Streaming culture could spell doom for Orson Welles' legacy

Although Citizen Kane is routinely name-checked as the greatest film of all time, few casual movie fans eagerly seek it out, and those that do might find the black and white drama about the rise and fall of an ambitious newspaper man too dated to appreciate. Of course, they'd be dead wrong to discount what is arguably the most influential American film ever. It has since been surpassed in modern esteem by The Godfather, whose kinship with modern cinema is perhaps more detectible.

And now, Welles' astonishing work as a filmmaker is in danger of becoming purely a curiosity for hardcore cinephiles like myself.

Part of this is a symptom of streaming culture which puts an emphasis on easily digestible and relatively current movies. Welles' films were not meant to be watched on a phone -- they are complex, intellectual, in some cases -- years in the making. They often require repeat viewings to fully work and they are decidedly non-commercial.

Part of the blame can also be placed on Welles, who stubbornly marched to the beat of his own drum creatively, so much so that even when he'd earned the clout in Hollywood to finance his pet projects he opted to make difficult Shakespearean adaptations like Chimes at Midnight, rather than fare that mainstream audiences might find more relatable.

He has no iconic late career performance in a wildly known hit film (like Brando in The Godfather) so younger audiences don't really have a gateway to his career other than being forced to sit through Citizen Kane in school and maybe stumbling upon his embarrassing, drunken outtakes from one his later life cheap commercials (which he used to finance his films) on YouTube.

It's a shame that for so many people today, if they know of Welles at all, they think of him as a one-hit-wonder or as a bloated has been. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

As a filmmaker, he made visually dynamic spectacles that rival Stanley Kubrick's unforgettable framing shots. Welles himself was always a profound booming presence on screen either as a credible (albeit blackfaced) Othello or as a corrupt cop in Touch of Evil.

He had a tendency to favor high-falutin' literary adaptations like his daring 1962 staging of Kafka's The Trial, although not all his work was deadly serious -- his playful 1974 semi-documentary about forgers and con artists -- F for Fake -- has its tongue firmly planted in its cheek.

Of course, Welles wasn't fully appreciated for much of the time he lived either. He made most of his money phoning it in with charismatic performances in lesser films by other directors (with the terrific The Third Man being a notable exception) and most of his films were never released as he fully intended them because of studio interference.

Recently, many of his works have been restored and reappraised, but so few of his films readily available, and many of them steeped in subject matter that was not timely even sixty years ago, I fear Welles's significance will feel like more and more of a passing memory with the march of time, with only a few aging filmmakers and movie nerds like me to extol his virtues.