Appropriate for this day and age, Mr. Bernstein being interviewed: "There's no trick to make a lot of money. . .if all you want is to make a lot of money."
Didn't Joseph Cotten's Jed Leland deliver that line? Of course, until one minute ago I thought he'd also told the story of the girl in the white dress, but still.
OMG. I haven’t thought about Citizen Kane since my eyes would have needed ocular prostheses to look old (!) Jeez, what a wonderful film. My favorite scene is Kane and his wife at the breakfast table as the years go by. My favorite of HJM’s is All About Eve. I watch it every few months. What’s not to like about a film with lines like “You’re too short for that gesture” (!)
Believe it or don’t, that was Herman’s brother Joe Manckiewicz! They both made pictures. And I believe the Democratic operative Frank Mankiewicz is Herman’s son and Ben Mankiewicz at TCM is his grandson. That family must have been a pretty competitive environment.
OMG (again)! Look at me! All these years of pretty focussed film-watching, and I NEVER REALIZED THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE MANCKIEWICZ! Sheesh. And golly. And goldarnit to boot!
Ben Mankiewicz is indeed his grandson. Ben has occasionally been on Sam Seder’s show to talk progressive politics, but it’s been a while since I’ve heard him there.
I think it was Danny Peary who said that this movie “taught us how to watch movies.” I hope that skill isn’t going away like so many other things, like reading books, using ovens, and how to operate belts and shoelaces
That comment reminds me of what Jay McInerney said about modernist novels: "They teach how to read them." I like that, and is there any reason not to think of Citizen Kane as modernist?
Spot on about Ron Howard. He and much of American film makers can’t imagine an audience enjoying a film in which the protagonist doesn’t get what s/he wants or needs or both. Unless remaking Shakespeare, American film makers can’t seem to embrace tragedy as a cathartic experience our souls need to accept life as it is.
But speaking of KaeI, I personally preferred Penelope Gilliatt’s lighter touch and appreciation of the populist side of the movieverse. Her take on Olivier in blackface as Othello - mmm, kiss!
There was a WHAT THE FUCK version of "Our Town" made in the 1940s. The death scene was there...but it was all a dream! The girl was just feverish, and you know how wimmins get when they're all bothered about things. (Like dying during a difficult pregnancy.) Happy ending and a music cue for the audience, in case we missed the point. And none of that minimalist set design. Leave that shit for those Krauts who used to work for UFA.
Lars Von Trier would take Thorton Wilder's original vision, and reapply it to "Dogville," of course. I hear Von Trier has a new picture out soon. The Danish title translates to, "Fucking Americans-Christ How I Hate Them!"
"Our Town" was always my go-to example of Hollywood fecklessness for people who were only familiar with the play (since eclipsed by "Forrest Gump"). And yet, Wilder himself wrote the screenplay. To what extent he agreed to this particular descration or why, who knows? But if you can get past Emily waking up, the film is pretty damned good IMO, and Aaron Copland's music is a big plus.
Had to look it up. Wikipedia: "The film was a faithful reproduction of the play except for two significant changes: the film used scenery, whereas the play had not; the events of the third act, which in the play revolve around the death of one of the main characters, were turned into a dream from which she awakens, allowing her to resume a normal life. Producer Sol Lesser worked with Wilder in creating these changes.
Wilder wrote producer Sol Lesser that "Emily should live.... In a movie you see the people so close "to" that a different relation is established. In the theater, they are halfway abstractions in an allegory, in the movie they are very concrete.... It is disproportionately cruel that she die. Let her live...."
Submitted with minimal comment, a minimal fragment of a mercifully short story I wrote:
Mom warned me about this sort of thing. She'd worked with Olivier and done three Ionesco plays before she moved west in '56. Her agent got her into the big prestige picture United Artists was doing with Orson Wells.
"But Orson being Orson, the whole goddamn thing was a train wreck and not one inch of film ever saw the light of day."
She stuck around Hollywood and got cast as Nicky Shakesalot's ex girlfriend in, "Rhumba Rhumba Rhumba!" You can see some of her cut scenes on the Blu-ray special edition, "But why the hell someone would want a special edition of THAT stinker is beyond me," she said.
She wound up getting her realtor's license and doing OK. (She showed the place by the beach where that awful thing with Don Johnson and the Malaysian dancer happened, but that was a few years later.)
