ORSON WELLES ONCE REFLECTED on his own work in the following way: "Almost all serious stories in the world are stories of failure with a death in it. But there is more lost paradise in them than defeat." In many ways that could stand as the story of Orson Welles himself -- failure, death and lost paradises are serious stuff to be sure; but in speaking of a man who changed forever the way we look at movies, should we not speak of found paradises as well as lost, of victories and defeats? With his passing in October of 1985, the most obvious temptation is to do to his death what Welles himself did to his most famous creation, Charles Foster Kane: ignore the warnings of NO TRESPASSING and plunge into the biographical details of what no doubt was a fascinating but ultimately tragic life, not unlike that of...
