This clip fascinates me. It's a package surrounding a void, itself packaged around the Janus faces of Welles - cinematic boy wonder and garrolous late-night raconteur and pitchman - a tragicomic way to make the silent classics "new" somehow. The films-within-the-film are missing, represented instead by ricocheting signifiers - titles and stills. All that is left is the apparatus, where Welles, "beloved rogue," deftly employs misdirection and puffs of cigar smoke so we don't notice what we're not supposed to.
[Also nice to see America's own Langlois, dumpster-diving savior/scholar of cinema William K. Everson, in the credits.]
