The life of the deep Orson Welles nerd is riddled with redundancy. Though there is a library full of secondary source material to complement the relatively few films the great master actually finished, the books and documentaries tend to spin the same yarn: Boy genius rides the astonishing success of the War of the Worlds radio broadcast into the sweetest Hollywood contract of all time, makes the greatest film anyone has ever seen (Citizen Kane), then spends the next 50 years languishing on the cloudy borderline between the purgatory of self-sabotage and the hell of thwarted promise.
It would be something if the documentary Magician: The Astonishing Life & Work of Orson Welles had some new information to bestow on the faithful legion of Wellesophiles—a frame or two of the original Magnificent Ambersons ending, a secret film of The Cradle Will Rock, a wire recording of him arguing with Herman Mankiewicz and John Houseman—but at this point, the vaults have been pretty well raided. That leaves the job of assembling a definitive telling of the Welles legend, with dissenting views intact, so that future generations too lazy to read biographies can be disabused of the notion that one of the truly fascinating artists of the 20th century was just a fat old drunk barking abuse at frozen pea commercial writers on YouTube. Documentarian Chuck Workman—whose excellent films Superstar and The Source performed similar services for Andy Warhol and Jack Kerouac—rises to that challenge admirably, providing a reverent but not uncritical history of Welles's life and work. There is fantastic footage, including film clips of his infamous Mercury stage productions—Macbeth with an all-black cast and Julius Caesar in fascist regalia—and sharp commentary.
Every Welles story asks the same question: Why did this brilliant maker spend so many dissolute years almost-but-not-quite getting it together for one last triumph? They also tend to offer the same stock answers—art versus commerce, the curse of early success, Hollywood's contempt for genius. Though Magician does make the dubious case that Chimes at Midnight was just such a late-stage masterpiece, its greatest trick lies in showing the how, and letting you speculate on the why. Workman focuses on the work but leaves plenty of room for Welles's human dimension, his peculiar gift for the kind of self-effacement only a pure narcissist can master, and revels in the enduring pleasure of his incredible, deathless voice.