Howard Hughes' Ham Sandwich
Welles shows us a bungalow at The Beverly Hills that Howard Hughes used to occupy. He shows us a tree where every night a package was placed. Sometimes Hughes would take it; sometimes he would not. The imagery Welles uses builds up a great mystery about what this package is. It becomes a heightened object, a mystery that Welles tellls us all about. When it's revealed that it was merely a ham sandwich, we understand that Welles' imagery evoked a great mystery within us because he knew that by pointing out a mystery package in a story about an infamous man would allow our imaginations to go wild and create whatever story we wanted to create.
Rage
While telling his fake story about Picasso, Welles uses nature to reveal the rage that he says Picasso was experiencing when he finds out someone has released new works of his in Paris. We see flashes of lighting surrounded in bright colors, blue, purple. Welles shows us waves crashing down. All to evoke the kind of rage he is speaking of through the visual image.
The Undefeated
Welles composes a shot as we are taken to the island of Ibiza of a white cuckoo clock ticking away, with a poster of a bullfighter in red and black. The image helps us understand how Ibiza is a place where people have come to run away from all of the troubles in the world that haunt them. Welles is showing us that time is not on their side, though they believe they are safe on the island. It relates to a poem by Ernest Hemingway that Welles mentions later entitled, The Undefeated.
Paris Fog
At the beginning of the film, Welles shoots Paris in a deep fog. We see a highway with signs above the road, but we cannot see any further than a few hundred feet. The image tells us that we are going on a journey, but we won't know where we are going until we get there. It's an image that represents the entire film.