Anyway, when I told her I was going to film school, she wasn't happy, but she understood. She talked Dad down from the ledge when he found out, which was pretty cool.
OK, before I re-read the first line I thought this was an actual reminiscence. I even googled "Rhumba Rhumba Rhumba!" and discovered this oddity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A80nQ8rcCZ8
{SCENE #24-CHICO AND HARPO WANDER INTO A MUSIC STORE}
Movies produced in the west have lost the art of stopping the action while people randomly burst into songs and dance routines.
Thanks for that link, and sorry to send you on a snipe hunt. My little story was built around a guy who was hired by Lucasfilm before Disney opened the floodgates. In my treatment, production came to a screeching halt because George decided to re-edit the first trilogy, yet again. Since I've wasted so much of your time already, here are the last two paragraphs:
No, I didn't get to meet Mr. Lucas, but his assistant was nice. She took us all to that curry place by the airport and paid us for the days we worked. Mom said that instead of cashing the check, I should have had the bank authenticate it, and gotten it framed. She said I could have charged people to look at it like it was the Shroud Of Turin or something.
Dad got Uncle Henry to give me a job on the loading dock, with a promise of something better if I get my over-the-road commercial license. I'm still working on a couple of screenplays. My friend Karen says she'll bring up my name if that latest "Origins Of Spiderman" project ever gets greenlit. What is this, the third or fourth one? Mom say's if I mention it to Dad, I'm on my own this time.
I still have Citizen Kael’s book, which I purchased when it first came out. I had actually not seen the film at that time, repertory cinemas being rather thin on the ground in the Southern California suburbs of my youth, but in fall quarter 1972 there was a screening on campus. Yay! Unfortunately, there was a problem with the sound, for values of “problem” equal to “none.” Boo! The show went on, albeit to a diminished audience. I probably took more benefit than most, because I’d read the screenplay 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘰𝘰𝘯.
In an otherwise forgettable film from 2008, 𝘔𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘖𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘞𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘴, actor Christian McKay absolutely 𝘯𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘴 the titular character even though, at thirty-five, he had a dozen years on the boy wonder.* The film centers around the Mercury Theatre’s 1937 “modern dress” production of 𝘑𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘶𝘴 𝘊𝘢𝘦𝘴𝘢𝘳, grafting a silly coming-of-age story (of a supernumerary, not of Welles) onto it. I was impressed, though—apart from McKay’s performance, I mean—by the production team’s attention to detail, because I’ve seen photographs of the stage performance, and these same images have been reproduced with considerable fidelity.
Amusing factoid from the first volume of John Houseman’s memoirs (which is where I and, in all likelihood, the filmmakers saw those photos): in the scene in which the senators attack Caesar, they fall upon him with rubber knives—all save Brutus, because Welles in that role felt that the audience needed to see the flash of real steel. At one performance, in the minute following the assassination, an actor was observed to skid and, looking down at the fallen dictator, appear visibly startled, whereupon the cast sort of rushed through the scene before the curtain fell for an impromptu intermission. Although the scene had of course been rehearsed and previously performed without incident, on this occasion Welles had been tardy in turning the blade aside, and had actually sliced actor Joseph Holland very close to the heart, and Holland—a real trouper, obviously—remained lying on stage as his role required, conscious and seriously leaking blood, hence the skid. Afterward Welles, characteristically, blamed his colleague for the mishap.
*I forget who it was who once cruelly summed up his career: “Wunderkind at twenty, Übermensch at thirty, kaput at forty.”
“ but in fall quarter 1972 there was a screening on campus. Yay! ”
There must have been a mass distribution to colleges that year. I saw it in the Student Union ballroom.
I had no idea what I was going to see. It was just “Film Night.” I know I must have seen many other “important” movies on those nights, but KANE is the only one I remember —vividly!— to this day.
Again with the bullet points, again in no particular order:
•Ron Howard! Speaking of auterism -- tl;dr: I believe it works for some, not for others. Some directors make the big bucks for being the Hollywood ideal: Bringing the big grossing productions timely without going over budget. Some get backing to produce works of art. Opie there is surely the former. So, you know, comparing him in any substantive way with Welles...
•As for Welles, as a filmmaker, being overhyped: "The Other Side of the Wind". He still had his chops notwithstanding his declining ability to get financing and, you know, movies made. Dunno as I type whether I'd unreservedly consider him an auteur, but he certainly left his mark on every movie he made as well as some he only passed through like "The Third Man" and even "Touch of Evil". (Full disclosure: Thanks to the Indiegogo campaign, I'm one of the zillions of producers of Wind".)
