Ostatnia strona „Obywatela Kane’a”

Abstrakt

The last side of Citizen Kane

History of cinema does not consist merely of masterpieces, but also of films that are unfinished, as well as scripts that were supposed to serve as the basis for films which ultimately never came into being or were transformed into completely different works completed by another filmmaker. Welles’ case is very interesting in this context as, on the one hand, he was a star of the “author’s policy”, a universally known celebrity, a legend of world cinema, who contributed significantly to its history, but on the other hand he was also an unaccomplished figure. Yet, his unfulfillment was different from what is often described, for instance, in autobiographical interpretations of Citizen Kane: “he had everything and lost everything”. We may rather say that his oeuvre forms a sinusoid that comprises both completed, artistically accomplished works and films that were rejected by viewers and critics, as well as more than a dozen very interesting unfinished projects. In this paper I’m analysing the case of Orson Welles’ last unfinished movie — The Other Side of the Wind 2018.