"Actor: Orson WELLES"

• Graham Green Collection | DVD | (25/09/2006) from £24.28   |  Saving you £5.71 (23.52%)   |  RRP £29.99

  The Third Man (Dir. Carol Reed 1949): This classic noir mystery from the team of Carol Reed and Graham Greene is regarded to be the best filmwork of both of these extreme talents. 'The Third Man' features Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins a pulp novelist who has come to post-WWII Vienna with the promise of work from his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). When he finds that Lime has just been killed in a questionable car accident he decides to remain in the city to investigate his friend's mysterious death. 'The Third Man' is a masterpiece of melancholia featuring extraordinary writing acting and directing as well as a classic zither score by Anton Karas. Brighton Rock (Dir. John Boulting 1947): The elegant and respectable facade of Brighton hides a sinister underworld ruled by intimidation and terror. Richard Attenborough stars as Pinkie a ruthless and sadistic young criminal whose trail of killings and double crossings lead to his eventual downfall when savage justice is finally meted out in a thrilling and memorable climax... Fallen Idol (Dir. Carol Reed 1948): A lonely young boy is caught up in a sinister and intriguing murder-mystery in this classic British film based on a short story by Graham Greene and directed with great style by Carol Reed both of who received Academy Award nominations. It was the first film on which Greene and Reed collaborated and remains both a moving portrayal of lost innocence and a genuine classic of British cinema. Heart Of The Matter (Dir. George More O'Ferrall 1953): Adapted from Graham Greene's novel Trevor Howard stars as Harry Scobie an assistant police commisioner working in Sierra Leone during WWII. Harry finds himself drawn to Helen a survivor of a U-boat attack and whilst the cat is away he decides that he can no longer stay married. However his catholic union threatens the outcome of both relationships. Harry soon convinces himself that desperate measures need to be taken...

• The Trial | DVD | (11/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £4.99

  Josef K awakes one morning to be arrested by the police. He is to be put on trial but no one will tell him what it is he is accused of. His attempts to profess his innocence of any charge only alienates him from his friends and his whole world becomes a nightmare.

• Treasure Island | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £6.64   |  Saving you £-0.65 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale of dastardly pirates swashbuckling heroes buried treasure and a young boy's courage during the adventure of a lifetime!

• The Orson Welles Collection | DVD | (17/04/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A fascinating 5 disc collection providing a fitting tribute to this giant of the silver screen including four of his films a rarely seen live TV appearance and two documentaries on his life and work. The Stranger (1946): In postwar Germany a meeting of the War Crimes Commission is being held. Those present decide that a heinous Nazi war criminal (Konstantin Shayne) should be released from prison in the hopes that he will lead the commission to his superior the infamous Franz

• Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight | Blu Ray | (29/06/2015) from £11.59   |  Saving you £6.40 (55.22%)   |  RRP £17.99

  On the brink of Civil War King Henry IV (John Gielgud) attempts to consolidate his reign while fretting with unease over his sons seeming neglect of his royal duties. Hal (Keith Baxter) the young Prince openly consorts with Sir John Falstaff (Orson Welles) and his company of “Diana’s foresters Gentlemen of the shade Minions of the moon”. Hal’s friendship with the fat knight substitutes for his estrangement from his father. Both Falstaff and the King are old and tired; both rely on Hal for comfort in their final years while the young Prince the future Henry V nurtures his own ambitions. Orson Welles considered Chimes at Midnight his personal favorite of all his films. Perhaps the most radical and groundbreaking of all Shakespeare adaptations the film condenses the Bard’s Henriad cycle into a single focused narrative. Its international cast comprises of Jeanne Moreau Fernando Rey Margaret Rutherford and Ralph Richardson as the narrator in addition to Welles and Gielgud. The film’s harrowing war scenes have proven especially influential cited in Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V as well as Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.

• Compulsion | DVD | (29/02/2016) from £18.75   |  Saving you £1.24 (6.61%)   |  RRP £19.99

• Rita Hayworth | DVD | (13/03/2006) from £32.43   |  Saving you £17.56 (54.15%)   |  RRP £49.99

  A bumper box set of classic films featuring 'The Love Goddess' herself Rita Hayworth! Gilda (Dir. Charles Vidor 1946): The legendary Rita Hayworth sizzles with sensuality and magnetism as she sings ""Put the blame on Mame"" and delivers a dazzling performance as the enticing temptress Gilda. In the story of Gilda Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) goes to work for Ballin Mundson (George MacReady) the proprietor of an illegal gambling casino in a South American city and quickly r

• Compulsion | DVD | (20/09/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Sometimes murder is just a way to pass the time Compulsion is a compelling stylish thriller that sees two callous law students murder a young boy in cold blood to improve their intellectual superiority.

