Orson Welles' first film, codirected with a one William Vance, is pretty much only known to purveyors of avant garde movies and cinema historians. It's an iconoclastic and satirical look at Americana--especially Southern Americana--and is mostly a product of Welles' getting used to the camera and figuring out where to point it.
The print I saw was very faded, and I think Welles actually meant for it to be foggy and slightly-out-of-focus, so the result was hard to see. Still, Welles did some pretty daring things with this film... not cinematically, but symbolically. The woman riding the bell while the slave (a man in black face) rang it seems like the type of thing that would immediately have had the censors gathering arms.
The bell, which can stand in for liberty, religion, or sex, really, is a pointed attack on American manners and racism, and Welles' Death/Judge/White power persona reacts accordingly. The controversy that was Citizen Kane is somewhat foreshadowed in Orson Welles' willingness to directly attack the system, something that eventually ruined his career... and probably helped keep this film underground for a while.
--PolarisDiB
The print I saw was very faded, and I think Welles actually meant for it to be foggy and slightly-out-of-focus, so the result was hard to see. Still, Welles did some pretty daring things with this film... not cinematically, but symbolically. The woman riding the bell while the slave (a man in black face) rang it seems like the type of thing that would immediately have had the censors gathering arms.
The bell, which can stand in for liberty, religion, or sex, really, is a pointed attack on American manners and racism, and Welles' Death/Judge/White power persona reacts accordingly. The controversy that was Citizen Kane is somewhat foreshadowed in Orson Welles' willingness to directly attack the system, something that eventually ruined his career... and probably helped keep this film underground for a while.
--PolarisDiB