The Man and the MythHUM 3280: Narrative Film

Fall 2014Dr. Perdigao

September 8-10, 2014

Credits• Producer: Orson Welles

• Director: Orson Welles

• Screenwriter: Herman J. Mankiewicz, Orson Welles

• Cinematographer: Gregg Toland

Framing• Rosebud

• (http://davidlavery.net/Courses/3870/Films/Peanuts_Kane.jpg)

• Accounts of Charles Foster Kane’s life

• News on the March newsreels

• Investigation by reporter Jerry Thompson

• Walter Parks Thatcher (guardian)

• Bernstein (Kane’s assistant)

• Jedediah Leland (old friend, newspaper associate)

• Susan Alexander (second wife)

• Raymond (butler)

Framing• Death of a great man

• Anonymous

• Sun rises and sets

• Newsreels recounting life, death

• Xanadu, Kubla Kahn

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Kahn” (1816)

• http://www.online-literature.com/coleridge/640/

The Other Xanadu (the lesser or greater?)

http://cormackcarr.com/2010/08/07/finding-your-xanadu/

Contexts• Orson Welles’ 1938 “War of the Worlds” broadcast, work with the Mercury

Players

• 1939—big year for Hollywood (The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind) but big news was Welles’ contract with RKO Pictures

• Originally Welles intended to make film based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with camera as protagonist, handheld camera chronicling Marlow’s journey, scrapped by studio

• Influence of Fritz Lang, experimental filmmaking

• Worked with screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz

• Titles of project—“American,” “John Citizen, U.S.A.”

The Real Story?• Based on William Randolph Hearst—most powerful newsman in U.S.;

political ambitions; construction of San Simeon estate for his lover in California (half the size of Rhode Island)

• Spanish-American war—“You provide the pictures and I’ll provide the war.”

• Susan Alexander as Marion Davies, even “Rosebud” claim

• 25% of world’s art market in Hearst’s possession

• Welles discounted claim but noted the film is based on financial barons living during the period the film covers

• Welles was asked to destroy the film, for payment of $800,000 by Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM; film banned from theatres under pressure from Hearst’s columnist Louella Parsons and Mayer; RKO president George J. Shaefer threatened legal action; Welles offered to buy for $1 mil; film finally released

Re(a)d Papers• Hearst’s attack on Welles—claims of Communist leanings

• Stage production of Native Son—critics called closer to Moscow than Harlem

• FBI file started on Welles

• New play called “Communistic”

• Welles under investigation, considered threat to the nation’s “internal security”

1941• Nominated for 9 Oscars

• 4 nominations for Welles—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Screenplay

• Boos when title read

• Lost all categories except for Best Screenplay

• RKO retired film to the vault

Threads• Making of Welles and Hearst, parallels

• Welles’ own story worked into film

• Loss of mother—Welles’ life, not Hearst’s

• Welles at peak of success at 25, youngest “has-been” at 26

• Hearst dies in 1952 at age 88

• Hearst’s real life fades against construction in Citizen Kane, legacy rewritten in film

• Mid-1950s, film comes back, on international lists of greatest films in early 60s

• Welles’ autobiographical film—lives out life in isolation

Form and Content• Inside/outside, windows and doors, reflections

• High boom shot—Kane’s possessions, focus on sled

• Use of quick cuts, dissolves, iris shot

• Deep focus photography

• Shadow and sharp contrast

• Jigsaw puzzle in cinematography and narrative

• “No Trespassing” sign at beginning and end

• Snow: snow globe: Rosebud