Orson Welles in Italy, by Alberto Anile

The argument over pay with Carlo Ponti and the experience of making the film with Steno put the final nail in the coffin of Welles's love affair with Italy.  He had spent six years being criticized for artistic exhibitionism and excessive formalism.
---Albert Anile, Orson Welles in Italy (Indiana University Press, 2013, translated by Marcus Perryman).

Orson Welles was in Italy from 1957 to 1963.  He went there to make a film, Black Magic, directed by Gregory Ratoff.  He was also fleeing the political climate of the United States, as well as the IRS and Hollywood.  In that time in Italy he worked constantly, when he could, on his film Othello, while taking acting jobs to raise money.  Anile documents this period thoroughly, mainly through a detailed study of how critics in Italy reacted to Welles.  The consensus of the Italian critics was summed up by Umberto Barbaro, writing about Welles's Shakespeare films as "poisoned baroque pies with an obtuse avant-garde style."

There were three major reasons for the Italian attitude toward Welles.
1. He was an arrogant American who did not speak Italian (though he learned while he was there)
2. The Italians were so enamored of their own neorealism they could not understand Welles's stylized films.
3. Dubbing.  Films in Italy are always dubbed into Italian and by the time Citizen Kane arrived in Italy in 1948, recut and dubbed, it was barely seen or appreciated.

I must admit to a personal problem with Italian films and the fact that they do not ever use direct sound. Only directors with intelligence and style --I think particularly of Leone and Rossellini -- can overcome this major handicap.  I think that the dubbing Welles became used to in Italy affected all his later films: from Othello (1951) on Welles dubbed and re-dubbed, most of the films existing now in multiple versions.

Anile covers this period in Welles's life, including Welles's romance with his future wife, Paola Mori, in more detail that any of the other Welles biographers.  Anile's book makes it clear that Welles was a brilliant artist who could also be a self-destructive deadbeat.