•The great thing about Kael was her enthusiasm and her prose, so out there and brutal. Her taste, though, was another matter. But always a joy to read. And I say that notwithstanding that I was, at the time, pretty much in sync with her tastes while only seeing not so many of the movies she reviewed. So small sample, don't judge me on this.
*Speaking of Kael: How much the movie is based on her thesis, Roy? Is Pauline being ripped off of due credit here? Want to, hope to see the movie regardless.)
"Wind" gave me pleasant flashbacks to the 70s. And whether it was good or now, it had a bunch of entertaining performances. Would say more pretty good craft, not masterpiece. OTOH, more competence in its shaky production than nearly anything else.
Slick, superfiial, masterful in its way. An entertainment that work for me, wholly lacking in anything serious or substantive. If nothing else, a master at work (not saying it's a masterpiece, just some fine craftwork).
Then again, it's the only movie I've produced, so I may not be objective.
Kane is a movie I knew only by reputation when I finally saw it as a big shot of 23 or 24. I was up late and it started playing on TV (cable, no commercials), and I thought, all right, pfft, let's try it, of course it'll be dated, there's no way it will live up to the hype...
I don't think I blinked once. When it ended at 3 am, I was wide awake. I paced my parent's house, then sat down and wrote for a while, mind and heart racing. I literally could not believe the depth and span of that movie. I had no idea that a movie could do what this movie did.
I was lucky in that I was old enough to sense the truth of the girl on the ferry speech, which might have been my favorite moment then, and certainly became so in my 30s. I have now such a girl, though I didn't realize she would become that as we passed on the beach in Belmar, NJ, in the summer of 1996; and I can't say I think about her every day, but the memory is still there and still sharp and still hurts in a way that in the moment I could not have guessed. How this movie has such far-ranging intelligence, and heart, and beauty all at once...
You have to credit HJM for some of that, but like you say, Roy, it's Welles and his actors who made it real (I forgot Wise edited!) and all I know (having not read Kael) is that HJM's screenplay was something like 280 pages long. A real script is 120, so 280 -- that's not writing, as was once said by a different guy about about another guy -- that's typing. And Citizen Kane still feels like an impossible achievement.
(My feeling on the Cain/Abel thing is that Kane was also Abel, and that part of him was killed, I suppose partly by him but partly by forces out of his control, back on that snowy day when he was yelling "The Union forever!" and inherited the mines that plowed up wealth from the earth, and so he has been in exile ever since, loved only by God, which will keep you going, but... isn't enough -- and yeah, that is *very* American.)
Fun Fact: When they need a reason for Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) to stay up late, they have him glance through the tv listings and exclaim, "Citizen Kane! I've never seen that..." So 2 or 3 (or 8) writers had to pick a good reason to watch tv that late, and that's what they came up with.
Late to the fun, but another quote of Fincher's about Welles from the link: "...at 25, you don’t know what you don’t know. Period. Neither Welles, nor anyone."
From what I've read, Welles told Toland when he first met him that he knew nothing about making films, and Toland said that's why he wanted to work with him because the only way to learn anything is from somebody who doesn't know anything (or something like that). IOW, Welles was smart enough to know exactly what he didn't know, but he damned sure knew what he wanted. Real geniuses catalyze the creativity of other geniuses, so he, Toland, Mankewicz, Herrmann, and everyone else involved with Kane came up with a masterpiece. So yeah, Fincher, fuck you.
Was it? When I saw I didn't know much about how evil Zuckerberg was or how corrosive Face book was and is...but he seemed to come off as very small in the movie. I mean, he started the damn thing as a "Hot or Not" for college kids.
Late, but just realizing that Citizen Kane is a two-for-one with takedowns of media figures--not just Hearst but the pompous, overdone, self-important Timestyle of "The March of Time" newsreels that the initial "News. . . On The March!" screening was portraying. (Harry Luce off Hearst in the corner pocket.)
Thanks for the wonderful essay Roy. I remember first seeing CK on a 12” black and white TV at my grandma’s place one Saturday, me perhaps of the age of 12, and having my entire concept of film being transformed. That said, Fincher made Zodiac, and I will brook no negging!
Nice to see a post on this. I've been wondering about it and wondering if I'm going to watch it, but I suppose I will, just because Welles fascinates me and the movie is one of my favorites. It's interesting how he is portrayed as something of a shit in most of the movies and fictional pieces about him, and yet how he seemed to have close friends and supporters his entire life.
