The Giant: Orson Welles, the Artist and the Shadow

By twenty-three, Welles had founded his own theatre company and revolutionised radio with his infamous broadcast of The War of the Worlds. By twenty-five, he had secured his place in history with his debut film, Citizen Kane. Yet four films and less than a decade later, his career suffered a spectacular collapse. Welles, once the most promising director in America, was written off as a “would-be genius” - a bad bet in an increasingly money-conscious industry. It would be many years before his later works such as Touch of Evil and The Other Side of the Wind received widespread acclaim. So how did the boy wonder from Kenosha, Wisconsin, amount to so much, and yet so little? And if his artistic ambitions were thwarted, where does the blame truly lie? In The Giant, Youssef Daoudi weaves together reality and mythology to create a radical new look at one of Hollywood’s most legendary figures. He poses a question as timeless as Orson Welles himself: What happens when a true artist comes up against the rest of the world?