That was an excellent one.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Our subject film gets underway by showing Mr. Welles in a very inauspicious light, as evidenced by his tepid, if not sarcastic, reception at the Rome airport as he arrived at the terminal almost unnoticed and visibly upstaged by Ty Power's arrival. But what's our guy to do given his current set of circumstances brought upon him by Ms. Hayworth giving him the old heave-ho and thereby ending their marriage? So now he's in post WWII Rome where he shall try to undergo some face saving (he hopes) by attempting to reinvigorate his career by directing his slightly convoluted version of Othello that starts to look like a comedy of errors at the immediate onset of this dubious production.But camp turns to tragedy as one of the actors gets murdered not long into the production. The dying thespian whispers something into Mr. Welles' ear just before passing on, and now a whole new chain of events starts to take place. One mystery begets other mysteries in a sort of arithmetic progression and the serious side of this drama/mystery starts to unfold. And this part of the film shows an understated, realistic Orson Welles who stumbles about looking for murder clues amidst a truly chaotic time in Italy. No star fanfare or ballyhoo here as he undertakes this complex task.After all, it is post WWII Italy and the country is in total upheaval as large segments of the populace live in dire poverty. Added to this is a loose but dangerous amalgamation of ex-Nazis, dope dealers, neo-Fascists, US & other Allied forces' mercenaries acting under the guise of the political umbrella called the Christian Democrats who purportedly want to democratize Italy and make it a safe haven for democracy, out of Stalin's Communist Party's reach. Welles stumbles into these characters as he proceeds with trying to find more facts surrounding the murder on his set and ends up in a bailiwick of troubling surprises in so doing. What he sees, hears and learns from one of his old friend American colleagues (Chris Walken's role) and others in the aforementioned umbrella group is what drives the latter part of the film and pieces together the political ramifications of what transpires here. Was this a true account of what actually happened in post WWII Italy's chaotic time of turmoil? As was said toward the film's conclusion: "You want facts, read a History book!" At least there you will find out one person's view of the facts...Welcome to the real world!!

I'm not sure how this was as a novel, but the film version has the classic flaw of all book adaptations. In trying to cram hundreds of pages of narrative into a couple of hours on screen, things need to be cut out. Sometimes things that are important, even vital, to the prose have to be sacrificed to the demands of cinema and other elements expanded or enhanced to take their place. Fade to Black has a great setting and a great hook but needed to severely restructure its plot in order to take full advantage of them. Any movie about genius filmmaker Orson Welles also needs to be a hell of a lot more visually imaginative than this. Those weaknesses mean that a film which starts out quite strong and has a lot of initial appeal, never manages to fulfill your expectations. Watching it is an okay experience, but also vaguely disappointing.In 1948, with his career on the down slope and his personal life in ruins, Orson Welles (Danny Huston) travels to Italy to play the bad guy in a two-bit production called Black Magic. After one of his co-stars mysteriously dies, Welles decides to investigate and finds himself caught up in the political intrigue of Italy's first post-war election and winds up a name on somebody's hit list. With the aid of his driver, Tommaso (Diego Luna), and the distracting motivation of a beautiful actress, Lea (Paz Vega), Welles discovers that reality is more twisted than any fantasy he can dream up.Fade to Black has three major strengths. Well…four, if you count the presence of Paz Vega. Danny Huston is very appealing as Orson Welles. Who's to say how personally accurate the portrayal is, but Huston does a fine job at capturing the essence of a wunderkind that was no longer a kind who felt no rules applied to him and didn't handle it well when he discovered some did. The moments here that play up Welles love of filmmaking are nicely contrasted by his conflicted relish of fame and dread of celebrity. Plopping Welles down into the middle of a murder mystery is also a great idea. So is using Welles as a window into the turmoil of post-Mussolini Italy and the dawning of Cold War political manipulation.Unfortunately, combining the mystery and the political machinations proves to be too much for the film to tolerate, especially when it turns out neither has much to do with the other. Perhaps they were woven together better in the novel. Here, each vies for your attention and stunts the growth of the other. When it comes time for big developments in either the murder or the political underhandedness, it feels a bit hollow because there hasn't been the proper build up. One of them needed to be kept in the background, with the other come fully to the foreground and a subplot involving the fate of Italian Jews and an ill fated Resistance cell should have been done away with entirely. As it is, Fade to Black starts out entirely about the mystery, then becomes totally about the politics, then flips back and forth between the two until the very end.I don't want to be overly critical because I did like this movie. It came so close to being a lot better than it is, though, it's hard not to be caught up in those lamentable failings. If writer/director Oliver Parker had embraced Huston's Welles as the story's heart and soul and not felt obligated to elevate Diego Luna's Tammaso to nearly his equal, which may have been true to the Italian novel this is based upon but is nothing but false to the potential of this movie, he might have made something compelling. What he created instead was merely satisfactory. That's much better than most but in this instance, it isn't enough.

Orson Welles was invited in 1947 to participate in the film "Black Magic", directed by Gregory Ratoff. At the time, Mr. Welles was getting over the painful experience he suffered after the divorce from Rita Hayworth. His arrival to Italy went mostly unnoticed, as we witness his arrival at Rome's airport; his presence there is upstaged by that of Tyrone Power. One of the reporters insists in calling him Mr. Hayworth, something that must have hurt the wound in his heart.When the shooting begins in the fabled Cinecitta, everything is chaos, as director Ratoff tries to rein all what is going on in the set. To make matters worse, the leading lady, the gorgeous Lea Padovani, doesn't seem to warm up to her more famous co-star. When one of the players in the film dies right in front of Mr. Welles, he discovers a list with names of prominent Christian democrats. Curiosity gets the best of him, as he wants to follow the motives behind the deaths.It was a difficult time for Italy. Having been defeated, the country was in turmoil with thousands of refugees living in squalor. The communist party had a strong following, something that Orson Wells notices right away. His the help of his young driver, Tommaso, he goes into an unknown territory and gets sucked in the mystery behind the politics of the time.As directed by Oliver Parker, the film is a curiosity piece about what went on in Italy at the time, from the real Orson Welles perspective. Danny Huston, who portrays the American genius, has an uncanny resemblance and is about the best thing in the picture. Diego Luna, is seen as Tommaso, and lovely Paz Vega, has some good moments as Lea Padovani, the leading lady.

This is one of those 'what if' conceits that sometimes come off spectacularly and more often than not bomb. This time around we are asked to surmise 'what if' Orson Welles couldn't get arrested in Hollywood in the late forties and in the wake of his separation and impending divorce from Rita Hayworth found himself playing the lead in a cheesy costume picture in Italy and on the side got involved in both murder and local politics. Like all 'what if's there's a modicum of truth here; Welles did exile himself in Europe in 1948 where he did appear in some fairly dire movies and, of course, he was divorced from Rita Hayworth around that time. The film has him lining up an investor for his version of Othello to be shot in Italy when the current film is in the can whereas although he did write, direct and star in Othello it was actually made in Morocco in 1952. Danny Huston really needs to do more than wield a cigar to come over as Welles and perhaps wisely he makes no attempt to reproduce that distinctive timbre though he might have had a stab at that impish twinkle in the eye that was so much a part of Welles. Pick of the rest is Anna Galieni, so great in The Hairdresser's Husband for Patrice Leconte. As a curio this is worth a look but that's about it.