Citizen Kane and RKO 281

NOTE: I recently went down a wormhole, settling on the 1999 HBO Film RKO 281 starring Liev Schreiber and John Malkovich. It's all about the clash Orsen Wells allegedly had trying to make the 1941 classic Citizen Kane, and subsequently fighting the powerful media magnate William Randolph Hearst with pal Herman Mankowitz in tow. Being familiar with Gary Oldman's Mank, it again just sort of made sense I finally sit down and watched the movie that all these 'Making Of' movies were about. So without further ado, here's both a review of Citizen Kane as well as RKO 281. Enjoy...

Citizen Kane

From Roger Ebert.com: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-citizen-kane-1941

"****"
Roger Ebert
May 24, 1998



“I don't think any word can explain a man's life,” says one of the searchers through the warehouse of treasures left behind by Charles Foster Kane. Then we get the famous series of shots leading to the closeup of the word “Rosebud” on a sled that has been tossed into a furnace, its paint curling in the flames. We remember that this was Kane's childhood sled, taken from him as he was torn from his family and sent east to boarding school.

Rosebud is the emblem of the security, hope and innocence of childhood, which a man can spend his life seeking to regain. It is the green light at the end of Gatsby's pier; the leopard atop Kilimanjaro, seeking nobody knows what; the bone tossed into the air in “2001.” It is that yearning after transience that adults learn to suppress. “Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost,” says Thompson, the reporter assigned to the puzzle of Kane's dying word. “Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything.” True, it explains nothing, but it is remarkably satisfactory as a demonstration that nothing can be explained. “Citizen Kane” likes playful paradoxes like that. Its surface is as much fun as any movie ever made. Its depths surpass understanding. I have analyzed it a shot at a time with more than 30 groups, and together we have seen, I believe, pretty much everything that is there on the screen. The more clearly I can see its physical manifestation, the more I am stirred by its mystery.

It is one of the miracles of cinema that in 1941 a first-time director; a cynical, hard-drinking writer; an innovative cinematographer, and a group of New York stage and radio actors were given the keys to a studio and total control, and made a masterpiece. “Citizen Kane” is more than a great movie; it is a gathering of all the lessons of the emerging era of sound, just as “Birth of a Nation” assembled everything learned at the summit of the silent era, and “2001” pointed the way beyond narrative. These peaks stand above all the others.

The origins of “Citizen Kane” are well known. Orson Welles, the boy wonder of radio and stage, was given freedom by RKO Radio Pictures to make any picture he wished. Herman Mankiewicz, an experienced screenwriter, collaborated with him on a screenplay originally called “The American.” Its inspiration was the life of William Randolph Hearst, who had put together an empire of newspapers, radio stations, magazines and news services, and then built to himself the flamboyant monument of San Simeon, a castle furnished by rummaging the remains of nations. Hearst was Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates rolled up into an enigma.

Arriving in Hollywood at age 25, Welles brought a subtle knowledge of sound and dialogue along with him; on his Mercury Theater of the Air, he'd experimented with audio styles more lithe and suggestive than those usually heard in the movies. As his cinematographer he hired Gregg Toland, who on John Ford's “The Long Voyage Home” (1940) had experimented with deep focus photography--with shots where everything was in focus, from the front to the back, so that composition and movement determined where the eye looked first. For his cast Welles assembled his New York colleagues, including Joseph Cotten as Jed Leland, the hero's best friend; Dorothy Comingore as Susan Alexander, the young woman Kane thought he could make into an opera star; Everett Sloane as Mr. Bernstein, the mogul's business wizard; Ray Collins as Gettys, the corrupt political boss, and Agnes Moorehead as the boy's forbidding mother. Welles himself played Kane from age 25 until his deathbed, using makeup and body language to trace the progress of a man increasingly captive inside his needs. “All he really wanted out of life was love,” Leland says. “That's Charlie's story--how he lost it.”

The structure of “Citizen Kane” is circular, adding more depth every time it passes over the life. The movie opens with newsreel obituary footage that briefs us on the life and times of Charles Foster Kane; this footage, with its portentous narration, is Welles' bemused nod in the direction of the “March of Time” newsreels then being produced by another media mogul, Henry Luce. They provide a map of Kane's trajectory, and it will keep us oriented as the screenplay skips around in time, piecing together the memories of those who knew him.

