My name is Orson Welles : the exhibition event at the Cinémathèque Française
On 8 October 2025, the Cinémathèque française reveals My Name is Orson Welles, an ambitious and immersive exhibition, announced as ‘the most exhaustive ever organised to date’ on the work and life of Welles.
Through more than 400 objects, documents and archives, the exhibition offers an intimate and fascinating immersion into the career of a creator who never followed the beaten path.
An odyssey through the labyrinth of a genius
From the entrance, we are invited to discover the private life of a multifaceted man. The scenography plays on the superposition of theatre, radio and cinema, reminding us that Welles began his career in theatre and radio (via the Mercury Theatre) before making his mark in the world of cinema. The radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds (1938) is presented as a defining moment in his ability to disrupt the collective imagination, and we listen to the story of this fake alien invasion while being reminded that many of the 6 million listeners tuned in to their radios that day were seized by panic.
Of course, Citizen Kane occupies a central place in the exhibition. Entire walls are dedicated to it, with visual studies, script notes, correspondence with producers, while Kane’s portrait also serves as an anchor point for questioning the Welles myth: a great work, but also his first major artistic battle.
« The camera is much more than a recording apparatus,
it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world. »
But the exhibition doesn’t stop there: it presents The Lady from Shanghai, Othello (Shakespeare is present everywhere, all the time), The Trial, Touch of Evil, and Falstaff among the essential milestones of his career. So, in addition to the visual documents and manuscripts on display throughout the exhibition, there are numerous film clips shown in enclosed spaces themed around his favourite stylistic devices: sequence shots, depth of field, fragmented editing, and so on.
We also see Welles as an actor, and it is a pleasure to hear the famous melody and revisit some of the sumptuous scenes from Carol Reed’s film The Third Man. Furthermore, exploring his various incarnations shows us how much he loved to slip into characters who were always ambiguous, both powerful and vulnerable.
The creative process of a giant with feet of clay
We also explore the grey areas: unfinished Don Quixote, interrupted projects, multiple versions, alternative edits. These rare, often disjointed pieces tell us more than any completed work about the constant challenges Welles faced — artistic, financial and personal.
Finally, the tour reveals other dimensions of Welles: his drawings, his writings, his radio and television performances, his formal experiments in F for Fake, even his sculptures! We come to understand that his ambition was to transcend boundaries, to master different media as a total artist.
One of the greatest strengths of this retrospective is that it recreates the creative process. We see not only the finished works, but also the sketches, the hesitations, the abandoned ideas. The audience becomes complicit in Welles’ mental laboratory.
Welles emerges as a man who stumbles, struggles and invents. His wanderings, his conflicts with producers, and his clumsy choices are shown, with delicacy, as integral parts of a journey that legend tends to smooth over.
Run to the Cinémathèque!
My Name is Orson Welles is not a static biography, but a journey through the corridors of a restless mind. It reminds us how cinema is a risky adventure, full of daring and doubt. Accessible to both novices and devotees alike, it makes you want to revisit Citizen Kane, The Lady from Shanghai, The Trial, Touch of Evil, Falstaff, Confidential Report, Truths and Lies, and rediscover the man behind the myth about whom Jean-Luc Godard wrote: ‘All filmmakers, always, will owe him everything.’
Practical information
Dates: From 8 October 2025 to 11 January 2026
Location: Cinémathèque française, 51 rue de Bercy, 75012 Paris
Opening hours: 12 to 7pm and 11am to 8pm at weekends and during school holidays. Closed on Tuesdays.
Admission: Full price: €14; reduced price and 18-25 year olds: €11; under 18s: €7.
For more information, visit the Cinémathèque’s official website: My Name is Orson Welles