Orson Welles

Welles began his direting career in 1940, at the age of twenty-five, with Citizen Kane, an undisputed, ground-breaking masterpiece of cinema history. Welles' satture as a baroque, impetuous and profoundly free artist made the sudios uncomfortable. He had control of every detail on the twelve feature films he was able to make, including Lady from Shanghai with Rita Hayworth (1947), Touch of Evil with Charlton Heston (1958), adaptations of Shakespeare's plays including Macbeth (1948), Othello (1952) and Kafka's The Trial (1962). Orson Welles remains a unique figure in cinema history and a real source of imagination for future generations of film-makers.