"The Hearts of Age" is an 8-minute short film that had its 80th anniversary last year and it was written and directed by Orson Welles, who would have become 100 this year. Welles also acts in here just like his co-director William Vance.
I would normally put a plot here, but I do not know what the plot is... there is a man in blackface, an old woman, some creepy looking old men, and Orson Welles as Death.
Hey, it's Orson Welles. That's about it.
Hearts of Age, The (1936) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Orson Welles acts and co-directs this, his first film, which is a take off on surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel. It's interesting watching this film knowing what Welles would go onto do but overall this isn't overly good.
Watching Orson Welles' first film is like listening to one of the early (emphasis on early, like pre-pubescent) compositions by Mozart- you know things can only go up from here. What Welles' decided to do before he reached the heights of fame as a theater actor/director and with his Mercury company, he tried his hand at making a film.
This film really was NOT intended for general release. Instead, it's a recording of a production by a small theater group and it made it to the "Unseen Cinema: 1884-1941" set of DVDs.
When a friend once lambasted me for my first movie (a pretty bad videotaped affair), I argued that I could grow; Orson Welles' first movie, indeed, was even worse. He challenged me that it couldn't be, so I pulled out the Criterion laserdisc of (I think) CITIZEN KANE and played HEARTS OF AGE.
Although I couldn't come up w/ as piquant a one-line summary as "vaginal bells," "worth seeing" is a fair appraisal.
If you like surrealistic films, like Cocteau's or Salvador Dali's, THE HEARTS OF AGE may appeal to you. It certainly throws symbols around, but it is the work of two teenagers at a prep school, not of a major French 20th Century poet and film maker and a major Spanish artist.
