Orson Welles: Larger-than-life

Orson Welles has secured his place in the filmmaking firmament. But Citizen Kane (1941) – with all its magnate malarky – can roundly overshadow everything he turned his hand to in the decades that followed; his films torn to shreds by philistine producers and Hollywood suits. What remains is a roster of some of the 20th century’s most ebullient and sublime films – from the Magnificent Ambersons (1942) to Fallstaff (1966), and beyond. Here, the lads try to pick their way through the Wellesian terrain – with brief pit stops at the Lafayette Theatre and the deserts of California. Forgive them for not mentioning F is for Fake (1973). The tl;dr? Welles was among America’s greatest formalists; and, even in truncated form, between exile and rapprochement, his work will endure.