J. Curl - Orson Welles's Impact on the Film Industry

"Having endured a rough childhood with his mother dying at a young age, Orson Welles turned to theatre as his release. His breakthrough came at the young age of twenty when he won praise for his all-black production of Macbeth in New York. He then dove into radio, producing famous radio plays, which led him to Hollywood where he struck a two-picture deal with RKO in 1939. Bruce Bawer quotes another author in his biography, saying, "One of his biographers, David Thomson, stated that in Hollywood, "From July 1939 to August 1942, Orson Welles…made…a tactless, eternally incriminating assault on the notion of the proper ways things were done" (210). That is exactly what Welles did and why his impact is so great. He pushed the limits regarding the art of film. His mise-en-scene and use of cinematography were invigorating to viewers. Although not seen at the time, his legacy would prove empowering to directors like Spielberg, Scorsese, Tarantino, etc. Campbell sums up this idea well in regards to a movie he starred in as well as directed, Jane Eyre, by writing, "The most telling mode of Welles's presence in this film, lies in the richness of his literary and cinematic imaginations, in his own interest in—and grasp of—the layers and varieties of narrativity within a story" (The Presence…8)."