It's also nice to feel and think passionately about something other than politics for a change (this refers to both you and me).
So I watched Mank over the weekend and it was delightfully entertaining.
Maybe the sole issue with it at this point is the usual Hollywood thing: Far too many liberties taken in a biography. Too, maybe more appropriate would have been doing as a light fiction like Kane is. Or maybe that could have been too meta.
Pauline Kael. It was great that a teenage boy could learn all about film and writing in one place. I remember my excitement when I realized about a third of the way through "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" (my first Pauline Kael experience. )that there was a whole shelf of her books at the library to read. Plus a couple of fresh reviews every month over in the periodical room.
I kept getting sidetracked by the personal columns in the Voice every time I tried to read the content so Sarris always got put off.
I have decided after 50 years of thinking about it I prefer my Welles as cobbled together near masterpieces. The first 47 minutes of Ambersons is the Supreme filmaking
achievement anywhere and that European films look exactly as Welles intended, bad sound, continuity problems and all. Arkadin is marvelous, the Trial would have delighted Kafka and I can't decide what the greatest Shakespeare film ever is - his Macbeth, Othello or Chimes of Midnight. ( It's probably Throne of Blood or Polanski's Macbeth. But we're talking Welles so..)
I think you write equally well about film, music or politics btw - that's impressive as hell.
I don't know about Gary Oldham . Sid and Nancy was excellent; he was perfect for Rozenkrantz - His Churchill was better than I expected. I can't think of anything else that really got me.
Appropriate for this day and age, Mr. Bernstein being interviewed: "There's no trick to make a lot of money. . .if all you want is to make a lot of money."
Didn't Joseph Cotten's Jed Leland deliver that line? Of course, until one minute ago I thought he'd also told the story of the girl in the white dress, but still.
No, it’s Bernstein. It’s in the same scene as the story about the girl. It’s my favorite line from the movie.
OMG. I haven’t thought about Citizen Kane since my eyes would have needed ocular prostheses to look old (!) Jeez, what a wonderful film. My favorite scene is Kane and his wife at the breakfast table as the years go by. My favorite of HJM’s is All About Eve. I watch it every few months. What’s not to like about a film with lines like “You’re too short for that gesture” (!)
Believe it or don’t, that was Herman’s brother Joe Manckiewicz! They both made pictures. And I believe the Democratic operative Frank Mankiewicz is Herman’s son and Ben Mankiewicz at TCM is his grandson. That family must have been a pretty competitive environment.
OMG (again)! Look at me! All these years of pretty focussed film-watching, and I NEVER REALIZED THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE MANCKIEWICZ! Sheesh. And golly. And goldarnit to boot!
OMG, indeed! LOL.
Ben Mankiewicz is indeed his grandson. Ben has occasionally been on Sam Seder’s show to talk progressive politics, but it’s been a while since I’ve heard him there.
Joe was the success, Herman not so much. IIRC, his shaky career took a hit with "Kane".
And there's Joe's kid, Tom.
"Eve, darling, it's me. Addison." and, re a script he hands someone to read, "The minutes will fly like hours."
I think it was Danny Peary who said that this movie “taught us how to watch movies.” I hope that skill isn’t going away like so many other things, like reading books, using ovens, and how to operate belts and shoelaces
Sansabelt pants have been around since the 1940s.
Yeah, but I always thought of them the same way I thought of Members Only jackets
That comment reminds me of what Jay McInerney said about modernist novels: "They teach how to read them." I like that, and is there any reason not to think of Citizen Kane as modernist?
I had a film teacher who certainly did! Ceilinged sets, the blocking, the lighting, why not?
I'll bet on anything requiring intellect is going away.
My recent reaction to being on the Internet is that it’s become such a fcking chore, that Caro’s biographies of LBJ are actually a source of relief
Spot on about Ron Howard. He and much of American film makers can’t imagine an audience enjoying a film in which the protagonist doesn’t get what s/he wants or needs or both. Unless remaking Shakespeare, American film makers can’t seem to embrace tragedy as a cathartic experience our souls need to accept life as it is.
But speaking of KaeI, I personally preferred Penelope Gilliatt’s lighter touch and appreciation of the populist side of the movieverse. Her take on Olivier in blackface as Othello - mmm, kiss!
