FILMOGRAPHY

The biographer is a clerk. He lives with the growing archives of the materials of the life he studies. He goes out only to drag home the papers of another’s life. At home, these papers crowd out the prospect of his own life. He reads, refers, compares, eliminates; he deals in proof, veracity, likelihood. He wants to make chronology of his subject’s life so that he can properly narrate it as a life. So he tries to establish when, how and why this Orson Welles moved, say, from Munich to London to Barcelona to Marrakech…only to find that the maps and timetables do not fit. Welles does not travel coherently…He has no purpose except that of hoping to shrug off pursuit. He has no home, no archive, no library…