Around the World with Orson Welles

Around the World with Orson Welles

195526m6.9/10
Documentary

Ratings

🎬TMDb
6.9/10(7)

A six-part British television travel series written, directed, and presented by Orson Welles for ITV in 1955. Filmed entirely in Europe, the series follows Welles through Vienna, the Basque Country, Madrid, Paris’s Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and London’s Chelsea Pensioners, blending travelogue, cultural portraiture, and personal essay. Moving between documentary observation and reflective commentary, the episodes combine interviews, local history, and Welles’s distinctive narration into a series that functions as both travel film and cinematic essay.

Language

EN

Status

Ended

First Aired

October 7, 1955

Last Aired

April 12, 2003

Networks

ITV1

Created By

Orson Welles

Where to Watch
Region US · Lang EN
US
No providers available for this region.
Seasons & Episodes
Select a season to view episodes. Reddit links may contain spoilers.
Season
Pays Basque I: The Basque Countries
E1
Pays Basque I: The Basque Countries
Air date: 1955-10-07
Welles takes the viewer to the Basque countryside, a remote corner of Europe on the border of Spain and France. He interviews American expatriates and a Basque sheepherder who returned to Europe after spending 23 years in Colorado.
Pays Basque II: La Pelote Basque
E2
Pays Basque II: La Pelote Basque
Air date: 1955-10-21
Welles continues his tour of the Basque region of France and Spain and learns about the game of pelota and some of its variants — jai alai, joko garbi, and rebot.
Revisiting Vienna
E3
Revisiting Vienna
Air date: 1955-11-04
Welles revisits Vienna, the setting of one of his most famous films, and one of his greatest performances as the unforgettable Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man.
Saint-Germain-des-Pres
E4
Saint-Germain-des-Pres
Air date: 1955-11-18
Welles travels to Paris, where his visit to the Saint Germain des Pres neighborhood is chronicled by newspaper columnist Art Buchwald. Welles interviews an artist, poets inventing new letters to describe sounds and night clubs featuring musicians playing hot jazz.
London: The Queen's Pensioners
E5
London: The Queen's Pensioners
Air date: 1955-12-02
Welles travels to London to visit an alms house in Hackney for indigent widows created in the 1600s and an old soldier's Chelsea home.
Spain: The Bullfight
E6
Spain: The Bullfight
Air date: 1955-12-16
Welles and Mr and Mrs Kenneth Tynan travel to Madrid to explain the nuts and bolts of bullfighting.
France: The Tragedy of Lurs
E7
France: The Tragedy of Lurs
Air date: 2003-04-12
The Dominici affair is a criminal case that occurred in France in the mid-20th century, which gave rise to detailed counter-investigations, emblematic of investigative journalism. On the night of August 4 to 5, 1952, three Englishmen, Sir Jack Drummond, a 61-year-old scientist, his wife Anne Wilbraham, 45, and their 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, were murdered near their car near La Grand. 'Terre, the farm of the Dominici family, in the town of Lurs in the Basses-Alpes (current Alpes-de-Haute-Provence). Patriarch Gaston Dominici was accused of the triple murder and sentenced to death in 1954. In 1957, President René Coty commuted the death sentence and on July 14, 1960, General de Gaulle pardoned and released Gaston Dominici. The affair was followed by numerous journalists, both French and foreign. The episode was ultimately unfinished, but French filmmaker Christophe Cognet recovered his materials and reconstructed the documentary for TV5 broadcast in 2003.

Cast

Orson Welles

Orson Welles

Host: Orson Welles

Recommended

Similar TV Shows