Orson Welles’s lost 'Heart of Darkness' screenplay
performed for the first time
Orson Welles’s audacious adaptation of Conrad’s ‘Heart
of Darkness’ has never been performed – until now.
It was the one that got away. Heart of Darkness was meant to have been Orson Welles’s first film: a monumentally ambitious, technically innovative adaptation with which he hoped to shake up the industry.
It was the one that got away. Heart of Darkness was meant to have been Orson Welles’s first film: a monumentally ambitious, technically innovative adaptation with which he hoped to shake up the industry.
Hollywood took one look at it – and baulked.
Written in the late Thirties, Welles’s 174-page re-imagining of Joseph Conrad’s
1899 novella was considered too expensive, too challenging, and the theme of
lust for power made the moguls uneasy. So he abandoned the project and embarked
on Plan B, a little film called Citizen Kane.
Rejected by RKO’s sceptical president, George
Schaefer, and bound up in rights issues with the Welles estate since his death,
the Heart of Darkness script has never once been performed – until now.
On Saturday afternoon (31 March), a one-off
production was staged by the Turner Prize nominated artist Fiona Banner and
live-streamed around the world from the most apt setting imaginable: a
riverboat installation modelled on the Roi des Belges, the vessel Conrad
captained on his journey up the Congo in 1890. Scottish actor Brian Cox played –
as Welles intended – both Marlow, the narrator-protagonist, and Captain Kurtz,
the despotic ivory trader he seeks.
Over the entire event hang titanic spectres of
hubris and defeat – both Welles’s own and those described in the story. This is
what fascinated Banner. “It seemed to embody so much failure to me,” she says.
“Or so much disappointment – the disappointment at the heart of Conrad’s story,
the hopes and aspirations of all of us, and how they co-exist with
impossibility. I think disappointment’s underrated, and such a rich part of
life.
Also reported by This Week London
The Film Programme
Actor Brian Cox does his best impression of Orson Welles and explains why he’ll be performing the entire script of ‘the greatest film never made’, Welles’s adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 11:00PM Sun, 25 Mar 2012
Actor Brian Cox does his best impression of Orson Welles and explains why he’ll be performing the entire script of ‘the greatest film never made’, Welles’s adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 11:00PM Sun, 25 Mar 2012
First
broadcast BBC Radio 4, 4:00PM Thu, 22 Mar 2012
Available
until 12:00AM Thu, 1 Jan 2099
Duration
28 minutes
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