• Too Much Johnson | Blu Ray | (29/06/2015) from £11.59   |  Saving you £6.40 (55.22%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Shot in 1938 Too Much Johnson was Welles’ first feature the film that helped him hone his craft and led him to create to the masterpiece that is Citizen Kane. The footage was presumed destroyed in a fire in Welles’ home in 1971 but was recently rediscovered in Italy and the restored 66 mins version makes its UK DVD debut. Too Much Johnson is an elaborate 1890s farce of mistaken identity. Cuckolded husband Dathis (Edgar Barrier) is on the tale of a man named Billings (Joseph Cotten) who has been having an affair with Dathis’s wife (Arlene Francis). Billings flees by ship to Cuba where now also hiding from his own wife (Ruth Ford) and mother-in-law (Mary) he adopts the identity of a plantation owner named Johnson who is expecting a mail-order bride. Orson Welles plays a Keystone Kop.

• F For Fake | DVD | (26/02/2007) from £17.53   |  Saving you £2.46 (14.03%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Reality and artifice truths and lies the means and the ends - these are the poles traversed by Orson Welles in his landmark examination of the nature of authenticity and artistic essence: F For Fake. Described by Welles as ""a new kind of film"" F For Fake is a prism of a movie a kaleidoscope in which fiction documentary and the poetic essay interlock fragment and recombine to form one of the most entertaining and profound works in all of cinema. How to describe a film so unlike any other ever made? In a nutshell F For Fake opens with a couple of magic tricks segues as though by sleight-of-hand into the story of master art-forger Elmyr de Hory and his relationship with biographer Clifford Irving (a sequence ""remixed"" by Welles with extant footage from Franois Reichenbach's documentary work-in-progress Elmyr) then hones in on Irving when word gets out that his purported biography of recluse-mogul Howard Hughes is a first-class hoax in its own right. Here the film erupts in all directions as Welles contrasts the sprawl of 1970s Hollywood with the halcyon Tinseltown that produced Citizen Kane; contemplates the continent that provided him with an artistic refuge some 800 years after the anonymous construction of the cathedral at Chartres; and lastly recounts a meeting between that most un-anonymous of artists - Pablo Picasso - and Welles' companion Oja Kodar which took place in her youth and during which......the nutshell here clamps shut; the film itself however opens up onto infinite space. Exhilarating hilarious and marvellously idiosyncratic F For Fake comes to us from that late period of Orson Welles' cinema which although perhaps less widely known than his Hollywood years nevertheless found one of the movies' greatest masters at the top of his powers.

• The Transformers: The Movie 35th Anniversary Limited Edition Steelbook | Blu Ray | (03/08/2021) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• RoGoPaG | Blu Ray | (27/08/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Conceived by the legendary Italian producer Alfredo Bini, the multi-director portmanteau film Let's Wash Our Brains: RoGoPaG (Laviamoci il cervello: RoGoPaG) brought together four giants of European cinema to contribute comic episodes reflective of the swinging post-boom era. The resulting omnibus collectively examines social anxieties around sex, nuclear war, religion, urbanisation - and the promise of a modern cinema.Roberto Rossellini's Illibatezza [Virginity] follows an airline stewardess plagued by an obsessed American tourist whose 8mm camera enables the indulgence of a personal, and solipsistic, vision of the Ideal. Jean-Luc Godard's Il nuovo mondo [The New World] takes place in an Italian-dubbed Paris beset by nuclear fallout, and wittily chronicles the changes that take place in the lives - and medicine cabinet - of a handsome young couple. Pier Paolo Pasolini's scandalous La ricotta [Ricotta, as in the curded cheese] presents the goings-on around a film shoot devoted to the Crucifixion and presided over by none other than Orson Welles (playing a kind of stand-in for Pasolini himself); it is this episode that landed Pasolini with a suspended four-month prison sentence. Lastly, Ugo Gregoretti's Il pollo ruspante [Free-Range Chicken] depicts a middle-class Milanese family flirting with the purchase of real-estate and engaging catastrophically with an antagonistic consumeristinfrastructure.

• The Third Man | Blu Ray | (13/01/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £22.99

  A celebrated British noir charting post-war European malaise Carol Reed's The Third Man was previously voted the greatest British film of all time. Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten Citizen Kane) a naïve writer of pulp westerns arrives in Vienna to meet his old friend Harry Lime (the incomparable Orson Welles) but finds that Lime has apparently been killed in a suspicious accident. Martins too curious for his own good hears contradictory stories about the circumstances of Lime's death and as witnesses disappear he finds himself chased by unknown assailants. Complicating matters are the sardonic Major Calloway (Trevor Howard Brief Encounter) head of the British forces and Lime's stage actress mistress Anna (Alida Valli). Will Martin's curiosity lead him to discover things about his old friend that he'd rather not know? Brilliantly scripted by Graham Greene and set to Anton Karas' evocative zither score this justly celebrated classic is further enhanced by Robert Krasker's Academy Award winning cinematography and Welles in one of his most iconic screen roles.

