Newport Harbor Will Open 4-Week Welles Retrospective

The Newport Harbor Art Museum is offering a four-week retrospective of Orson Welles, one of America’s greatest filmmakers.

The series starts Friday at 6:30 p.m. with Welles’ acknowledged masterpiece of American success and regret, “Citizen Kane” (1941), with Welles as an enigmatic newspaper tycoon.

Up next, Feb. 18, is “Lady From Shanghai” (1948), a thriller in which Welles plays an adventurer who hooks up with a cripple (Everett Sloan) and his beautiful wife (Rita Hayworth).

Feb. 24 brings “Touch of Evil” (1958), a cult favorite in which Welles is a dirty cop who tangles with a narcotics agent (Charlton Heston) in a rough Mexican border town.

“The Trial,” one of Welles’ more ambitious movies, will be shown March 4. This adaptation of Kafka’s famous existential novel stars Anthony Perkins as the confused Everyman caught up in a maddeningly obtuse and dangerous judicial system.

Arthur Taussig, who teaches film classes at Orange Coast College and writes a newsletter called “The Film Analyst,” will introduce each movie and will discuss them afterward. Taussig has hosted similar programs on vampire flicks and the films of Marlene Dietrich.

* “Citizen Kane” by Orson Welles will be shown Friday at 6:30 p.m. at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach. $3 for museum members, seniors and students; $5 for the public. (714) 759-1122.