Cinema's most enduring citizen

Twenty-five years after his death, Orson Welles still holds an almost magical grip on cinema buffs’ imaginations

YOU CAN SAY he was a failure – but that only leads to a more demanding appreciation of success than numbers will ever satisfy. Orson Welles never directed a picture that made a profit in his lifetime. He died, alone and broke, in a cottage in the Hollywood Hills on October 10th 1985, at which point his affairs and his estate passed into a chaos that he had known and engineered for most of his life. This disorder is such that at least one film, The Other Side of the Wind, which was nearly finished while Welles was alive, has still not been delivered to us.

He has been dead nearly 25 years and yet there is a gathering current of movies and other fictions in which Orson Welles is still a character, an inspiration and a warning to young film-makers.

In 2012 Sight & Soundmagazine will publish, as it has done every decade since 1952, its critics' and filmmakers' poll of the greatest films ever made. As things stand now, I cannot see how Citizen Kanewill be replaced as top film – the rank it held in 1962, 1972, 1982, 1992 and 2002, in which case it will have reigned for 50 years.

Meanwhile, the large, busy ghost of Orson watches us with his Cheshire-cat smile. In Kane, the hero says that at the rate of losing $1m a year, he’ll be broke – in 60 years. It’s a nifty joke. But Welles’s own capital shows no diminution and it has lasted longer than Kane’s could have. That’s a stranger joke by far. It begins to suggest that something matters more than money.

Welles possessed intimidating charisma and perilous charm. Of course, we know Welles as an actor – something denied to DW Griffith, John Ford, Preston Sturges and others. (Orson Welles’ stage debut was at Dublin’s Gate Theatre in 1931.) But his aura is more persistent still: few citizens of the 20th century left such an intimate imprint. We see him (as Harry Lime as much as Kane), but we hear him, too. He is a voice in the public imagination, reading John Donne, murmuring, “Free of income tax, old man” to Holly Martins, yet sighing over “no wine before its time”.

It may hurt a film buff to admit this, but some directors are dull fellows – because they have no life beyond film. Welles went off in so many other directions: as actor, as man of the theatre, as the spirit of radio, as a magician, a self- taught know-it-all, a traveller, a world-class raconteur and even a political prospect (he wrote speeches for FDR). Welles was such a wonder that biographers have always been drawn to him. There are books on Orson by Peter Noble, Frank Brady, Barbara Leaming, Charles Higham, Joseph McBride, Jonathan Rosenbaum and me – to say nothing of a book-length interview by Peter Bogdanovich and (so far) the two volumes by Simon Callow that promise to be the definitive work.

But it's not just a matter of biography and critical writing. Orson Welles has become a character. Richard Linklater's new film, Me and Orson Welles, is a fiction about a young actor who meets Welles (played by Christian McKay) and manages to be cast in the 1937 stage production of Caesar. It joins a group of pictures made since Welles's death: RKO 281(1999), directed by Benjamin Ross, with Liev Schreiber as Welles caught up in the making of Citizen Kane; also in 1999, Tim Robbins cast Angus Macfadyen as Welles in the story of the Mercury theatre's troubled production of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock; and Ed Wood(1994), by Tim Burton, has Vincent D'Onofrio in a cameo as Welles in what many connoisseurs reckon to be the best portrayal.

It's notable that the Welles in these productions is young still, plump maybe but not obese, a hero to his acolytes. The Welles of 1936-42 worked 20 hours a day, ate double meals to keep going, pursued pretty young women like a demon and lived as if he had no tomorrow. He worked, all at once, in radio, on the stage and in preparation for his great film. He was a looming figure in American life: an offence to Hollywood in the way he achieved a carte blanche contract, and a boy wonder of such arrogance that it was said of him, "There but for the grace of God, goes God." But it's more than the flourish, the eloquence with which he let himself be interviewed, and the effortless seduction of the man himself. If ever our young directors feel fear, self-pity or failure in their lives – then surely they think of Welles again. For Welles is not just the boy wonder; he is Falstaff and Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil– gross hulks. At the root of Welles's fascination lies this question: how can anyone so creative be so self-destructive? Though Welles scrutinised himself intently, there's little evidence that he sought professional advice – even when his overeating was sure to kill him. (He was only 70 when he died – yet in his early 20s Hollywood had welcomed him as a new Tyrone Power)

In the great celebration of American film by French critics in the 1950s, Welles was the outcast hero. Not just the maker of great films, but a genius waiting to be acclaimed. It was a romantic package and Orson was perfect casting. For a generation, all over the world, he was the light and Citizen Kane was the film. A flop when it opened, in 1941, it was hardly known when Sight & Soundhad its 1952 poll. But by 1962, it had taken over, and it still rules.

Many of the people who revered Welles overlooked his faults. People who knew Orson believed this above all: you never let him meet the money people. He turned on the moneybags and lashed them with envy and contempt. Because he could not be humble. If you watch Citizen Kaneclosely, you can see the same trait and the same cocksure grin that goes with it. After he had amazed his country with his 1938 radio version of The War of the Worlds, he went to Hollywood. The film he made there – Citizen Kane– was a collection of all the new ways of making film, but it was a celebration of the old ways, too. It was brilliant, yet it could not resist lampooning Hearst (a jab that ruined its chance of success).

He may have died broke – his abiding condition – but he did not do it for the money. He did it for the sake of the medium and his artistic soul. That is a dangerous way to go, but it's a big reason why the young honour him. Welles was an untamed outcast who got his money however he could – that's the big reason why "legal obstacles" prevent us from seeing The Other Side of the Wind.

But don't make a fetish out of that. You can still see The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, F for Fake, The Trial, Macbeth, Othello, Chimes at Midnight, Mr Arkadin, The Lady from Shanghaiand The Immortal Story, none of which is perfect. But if you've made a perfect film at 25, you grow up fast and you realise that there can be a liveliness in imperfection that draws you on more powerfully than magnificence.

If Orson Welles had never made Citizen Kane, he would be a phenomenon. But he did and that leaves us all his children.

– Guardian service

Citizen Kaneis on re-release. Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Wellesis released on Dec 4th.

The IFI Orson Welles season

Citizen Kane is re-released from Nov 13th

The Magnificent Ambersons Nov 1st, 2.30pm

Journey Into Fear Nov 3rd, 7pm

The Stranger Nov 5th, 6.10pm

The Lady from Shangai Nov 7th, 2pm

Macbeth Nov 8th, 1.40pm

Confidential Report (Mr Arkadin) Nov 7th, 4.30pm

Touch of Evil Nov 8th 4.30pm

The Trial (Le Procès) Nov 16th, 6.10pm

The Immortal Story (Histoire Immortelle) Nov 15th, 4.15pm

F for Fake (Vérités Mensonges) Nov 18th, 6.30pm

See ifi.ie for more