The Eyes of Orson Welles | Telescope Film
The Eyes of Orson Welles

The Eyes of Orson Welles

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Outside of his world-famous career in cinema, Orson Welles was also a trained artist. For the first time ever, his drawings and paintings have been made available to the public, showcasing the never-before-seen story of Welles' visual thinking. An exclusive new perspective on one of the 20th century's greatest creative figures.

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What are critics saying?

90

The New York Times by Glenn Kenny

The movie intersperses observations and speculations on Welles’s life and work with long looks at his graphic pieces. These are fascinating.

88

Slant Magazine by Chuck Bowen

The Eyes of Orson Welles honors the central paradox of Welles: that he was a joyful poet of alienation who was, like most of us, both victim and victimizer.

80

Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele

Considering the amount of such material Welles left behind — sketches, drawings and paintings from his formative childhood travels through decades in movies — it makes for a tantalizing reappraisal sure to appeal to even the most knowledgeable Welles enthusiast.

80

Rolling Stone by David Fear

If you can say nothing else about this free-form valentine, it’s genuinely eye-opening.

63

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

Early in the documentary The Eyes of Orson Welles, a box is taken out of long years of archival storage at the University of Michigan and opened to reveal an entire alternate career: pages upon pages of Welles’s graphic artwork. For this, Mark Cousins’s documentary is necessary viewing. For the glutinous narrative voice-over of Cousins himself, it’s decidedly less so.

63

RogerEbert.com by Matt Zoller Seitz

The Eyes of Orson Welles doesn't rank with the best Welles scholarship, mainly because it's too overreaching and disorganized, and commits itself to central creative decisions that increasingly come to seem misguided.

58

The Playlist by Andrew Bundy

Cousins’ new doc will undoubtedly be essential viewing for a sea of cinephiles, but it might not easily capture the attention of audiences less familiar with Welles’ legacy.