Curious about Kane's dying word, “rosebud,” the newsreel editor assigns Thompson, a reporter, to find out what it meant. Thompson is played by William Alland in a thankless performance; he triggers every flashback, yet his face is never seen. He questions Kane's alcoholic mistress, his ailing old friend, his rich associate and the other witnesses, while the movie loops through time. As often as I've seen “Citizen Kane,” I've never been able to firmly fix the order of the scenes in my mind. I look at a scene and tease myself with what will come next. But it remains elusive: By flashing back through the eyes of many witnesses, Welles and Mankiewicz created an emotional chronology set free from time.

The movie is filled with bravura visual moments: the towers of Xanadu; candidate Kane addressing a political rally; the doorway of his mistress dissolving into a front-page photo in a rival newspaper; the camera swooping down through a skylight toward the pathetic Susan in a nightclub; the many Kanes reflected through parallel mirrors; the boy playing in the snow in the background as his parents determine his future; the great shot as the camera rises straight up from Susan's opera debut to a stagehand holding his nose, and the subsequent shot of Kane, his face hidden in shadow, defiantly applauding in the silent hall.

Along with the personal story is the history of a period. “Citizen Kane” covers the rise of the penny press (here Joseph Pulitzer is the model), the Hearst-supported Spanish-American War, the birth of radio, the power of political machines, the rise of fascism, the growth of celebrity journalism. A newsreel subtitle reads: “1895 to 1941. All of these years he covered, many of these he was.” The screenplay by Mankiewicz and Welles (which got an Oscar, the only one Welles ever won) is densely constructed and covers an amazing amount of ground, including a sequence showing Kane inventing the popular press; a record of his marriage, from early bliss to the famous montage of increasingly chilly breakfasts; the story of his courtship of Susan Alexander and her disastrous opera career, and his decline into the remote master of Xanadu (“I think if you look carefully in the west wing, Susan, you'll find about a dozen vacationists still in residence”).

“Citizen Kane” knows the sled is not the answer. It explains what Rosebud is, but not what Rosebud means. The film's construction shows how our lives, after we are gone, survive only in the memories of others, and those memories butt up against the walls we erect and the roles we play. There is the Kane who made shadow figures with his fingers, and the Kane who hated the traction trust; the Kane who chose his mistress over his marriage and political career, the Kane who entertained millions, the Kane who died alone.

There is a master image in “Citizen Kane” you might easily miss. The tycoon has overextended himself and is losing control of his empire. After he signs the papers of his surrender, he turns and walks into the back of the shot. Deep focus allows Welles to play a trick of perspective. Behind Kane on the wall is a window that seems to be of average size. But as he walks toward it, we see it is further away and much higher than we thought. Eventually he stands beneath its lower sill, shrunken and diminished. Then as he walks toward us, his stature grows again. A man always seems the same size to himself, because he does not stand where we stand to look at him.


*******

RKO 281

from Roger Ebert.com: https://www.rogerebert.com/far-flung-correspondents/after-kane-before-mank-revisiting-rko-281

After Kane, Before Mank: Revisiting RKO 281
Seongyong Cho
December 29, 2020




While David Fincher’s recent Netflix film “Mank” adamantly sticks to Welles’ co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz’s bitter viewpoint on how he came to write “Citizen Kane,” Benjamin Ross' 1999 HBO movie “RKO 281” mainly presents director and co-writer Orson Welles’ viewpoint on the classic film's production. It also pays some attention to Mankiewicz and several other real-life figures revolving around Welles, resulting in a vivid and compelling presentation of that troubled history behind the making of “Citizen Kane.”

The first act of “RKO 281” revolves around Welles’ struggle to find a project ambitious enough for him and his growing reputation after success in radio and theater. While he surely made a big impression on the folks of Hollywood with his glorious entrance, Welles, played by Liev Schreiber, soon finds himself running out of time without anything to be greenlit by RKO and its current president George Schaefer (Roy Scheider). But then, serendipitously, he is invited to the big manor of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst (James Cromwell) in San Simeon, California. While getting the glimpses of the private life of Hearst and his longtime mistress Marion Davies (Melanie Griffith), Welles comes to have a brilliant story idea for his first movie, and then persuades Mankiewicz to write a screenplay based on that. As your average jaded Hollywood writer, Mankiewicz, played by John Malkovich, is reluctant at first, but he eventually agrees to work for Welles because it looks like the last opportunity in his dwindling movie career which has been deteriorated by his alcoholism. Having been one of Hearst and Davies’ regular guests for years, Mankiewicz surely knows some interesting personal facts about them, and he doesn't hesitate to include a reference the pet name for Davies’ certain body part.

