YMMV / Orson Welles

• Genre Turning Point:
  • It can be hard to appreciate how innovative Citizen Kane is. For one thing it was a film that used the best of Hollywood production facilities and craftsmanship to achieve powerful visual storytelling and use of sound, to suggest multiple layers of storytelling and psychological complexity. The narrative itself was highly complex for the time, generally avoiding neat solutions and not backing away from Downer Ending and criticizing America's idea of success. But more specifically it did this with ideas and conceits that was only possible with cinema. Visually and technically, it pioneered the use of Deep Focus cinematography which allowed action in the foreground and the background to be seen clearly, with the framing often creating a contrast between the same.
  • Likewise F for Fake completely turned traditional ideas of documentary around, becoming the Trope Codifier for a genre that some critics call an "essay film" in that it somehow takes a general subject but digresses to other areas and interests and somehow still fitting into the context. And it's all true.
  • Some critics consider Touch of Evil a Genre-Killer, the end of the classic Film Noir.
  • His Shakespeare adaptations, both on stage and film, were incredibly radical and ahead of their time in the way it magnified the subtext of the plays rather than a straight, safe, adaptation. Moreover his films are cinematic versions of Shakespeare, placing the bard's texts in scenes and images that are worthy of it, all through editing, set design and shot selection and never changing a word of the text.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The infamous "Frozen Peas" blooper reel has been a frequent subject of parody for decades, even before the internet became a mainstream utility, simply because of how off-the-rails the whole thing gets and how uncharacteristic it seems for someone with such a sophisticated reputation as Welles. The reel became so infamous that even Animaniacs parodied it in one of their Pinky and the Brain sketches (as Maurice LaMarche's voice for Brain was based on Welles).
  • Likewise with Welles' drunk antics on the set of a commercial for Paul Masson champagne, thanks to it instantly derailing on every take from Welles' complete inability to remember his lines in his sloshed-up stupor.

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