Feb. 04--I didn't see "Citizen Kane" until I was an adult and working as a professional theater critic. At the time I remember actually sputtering as I watched the newspaper tycoon at the film's center manufacture a reviewer's words out of thin air.
Orson Welles was "Citizen Kane's" co-writer, producer, director and its star, playing Charles Foster Kane, the aforementioned head honcho who walks into the newsroom one night only to be informed that the next day's paper is ready to go except for an overnight review from drama critic Jedediah Leland, who was covering an opera performance starring ... well, none other than Kane's wife, a woman of virtually no talent. Oh, the conflicts of interest!
Leland is at his desk, passed out drunk over a typewriter that contains the first few lines of his review in which he describes the young starlet as a "pretty but hopelessly incompetent amateur."
Kane decides to step in and begins dictating the rest to a colleague, one Mr. Bernstein. Note that Kane doesn't whitewash the quality of his wife's performance: " 'Of her acting, it is absolutely impossible to say anything except, in the opinion of this reviewer, it represents a new low.' Have you got that, Mr. Bernstein? 'In the opinion of this reviewer.' "
Bernstein is confused, but then Kane just throws all pretense out the window: "Give me a typewriter. I'm gonna finish Mr. Leland's notice." This blew me away the first time I saw it. Just the brazenness of what Kane was about to do! And then Kane fires the guy. (Well, he was zonked out on the job, there really is no defending that.)
Kane actually does far worse in the film (his moral-human deterioration is a thing to behold), but I still find that scene at once mesmerizing and cringe-inducing in its depiction of casual hubris.
"Citizen Kane" is a great newspaper film, among its many superlative qualities, and it screens next Thursday at the Pickwick Theatre courtesy of the Park Ridge Classic Film series, accompanied by a conversation with Michael Dawson, who has made a serious study of Welles and is currently at work on a documentary about the him.
"I want to review 'Citizen Kane' in the context of what Welles did later," Dawson said. "I think while it is a fantastic film, he continued to make masterpieces -- he just did so under increasingly difficult circumstances and he became essentially an independent filmmaker long before it was vogue. But even under those circumstances, he was always large-canvas. This idea that he went downhill after 'Citizen Kane' -- that actually is not true."
And yet "Citizen Kane" is the film that secured a place in pop culture, while others haven't. Why is that?
"Some of his later films suffered from studio interference and were re-edited. And that re-editing caused issues with the film in terms of pacing," said Dawson. Meaning, the films simply didn't work as well once someone else got a hold of them and fiddled around.
"In the case of 'Macbeth' (1948), a film that Welles shot in a little over 30 days at Republic Pictures, he had the audacity to have the actors speak with a Scottish brogue. And at the time the English were in a firestorm over it, and unfortunately American culture revered whatever the English had to say about Shakespeare. But the setting is Scotland! So at some point, the studio said, 'You've got to come in and redo this' " -- meaning, have the actors re-record their dialogue, minus the Scottish accents -- "and he began doing it and then eventually said, 'I'm not doing this anymore,' so they had to re-edit the film to compensate for some of that obvious inconsistency they were left with. That was a ridiculous situation."
Welles, of course, is from the Midwest. Born in Kenosha, Wis., his childhood consisted of bouncing in and around Chicago. His mother was a concert pianist who died when Welles was a little boy. He was left in the care of his father, who, though financially solid as a manufacturer of lamps (headlights) for bikes and autos, was also an alcoholic and a less-than-stable parental figure. (Welles would later describe this as a "hectic period" in his childhood.) He died when Welles was a preteen, and eventually Welles would enroll in the Todd Seminary for Boys in Woodstock, a school where he flourished creatively.
As an adult, Dawson said, Welles would return periodically to visit: "E. Leonard Rubin (a longtime in-house counsel for Playboy Enterprises) attended the Todd Seminary for Boys, long after Welles had left, and he (was) actually staying at Orson Welles' old room.
"He's 14 and someone knocks on the door one day and there's Orson Welles on the other side, there to show Rita Hayworth his old room."
"Citizen Kane" screens 7:30 p.m. Feb. 11 at the Pickwick Theatre, 5 S. Prospect Ave. in Park Ridge, with a discussion from Orson Welles scholar Michael Dawson. Go to www.parkridgeclassicfilm.com/film-schedule.