There was a WHAT THE FUCK version of "Our Town" made in the 1940s. The death scene was there...but it was all a dream! The girl was just feverish, and you know how wimmins get when they're all bothered about things. (Like dying during a difficult pregnancy.) Happy ending and a music cue for the audience, in case we missed the point. And none of that minimalist set design. Leave that shit for those Krauts who used to work for UFA.
Lars Von Trier would take Thorton Wilder's original vision, and reapply it to "Dogville," of course. I hear Von Trier has a new picture out soon. The Danish title translates to, "Fucking Americans-Christ How I Hate Them!"
Sounds like a winner. So the film of Our Town is no good? Disappointing.
"Our Town" was always my go-to example of Hollywood fecklessness for people who were only familiar with the play (since eclipsed by "Forrest Gump"). And yet, Wilder himself wrote the screenplay. To what extent he agreed to this particular descration or why, who knows? But if you can get past Emily waking up, the film is pretty damned good IMO, and Aaron Copland's music is a big plus.
Had to look it up. Wikipedia: "The film was a faithful reproduction of the play except for two significant changes: the film used scenery, whereas the play had not; the events of the third act, which in the play revolve around the death of one of the main characters, were turned into a dream from which she awakens, allowing her to resume a normal life. Producer Sol Lesser worked with Wilder in creating these changes.
Wilder wrote producer Sol Lesser that "Emily should live.... In a movie you see the people so close "to" that a different relation is established. In the theater, they are halfway abstractions in an allegory, in the movie they are very concrete.... It is disproportionately cruel that she die. Let her live...."
I may have to pick up some Paul Masson and rewatch Citizen Kane tonight.
Submitted with minimal comment, a minimal fragment of a mercifully short story I wrote:
Mom warned me about this sort of thing. She'd worked with Olivier and done three Ionesco plays before she moved west in '56. Her agent got her into the big prestige picture United Artists was doing with Orson Wells.
"But Orson being Orson, the whole goddamn thing was a train wreck and not one inch of film ever saw the light of day."
She stuck around Hollywood and got cast as Nicky Shakesalot's ex girlfriend in, "Rhumba Rhumba Rhumba!" You can see some of her cut scenes on the Blu-ray special edition, "But why the hell someone would want a special edition of THAT stinker is beyond me," she said.
She wound up getting her realtor's license and doing OK. (She showed the place by the beach where that awful thing with Don Johnson and the Malaysian dancer happened, but that was a few years later.)
Anyway, when I told her I was going to film school, she wasn't happy, but she understood. She talked Dad down from the ledge when he found out, which was pretty cool.
Good heavens.
OK, before I re-read the first line I thought this was an actual reminiscence. I even googled "Rhumba Rhumba Rhumba!" and discovered this oddity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A80nQ8rcCZ8
{SCENE #24-CHICO AND HARPO WANDER INTO A MUSIC STORE}
Movies produced in the west have lost the art of stopping the action while people randomly burst into songs and dance routines.
Thanks for that link, and sorry to send you on a snipe hunt. My little story was built around a guy who was hired by Lucasfilm before Disney opened the floodgates. In my treatment, production came to a screeching halt because George decided to re-edit the first trilogy, yet again. Since I've wasted so much of your time already, here are the last two paragraphs:
No, I didn't get to meet Mr. Lucas, but his assistant was nice. She took us all to that curry place by the airport and paid us for the days we worked. Mom said that instead of cashing the check, I should have had the bank authenticate it, and gotten it framed. She said I could have charged people to look at it like it was the Shroud Of Turin or something.
Dad got Uncle Henry to give me a job on the loading dock, with a promise of something better if I get my over-the-road commercial license. I'm still working on a couple of screenplays. My friend Karen says she'll bring up my name if that latest "Origins Of Spiderman" project ever gets greenlit. What is this, the third or fourth one? Mom say's if I mention it to Dad, I'm on my own this time.
I still have Citizen Kael’s book, which I purchased when it first came out. I had actually not seen the film at that time, repertory cinemas being rather thin on the ground in the Southern California suburbs of my youth, but in fall quarter 1972 there was a screening on campus. Yay! Unfortunately, there was a problem with the sound, for values of “problem” equal to “none.” Boo! The show went on, albeit to a diminished audience. I probably took more benefit than most, because I’d read the screenplay 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘰𝘰𝘯.