• Immortal Story | Blu Ray | (09/11/2015) from £11.59   |  Saving you £2.40 (20.71%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Welles' second-to-last feature, The Immortal Story is an adaptation of a book by Danish author Isak Dinesen and stars Jeanne Moreau. The year is 1860 in the Portuguese colony of Macao, Mr. Clay (Welles) is an aging, rich merchant, who is the subject of town gossip. He likes his clerk Levinsky (Roger Coggio), to read to him to help him relax in the evenings and one night he recounts a tale about a rich man who paid a poor sailor five guineas to father a child with his beautiful young wife. Mr. Clay has no wife and no heir to his fortune and resolves to make the story true...Levinsky approaches Virginie Ducrot (Moreau), another clerk's mistress, and strikes a bargain for 300 guineas. Now to find the sailor... Cast and Crew: Orson Welles / Jeanne Moreau / Roger Coggio / Norman Eshley. Director Orson Welles Awards and Reviews: Berlin International Film Festival 1968, Nominated Golden Bear, Orson Welles. ˜A sumptuous experience' - Time Out ˜The ending of is amongst the most beautiful and self-contained in all of Welles' cinema' - Senses of Cinema

• Casino Royale | Blu Ray | (06/08/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  With gadgets, gaming and girls galore, this camp classic celebrates 40 fabulous years as not only the coolest of the spy films, but also as a brilliant parody of - itself! Will the real James Bond please stand up? When secret agency chief M (John Huston) is killed, Sir James Bond (David Niven) is thrust out of spy retirement to help smash SMERSH, the band of hitmen who are likely responsible. And to protect his real identity, Bond's name is given to numerous other agents, including Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) and Bond's neurotic nephew, Jimmy (Woody Allen). With five directors, a cast of Hollywood icons that also includes Ursula Andress, Charles Boyer, Peter O'Toole, Jacqueline Bisset and Orson Welles, a soundtrack by Burt Bacharach, and a frisky, farcical script, Casino Royale is Bond. Psychedelic Bond.

• Catch 22 | DVD | (04/10/2004) from £19.75   |  Saving you £-3.76 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Mike Nichols' superbly directed cinematic adaptation of Joseph Heller's scathing black comedy. 'Catch 22' is the tale of a small group of flyers in the Mediterranean in 1944. There are winners and losers opportunists and survivors. Separately and together they are frightened nervous often profane and sometimes pathetic. Almost all are a little crazy. 'Catch 22' is an anti-war satire of epic proportions!

• The Witching | DVD | (18/11/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A strange and sinister man Mr Cato (Orson Welles) wields extraordinary power in the small town of Lilith. Almost supernatural power. The townsfolk indulge in weird ritual in their pursuit of necromancy... bringing the dead back to life. Against this disturbing background it is a young beautiful girl Lori (Pamela Franklin) who becomes the human catalyst between life and death...

• Too Much Johnson | DVD | (29/06/2015) from £9.98   |  Saving you £5.00 (62.58%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Shot in 1938 Too Much Johnson was Welles’ first feature the film that helped him hone his craft and led him to create to the masterpiece that is Citizen Kane. The footage was presumed destroyed in a fire in Welles’ home in 1971 but was recently rediscovered in Italy and the restored 66 mins version makes its UK DVD debut. Too Much Johnson is an elaborate 1890s farce of mistaken identity. Cuckolded husband Dathis (Edgar Barrier) is on the tale of a man named Billings (Joseph Cotten) who has been having an affair with Dathis’s wife (Arlene Francis). Billings flees by ship to Cuba where now also hiding from his own wife (Ruth Ford) and mother-in-law (Mary) he adopts the identity of a plantation owner named Johnson who is expecting a mail-order bride. Orson Welles plays a Keystone Kop.

• The Roots Of Heaven | DVD | (12/05/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Roots Of Heaven

• The Stranger | DVD | (07/03/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £3.99

  The Stranger, according to Orson Welles, "is the worst of my films. There is nothing of me in that picture. I did it to prove that I could put out a movie as well as anyone else." True, set beside Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, or even The Trial, The Stranger is as close to production-line stuff as the great Orson ever came. But even on autopilot Welles still leaves most filmmakers standing. The shadow of the Second World War hangs heavy over the plot. A war crimes investigator, played by Edward G Robinson, tracks down a senior Nazi, Franz Kindler, to a sleepy New England town where he's living in concealment as a respected college professor. The script, credited to Anthony Veiller but with uncredited input from Welles and John Huston, is riddled with implausibilities: we're asked to believe, for a start, that there'd be no extant photos of a top Nazi leader. The casting's badly skewed, too. Welles wanted Agnes Moorehead as the investigator and Robinson as Kindler, but his producer, Sam Spiegel, wouldn't wear it. So Welles himself plays the supposedly cautious and self-effacing fugitive--and if there was one thing Welles could never play, it was unobtrusive. What's more, Spiegel chopped out most of the two opening reels set in South America, in Welles' view, "the best stuff in the picture". Still, the film's far from a write-off. Welles' eye for stunning visuals rarely deserted him and, aided by Russell Metty's skewed, shadowy photography, The Stranger builds to a doomy grand guignol climax in a clock tower that Hitchcock must surely have recalled when he made Vertigo. And Robinson, dogged in pursuit, is as quietly excellent as ever. On the DVD: not much in the way of extras, except a waffly full-length commentary from Russell Cawthorne that tells us about the history of clock-making and where Edward G was buried, but precious little about the making of the film. Print and sound are acceptable, but though remastering is claimed, there's little evidence of it. --Philip Kemp