrogant and headstrong and Workman does him a disservice by adhering too closely to the persecuted genius line. As Roger Hills's daughter Jane confides, Welles was the only person she knew with `absolutely no empathetic skills'. But more is needed on his complex domestic life than a digression on the fact that he fathered director Michael Lindsay-Hogg with actress Geraldine Fitzgerald.

However, Awesome Orson was a phenomenon and Workman amusingly alludes to the impact he has left on American cinema by playfully including clips from films that include Welles as a semi-fictionalised character, including Woody Allen's Radio Days (1987), Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994) and Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles (2008). As Sir Peter Brook shrewdly puts it: `One thing one can be sure of is that there wasn't before him an Orson and there'll never be a second.'