In an otherwise forgettable film from 2008, 𝘔𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘖𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘞𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘴, actor Christian McKay absolutely 𝘯𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘴 the titular character even though, at thirty-five, he had a dozen years on the boy wonder.* The film centers around the Mercury Theatre’s 1937 “modern dress” production of 𝘑𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘶𝘴 𝘊𝘢𝘦𝘴𝘢𝘳, grafting a silly coming-of-age story (of a supernumerary, not of Welles) onto it. I was impressed, though—apart from McKay’s performance, I mean—by the production team’s attention to detail, because I’ve seen photographs of the stage performance, and these same images have been reproduced with considerable fidelity.
Amusing factoid from the first volume of John Houseman’s memoirs (which is where I and, in all likelihood, the filmmakers saw those photos): in the scene in which the senators attack Caesar, they fall upon him with rubber knives—all save Brutus, because Welles in that role felt that the audience needed to see the flash of real steel. At one performance, in the minute following the assassination, an actor was observed to skid and, looking down at the fallen dictator, appear visibly startled, whereupon the cast sort of rushed through the scene before the curtain fell for an impromptu intermission. Although the scene had of course been rehearsed and previously performed without incident, on this occasion Welles had been tardy in turning the blade aside, and had actually sliced actor Joseph Holland very close to the heart, and Holland—a real trouper, obviously—remained lying on stage as his role required, conscious and seriously leaking blood, hence the skid. Afterward Welles, characteristically, blamed his colleague for the mishap.
*I forget who it was who once cruelly summed up his career: “Wunderkind at twenty, Übermensch at thirty, kaput at forty.”
Billy Wilder? Let's hope.
“ but in fall quarter 1972 there was a screening on campus. Yay! ”
There must have been a mass distribution to colleges that year. I saw it in the Student Union ballroom.
I had no idea what I was going to see. It was just “Film Night.” I know I must have seen many other “important” movies on those nights, but KANE is the only one I remember —vividly!— to this day.
Again with the bullet points, again in no particular order:
•Ron Howard! Speaking of auterism -- tl;dr: I believe it works for some, not for others. Some directors make the big bucks for being the Hollywood ideal: Bringing the big grossing productions timely without going over budget. Some get backing to produce works of art. Opie there is surely the former. So, you know, comparing him in any substantive way with Welles...
•As for Welles, as a filmmaker, being overhyped: "The Other Side of the Wind". He still had his chops notwithstanding his declining ability to get financing and, you know, movies made. Dunno as I type whether I'd unreservedly consider him an auteur, but he certainly left his mark on every movie he made as well as some he only passed through like "The Third Man" and even "Touch of Evil". (Full disclosure: Thanks to the Indiegogo campaign, I'm one of the zillions of producers of Wind".)
•The great thing about Kael was her enthusiasm and her prose, so out there and brutal. Her taste, though, was another matter. But always a joy to read. And I say that notwithstanding that I was, at the time, pretty much in sync with her tastes while only seeing not so many of the movies she reviewed. So small sample, don't judge me on this.
*Speaking of Kael: How much the movie is based on her thesis, Roy? Is Pauline being ripped off of due credit here? Want to, hope to see the movie regardless.)
Well, we'll see -- the movie "opens" today. I didn't like Wind very much: https://edroso.substack.com/p/gone-with-the-wind
"Wind" gave me pleasant flashbacks to the 70s. And whether it was good or now, it had a bunch of entertaining performances. Would say more pretty good craft, not masterpiece. OTOH, more competence in its shaky production than nearly anything else.
Slick, superfiial, masterful in its way. An entertainment that work for me, wholly lacking in anything serious or substantive. If nothing else, a master at work (not saying it's a masterpiece, just some fine craftwork).
Then again, it's the only movie I've produced, so I may not be objective.
Kane is a movie I knew only by reputation when I finally saw it as a big shot of 23 or 24. I was up late and it started playing on TV (cable, no commercials), and I thought, all right, pfft, let's try it, of course it'll be dated, there's no way it will live up to the hype...
I don't think I blinked once. When it ended at 3 am, I was wide awake. I paced my parent's house, then sat down and wrote for a while, mind and heart racing. I literally could not believe the depth and span of that movie. I had no idea that a movie could do what this movie did.
I was lucky in that I was old enough to sense the truth of the girl on the ferry speech, which might have been my favorite moment then, and certainly became so in my 30s. I have now such a girl, though I didn't realize she would become that as we passed on the beach in Belmar, NJ, in the summer of 1996; and I can't say I think about her every day, but the memory is still there and still sharp and still hurts in a way that in the moment I could not have guessed. How this movie has such far-ranging intelligence, and heart, and beauty all at once...
