At the Civic Centre, Berkhamsted (UK), on the evening of Friday 2nd October 2009 at the Graham Greene International Festival the audience saw a remarkable thirty-minute film titled Five Minutes, Mr. Welles (Brooklyn Hazelhurst, USA, 2005).
This short film was directed by Vincent D’Onofrio (above, top) who acts the part of Orson Welles for the second time in his career. The actor is imagined struggling to learn his lines during filming of The Third Man. The only other character in the piece is Welles’ female assistant (played by Janine Thériault). She tries to help the actor, but, though the two appear to have been intimate, he suspects her of spying upon him on behalf of David O. Selznick. He doubts the quality of the lines which have been written for him for the scene on the Great Wheel at the Prater, but she reminds him that he has accepted his fee, so that he can work on Othello. The action is given urgency, as an off-set voice is heard to call “Five Minutes, Mr. Welles”, summoning him to his day’s work on the set.
The piece is filmed in black and white and located entirely within one claustrophobic room. With back lighting, silhouettes and tilted camera angles, the style of filming pays tribute to Robert Krasker’s Oscar-winning cinematography for The Third Man and also to the techniques of Citizen Kane.
In addition to offering an interesting, if fictional, interpretation of Welles’ character, the film (which has only been screened previously at the Venice Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival) also speaks to us about artistic inspiration and creativity. Vincent D’Onofrio may be seen every week on television on Channel Five’s “Law and Order: Criminal Intent”.
The film was introduced by Dr. Brigitte Timmermann (above) who wrote insightfully about Orson Welles in her splendidly illustrated book The Third Man's Vienna (Shippen Rock, 2005).
The Festival director Dermot Gilvary acknowledged the great help which he received from Philip Farah (General Entertainment Company Inc., New York and Hollywood) in the arrangements for the screening of Five Minutes, Mr. Welles.