Around the World with Orson Welles

Around the World with Orson Welles is a series of six short travelogues originally written and directed by Orson Welles for AssociatedRediffusion in 1955, for Britains thennew ITV channel. Despite its title emphasizing the world, it was entirely filmed in Europe. Among other incidents in the episodes, Welles visited Jean Cocteau and Juliette Grco in Paris, attended a bullfight in Madrid with cohosts Kenneth Tynan and Elaine Dundy and visited the Basque Country.

The filming schedule was ambitious. Once the contract was signed, Welles was expected to make a furtherepisodes inweeks spread out over nine months, with the first broadcast scheduled for September 1955. However, Welless other commitments interfered with his ability to meet deadlines, and much of the series was left incomplete. Welles spent much of 1955 working on writing, directing and acting in his London stage production Moby DickRehearsed, and after that flopped on the West End, he switched to shooting an aborted film adaptation of the play, first in London, and then in Rome filming Moby DickRehearsed in Rome was under the pretext of working on the Around the World with Orson Welles TV series.198Although AssociatedRediffusion retained a number of rights, including approval of episode synopses, script approval, music approval, and viewing rights for the rushes and final cut, film scholars JeanPierre Berthom and Francois Thomas argue that Welles remained in control much of the time, due to the fragmentary, piecemeal way in which much of the footage was shot, with the writerdirectorpresenter being the only person who could piece it all together. For instance, Welles shot most of his interviews with only one camera, focussed on the interviewee, and all of the reverse shots of him asking questions had to be shot later in a studio. Frequently, Welless entire episodes would be heavily studiodependent his entire participation in an episode on bullfighting consisted of filming himself entering and sitting down at a bullfight, then filming the bullfight and the reconstructing part of the audience seats in a studio, so he could record his bullfight commentary months after having watched it.200 ........

Source: Wikipedia