Around the World with Orson Welles

1955
Around the World with Orson Welles

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1

EP1 Pays Basque I - The Basque Countries Oct 07, 1955

Orson Welles takes the viewer to the Basque countryside, a remote corner of Europe on the border of Spain and France. He interviews American expatriates and a Basque sheepherder who returned to Europe after spending 23 years in Colorado.

EP2 Pays Basque II - La Pelote Basque Oct 21, 1955

Orson Welles continues his tour of the Basque region of France and Spain and learns about the game of pelota and some of its variants - jai alai, joko garbi, and rebot.

EP3 Revisiting Vienna Nov 04, 1955

Orson Welles re-visits the city of Vienna, the setting of one of his most famous films, and one of his greatest performances as the unforgettable Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man.

EP4 Saint-Germain-des-Pres Nov 18, 1955

Orson Welles travels to Paris, France, where his visit to the Saint Germain des Pres neighborhood is chronicled by newspaper columnist Art Buchwald. Welles interviews an artist, poets inventing new letters to describe sounds and night clubs featuring musicians playing hot jazz.

EP5 London - The Queen's Pensioners Dec 02, 1955

Orson Welles travels to London to visit an alms house in Hackney for indigent widows that was created in the 1600s and an old soldiers home in Chelsea.

EP6 Spain - The Bullfight Dec 16, 1955

Orson Welles and Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Tynan travel to Madrid to explain the nuts and bolts of bullfighting.

EP7 France - The Tragedy of Lurs Jan 01, 0001

The Dominici affair is a criminal case that occurred in France in the mid-20th century, which gave rise to detailed counter-investigations, emblematic of investigative journalism. On the night of August 4 to 5, 1952, three Englishmen, Sir Jack Drummond, a 61-year-old scientist, his wife Anne Wilbraham, 45, and their 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, were murdered near their car near La Grand. 'Terre, the farm of the Dominici family, in the town of Lurs in the Basses-Alpes (current Alpes-de-Haute-Provence). Patriarch Gaston Dominici was accused of the triple murder and sentenced to death in 1954. In 1957, President René Coty commuted the death sentence and on July 14, 1960, General de Gaulle pardoned and released Gaston Dominici. The affair was followed by numerous journalists, both French and foreign.
7.2| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 07 October 1955 Ended
Producted By:
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: https://laboutique.carlottafilms.com/products/autour-du-monde-avec-orson-welles-dvd
Synopsis

"Around The World With Orson Welles" (broadcast in France under the title: Le Carnet De Voyage d'Orson Welles) is a series of 6 episodes lasting 26 minutes produced by Louis Dolivet for a new British channel, ITV and dedicated to Orson Welles and following "Orson Welles' Sketch Book". The contract signed in March 1955 with ITV called for an order of 26 episodes, each to be a travelogue. This is Welles' first real work for television (the "Sketch Book" series consists of long fixed shots in the studio). The episode filmed first is the one dedicated to Vienna. Two episodes are devoted to the Basque Country, another to bullfighting, then to a district of Paris, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and finally, the last to retirees from Chelsea (London). The episode dedicated to the Domenici Affair was left partly unfinished, but should have been the first documentary dedicated to this affair which hit the headlines in France in 1952.

... View More
Stream Online

The movie is currently not available onine

Director

Producted By

Trailers & Images

Reviews

lightplume Missing in the reviews above and blurbs on the DVD is mention of the the only full-length interview on film of Isadora Duncan's brother Raymond Duncan (in the Paris segment). The eighty-year-old artist shows his sculptures inspired by the Greeks, shows us around his printing presses where he sets type he designed emulating the Greek alphabet, tells us why he is dressed in the classical Greek clamys (the Greek equivalent to the toga), and expounds on his philosophy of life which emphasizes individualism. He is bright, alert, endearing. And, by the way, he did not run his Akademia as a commune, but as an art center which included art studios, a theater where musicians, poets and actors appeared twice a week, and an art gallery. Raymond Duncan would return to America every year or so (except during WW II) to do his one-man show at Carnegie Hall or Town Hall in NY. Orson Welles is a fine interviewer, allowing his subjects to tell their stories with dignity. He loves people. This series shows us how it can be done with one camera and a tiny crew: the magical element is Orson Welles' unpretentiousness.
EddieK Following Orson Welles' fascinating yet tantalizing career can be frustrating for the aficionado. So much of his oeuvre remains hidden from view that each discovery from the archives is greeted with an inordinate amount of enthusiasm. Take this intriguing yet relatively disappointing collection of documentaries Welles directed for British TV in the 1950s.The documentary series explores various aspects of European Culture. Welles takes his camera in search of Basque country, Spanish bullfights, the idiosyncratic denizens of Paris' St Germain des Pres, and the loquacious and venerable Chelsea Pensioners. The "St Germain des Pres" episode best typifies the offbeat subject matter. Welles spends most of his time interviewing a commune dweller who makes his own clothes. After that, Welles dashes through the town, capturing glimpses of celebrities like Jean Cocteau and Eddie Constantine ("Lemmy Caution"), before discovering a group of "Letterists" who are dedicated to (you guessed it) inventing new letters.Unfortunately, Welles' typically low budget and the nature of the subject matter limit his range of cinematic expression. Despite the exotic and obscure locales, most of the footage consists of relatively static interviews, captured in long takes with obligatory reaction shots of Welles inserted to break up the monotony. Even the bullfight episode lacks the dynamic footage one might expect; Welles' camera is grounded in the stands, preventing him from getting involved in the action.The highlight of the series is the second Basque episode. True, the first few minutes repeat the introduction from the first Basque show, but after that Welles has a lot of fun interviewing kids playing 'pelote' (a game similar to jai alai). Welles gets his camera into the pelote action, and seems rejuvenated by the subject matter. An 11-year old boy joins Welles and acts as a tour guide for the rest of the show. The episode ends dramatically, with Welles quoting a Basque aphorism against a night sky lit by fireworks.For a better example of Welles' creativity in the documentary genre, check out his 1974 essay film, "F for Fake." "Around the World with Orson Welles" is a far more pedestrian effort, but it should whet the appetite of Welles fans who continue to search for "lost classics" among the great director's oeuvre.
r-e-witt The DVD version I've seen has five episodes: St. Germain Des Pres, Chelsea Pensioners, Madrid Bullfight and Pays Basque I & II. Films like this are as close as we may ever come to traveling in time. Welles' inimitable self is revealed here as nowhere else as he travels about Europe, meeting, greeting and interviewing. A rich "cast of characters," the real people encountered on the journey, make for a remarkable study. At times, not only is the influence of the recent war apparent, but also the ominous sense of life at the "dawn of the nuclear age." It's a shame only that there aren't more episodes. Long live Orson Welles!