[tubemonkey]

BBC Radio 4 -- exp 22 Nov

• Heart of Darkness -- Joseph Conrad -- screenplay Orson Welles (1 ep / 1.5 hrs)

It's the 1890s and Mr Kurtz, one of the senior agents of an Ivory trading company, has disappeared.

Marlow, a skipper, is hired to take a steamship up the Congo River to find him. But the further he and the other company men travel up river, the greater the sense of impending danger, and the more disturbing the rumours that begin to circulate about Kurtz.

Orson Welles wrote this screenplay in 1939, with the intention of directing and starring as both Marlow and Kurtz. After founding the Mercury Theatre in 1937, his celebrated production of Julius Caesar and his radio adaption of The War of The Worlds established him as a major talent. RKO Pictures then signed a deal with him to produce his first feature film. Welles intended this to be Heart of Darkness but the script proved to be too audacious for them - and his second script, Citizen Kane, was greenlit instead.