You have to credit HJM for some of that, but like you say, Roy, it's Welles and his actors who made it real (I forgot Wise edited!) and all I know (having not read Kael) is that HJM's screenplay was something like 280 pages long. A real script is 120, so 280 -- that's not writing, as was once said by a different guy about about another guy -- that's typing. And Citizen Kane still feels like an impossible achievement.
(My feeling on the Cain/Abel thing is that Kane was also Abel, and that part of him was killed, I suppose partly by him but partly by forces out of his control, back on that snowy day when he was yelling "The Union forever!" and inherited the mines that plowed up wealth from the earth, and so he has been in exile ever since, loved only by God, which will keep you going, but... isn't enough -- and yeah, that is *very* American.)
Fun Fact: When they need a reason for Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) to stay up late, they have him glance through the tv listings and exclaim, "Citizen Kane! I've never seen that..." So 2 or 3 (or 8) writers had to pick a good reason to watch tv that late, and that's what they came up with.
Late to the fun, but another quote of Fincher's about Welles from the link: "...at 25, you don’t know what you don’t know. Period. Neither Welles, nor anyone."
From what I've read, Welles told Toland when he first met him that he knew nothing about making films, and Toland said that's why he wanted to work with him because the only way to learn anything is from somebody who doesn't know anything (or something like that). IOW, Welles was smart enough to know exactly what he didn't know, but he damned sure knew what he wanted. Real geniuses catalyze the creativity of other geniuses, so he, Toland, Mankewicz, Herrmann, and everyone else involved with Kane came up with a masterpiece. So yeah, Fincher, fuck you.
Forget to note that one of Fincher's more prominent films is his hagiography of Mark Zuckerberg.
Was it? When I saw I didn't know much about how evil Zuckerberg was or how corrosive Face book was and is...but he seemed to come off as very small in the movie. I mean, he started the damn thing as a "Hot or Not" for college kids.
Late, but just realizing that Citizen Kane is a two-for-one with takedowns of media figures--not just Hearst but the pompous, overdone, self-important Timestyle of "The March of Time" newsreels that the initial "News. . . On The March!" screening was portraying. (Harry Luce off Hearst in the corner pocket.)
Thanks for the wonderful essay Roy. I remember first seeing CK on a 12” black and white TV at my grandma’s place one Saturday, me perhaps of the age of 12, and having my entire concept of film being transformed. That said, Fincher made Zodiac, and I will brook no negging!
Nice to see a post on this. I've been wondering about it and wondering if I'm going to watch it, but I suppose I will, just because Welles fascinates me and the movie is one of my favorites. It's interesting how he is portrayed as something of a shit in most of the movies and fictional pieces about him, and yet how he seemed to have close friends and supporters his entire life.
It's also nice to feel and think passionately about something other than politics for a change (this refers to both you and me).
So I watched Mank over the weekend and it was delightfully entertaining.
Maybe the sole issue with it at this point is the usual Hollywood thing: Far too many liberties taken in a biography. Too, maybe more appropriate would have been doing as a light fiction like Kane is. Or maybe that could have been too meta.
Pauline Kael. It was great that a teenage boy could learn all about film and writing in one place. I remember my excitement when I realized about a third of the way through "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" (my first Pauline Kael experience. )that there was a whole shelf of her books at the library to read. Plus a couple of fresh reviews every month over in the periodical room.
I kept getting sidetracked by the personal columns in the Voice every time I tried to read the content so Sarris always got put off.
I have decided after 50 years of thinking about it I prefer my Welles as cobbled together near masterpieces. The first 47 minutes of Ambersons is the Supreme filmaking
achievement anywhere and that European films look exactly as Welles intended, bad sound, continuity problems and all. Arkadin is marvelous, the Trial would have delighted Kafka and I can't decide what the greatest Shakespeare film ever is - his Macbeth, Othello or Chimes of Midnight. ( It's probably Throne of Blood or Polanski's Macbeth. But we're talking Welles so..)
I think you write equally well about film, music or politics btw - that's impressive as hell.
I don't know about Gary Oldham . Sid and Nancy was excellent; he was perfect for Rozenkrantz - His Churchill was better than I expected. I can't think of anything else that really got me.