While he did his best at completing the screenplay within a short period of time as demanded by Welles, Mankiewicz is also well aware of the big danger of what he and Welles are attempting to do. Hearst may not be as powerful as he once was, but he still can wield considerable power and influence over the presidents and executives of those major Hollywood movie companies including Louis B. Meyer (David Suchet), and it's only a matter of time before Hearst comes to learn of what Welles’ first movie is about. Nevertheless, Welles decides to take risks mainly because he believes that his movie will draw more publicity due to Hearst; Schaefer and RKO go along with his decision despite having understandable concerns.

What follows is a rather brief but exhilarating passage that offers a closer look into the production of “Citizen Kane.” We see Welles thoroughly studying and analyzing John Ford’s “Stagecoach” (1939) along with his cinematographer Gregg Toland (Liam Cunningham), and "RKO 281" then serves us a series of amusing moments on the set, including the instance when Welles and Toland dug a hole in the floor to get an extreme low-angle shot exactly envisioned by Welles. Because of that and many other incidents on the set, Schaefer and RKO executives have constant headaches everyday, but they have no choice but to keep tolerating Welles as legally bound to their contract with him.

However, these troubles turn out to be nothing compared to lots of wrath and threat from Hearst, who instantly embarks on suppressing Welles’ film by any means necessary once he is notified of its existence by infamous Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Fiona Shaw). As depicted in the film, Hearst and Louella Parsons (Brenda Blethyn), another notorious gossip columnist in Hollywood who had incidentally been on his payroll for years, put a lot pressure on Meyer and other Hollywood studio bosses. It's chilling to see how they could nearly succeed in destroying “Citizen Kane” once for all.

Nevertheless, the screenplay by John Logan, which is partly based on Michael Epstein and Thomas Lennon’s Oscar-nominated documentary film “The Battle Over Citizen Kane” (1996), is surprisingly sympathetic to Hearst as well as Davies. Though it goes without saying that he is the chief villain of the story, Hearst looks genuinely hurt after learning more of how his private life with Davies is blatantly appropriated by Welles and Mankiewicz’s story, and that consequently brings out his worst sides. In the case of Davies, she is also not so pleased. She's a fairly good Hollywood actress who is quite different from her tragically untalented fictional counterpart in “Citizen Kane,” and the film makes her reflect more on many unhappy aspects of her relationship with Hearst, which becomes more strained than before thanks to his battle with Welles’ movie.

The conflict between Hearst and Welles in the story eventually culminates to a coincidental private encounter between them not long before the eventual premiere of “Citizen Kane” in New York City in May 1941. Hearst seems to sense that Welles is not so different from what he once was many years ago, even though he is still regarding Welles with anger and contempt. Regardless of whether this dramatic moment really happened in real life as Welles claimed later, there is some ironic poignancy in Hearst’s last words to Welles in the movie: “My battle with the world is almost over. Yours, I’m afraid, has just begun.”

Although it must be pointed out that Logan’s screenplay frequently takes artistic liberties with its real-life story (Welles was actually never invited to Hearst’s manor, and it was in fact Mankiewicz who first conceived the story idea of “Citizen Kane”), the story and characters in the film are vividly presented under Ross’ competent direction, and his main cast members are uniformly excellent on the whole. Despite not resembling Welles all that much, Liev Schreiber does a good job of channeling Welles’ larger-than-life persona instead of resorting to mere imitation, and he is also supported well by a bunch of vividly colorful performers. Often looking as weary and sardonic as required, John Malkovich complements Schreiber’s spirited acting well on the screen, and their dynamic interactions establish the solid ground for a fictional moment of reconciliation between Welles and Mankiewicz after their serious clash over that controversial authorship of “Citizen Kane.” While Roy Scheider is ever-patient as a guy who must constantly balance himself between his business and Welles’ artistic ambition, James Cromwell and Melanie Griffith ably convey to us the human sides of Hearst and Davies’ flawed but ultimately enduring relationship, and Brenda Blethyn, Fiona Shaw, Liam Cunningham, and David Suchet are also effective in their small supporting parts.

As a TV movie, “RKO 281” looks plainer than “Mank,” but it's still worth a watch thanks to its engaging storytelling and performance, and it will certainly make a wonderful double feature show along with Fincher's film. Although quite different from each other in many aspects including tone and style, these two movies show and tell us a lot of things about “Citizen Kane” via their respective fictional narratives, and you may appreciate more of the sheer genius of “Citizen Kane” after watching them together.