#achievement unlocked: you accumulated enough on set photos of OW being a brat to make a seperate post

[deadpanwalking]

It is interesting to speculate how much Carol Reed influenced the performance. As we have seen, it was Welles’s practice to arrive on a film set with his interpretation, his make-up (which he always devised and generally executed himself), his part and even his shot list perfectly self-created, hermetically sealed and ready to be slotted into the rest of the film. He seems to have attempted to do so with Reed, but the Englishman was a canny operator, with a background in theatre (he was the illegitimate son of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the great Edwardian actor-manager) and possessed of what would nowadays be described as excellent people-skills; he was especially renowned for his ability to direct children. When Welles finally arrived on the fragrant sewer set in Shepperton, he offered Reed a suggestion as to how the scene might be shot: ‘Brilliant, Orson, really brilliant!’ Elizabeth Montagu reports Reed as saying. ‘I wish I had thought of that!’ He then paused and looked around. ‘But as everything is set up to shoot it my way, we’ll go ahead. And then, Orson, we’ll do it again, your way . . .’ After fifteen takes of doing it Reed’s way, Welles had had enough. There were several other similar incidents, says Montagu, ‘until Orson realised he could never win and gave up trying’. Simon Callow, from Orson Welles, Volume III: One-Man Band