Around the World with Orson Welles
Around the World with Orson Welles is a British miniseries, consisting of six 26-minute travelogues hosted by Welles. Produced by Louis Dolivet for then-new network ITV and dedicated to Welles and following his 'Sketch Book'. The first filmed episode is the one dedicated to Vienna. Two episodes are devoted to the Basque Country, another to bullfighting, then to a district of Paris, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and finally, the last to retirees from Chelsea (London). The one dedicated to the Domenici Affair was left unfinished, but could have been the first documentary dedicated to the affair, which hit the headlines in France in 1952.
Episodes
Pays Basque I: The Basque Countries
Welles takes the viewer to the Basque countryside, a remote corner of Europe on the border of Spain and France. He interviews American expatriates and a Basque sheepherder who returned to Europe after spending 23 years in Colorado.
Pays Basque II: La Pelote Basque
Welles continues his tour of the Basque region of France and Spain and learns about the game of pelota and some of its variants — jai alai, joko garbi, and rebot.
Revisiting Vienna
Welles revisits Vienna, the setting of one of his most famous films, and one of his greatest performances as the unforgettable Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man.
Saint-Germain-des-Pres
Welles travels to Paris, where his visit to the Saint Germain des Pres neighborhood is chronicled by newspaper columnist Art Buchwald. Welles interviews an artist, poets inventing new letters to describe sounds and night clubs featuring musicians playing hot jazz.
London: The Queen's Pensioners
Welles travels to London to visit an alms house in Hackney for indigent widows created in the 1600s and an old soldier's Chelsea home.
Spain: The Bullfight
Welles and Mr and Mrs Kenneth Tynan travel to Madrid to explain the nuts and bolts of bullfighting.
France: The Tragedy of Lurs
The Dominici affair is a criminal case that occurred in France in the mid-20th century, which gave rise to detailed counter-investigations, emblematic of investigative journalism. On the night of August 4 to 5, 1952, three Englishmen, Sir Jack Drummond, a 61-year-old scientist, his wife Anne Wilbraham, 45, and their 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, were murdered near their car near La Grand. 'Terre, the farm of the Dominici family, in the town of Lurs in the Basses-Alpes (current Alpes-de-Haute-Provence). Patriarch Gaston Dominici was accused of the triple murder and sentenced to death in 1954. In 1957, President René Coty commuted the death sentence and on July 14, 1960, General de Gaulle pardoned and released Gaston Dominici. The affair was followed by numerous journalists, both French and foreign. The episode was ultimately unfinished, but French filmmaker Christophe Cognet recovered his materials and reconstructed the documentary for TV5 broadcast in 2003.
Top Cast
Orson Welles
Host: Orson Welles
