Citizen Kane's birthday
On May 1, 1941, Orson Welles' film Citizen Kane premiered in New York. According to a number of foreign film critics and film studies media, this film is the best film work of all countries and all times. The more interesting, in my opinion, is the history of the creation of this film.
The impetus for the creation of the film was the decision of the management of the American film company RKO Pictures, whose market position had deteriorated somewhat by the end of the 30s, to create something special that could attract moviegoers to cinemas. For this purpose, a contract was signed with 24-year-old Orson Welles, who by that time had no experience in creating full-length feature films, but created his own theatrical troupe Mercury, which became famous for its radio show based on the science fiction novel by HG Wells "The War of the Worlds". This radio show was made in such a realistic style that it scared to death of a huge number of radio listeners. The contract concluded with Orson Welles in 1939, gave him complete creative freedom. The only limitation was the budget of the future film - 500 thousand dollars (the equivalent of today's 10.8 million dollars).
Orson Welles turned to Herman Mankiewicz for help in creating the script for the future film. This choice was absolutely not accidental. Herman Mankiewicz came from a family of German Jews who emigrated from Hamburg to the United States at the end of the 19th century. By the end of the 30s, he already had about 40 scripts on his account, according to which successful and famous films were shot. However, in most cases, his name was not in the credits. For example, Mankiewicz was the first and main screenwriter of the film "The Wizard of Oz", but the credits of this film included the names of completely secondary participants in the creation of the script.
The reason was that Herman Mankiewicz was known as an uncompromising critic of the Nazi regime in Germany. And in this capacity, he was known to Goebbels. Accordingly, Hitler banned the distribution of films in Germany, in the credits of which the name Mankiewicz was listed. Naturally, this order of Hitler was also guided by numerous pro-Nazi regimes in European countries. Well, American film producers, who did not want to lose the European film market for their films, went to all sorts of tricks, so long as the name Mankiewicz did not shine in their films. Mainly, this goal was achieved by entering into contracts with Mankiewicz, according to which his function was called "script doctor". Herman Mankevich, who by the end of the 30s had serious problems with alcohol, was forced to agree to such rather humiliating conditions.
So Orson Welles came to the hospital, where Herman was lying with a broken leg in a car accident, with an offer to act as a script doctor for his draft script. Herman agreed and, already in a hospital bed, began working on the script. Welles originally intended to base the film on the life story of Howard Hughes, adding storylines from the lives of several other tycoons to this description. Welles was going to name his future film "American" or "John Q". RKO Pictures producer George Schaefer insisted on the title "Citizen Kane", Orson Welles decided to make Kane a media mogul.
This decision by Wells had a major impact on the making of the film. The fact is that a certain Louella Parsons, a columnist of rumors from the life of representatives of the high society, was mortally offended by Welles because he gave the opportunity to get acquainted with the preliminary materials about the creation of the film to her worst rival, Hedda Hopper, but denied this to Parsons herself. Parsons then called her boss, media mogul William Randolph Hearst, and informed him that the character in Welles' upcoming film, Charles Foster Kane, was a thinly veiled, slanderous portrait of William Randolph Hearst himself. This denunciation call of Parsons prompted Hearst to declare war on RKO, Orson Welles, and "Citizen Kane". Hearst began to interfere in every possible way with the process of making the film. On the set, under various pretexts, spies were sent to interfere with work. There is a known case when Orson Welles was informed that Hearst organized a provocation: a naked woman was supposed to jump into his arms when he entered his hotel room, in which there was a photographer in advance who was supposed to take a picture to discredit the director. Welles then spent the night elsewhere, and therefore it remains unknown whether the warning was true.
The shooting process began in June 1940 and ended on October 23, 1940, just a few days later than planned. And this despite all the obstacles created by Hirst. By February 1941, the film was ready for release. But Hearst, having enormous opportunities in the media space, managed to close the film's access to the screens of American cinemas. The most curious thing is that Hearst himself, oddly enough, liked the film as a treatise about him and his empire, but he could not allow his mistress Marion Davis to be reflected in the image of Susan Alexander Kane.
The struggle between Orson Welles and Hearst for the release of the film began. This struggle has become so epic in proportion that in 1999 a TV movie "RKO 281" was made about this episode in the history of American cinema. Welles strongly denied any connection between the image of Kane and Hearst. However, for those who knew Hearst, this connection was obvious. Moreover, it was known that Herman Mankiewicz, who had once been a member of Hearst's inner circle, and then suffered from him, "had a hand" in creating the script.
Hearst's possibilities were colossal, but not unlimited, and in May 1941 the film was released in theaters. But only in New York and 5 other largest US cities: Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, Boston and San Francisco. In the countryside and in the smaller towns, Hearst's power was enough to thwart Welles' film. The result was an almost complete failure of the film at the box office. The film studio posted a loss of $150,000 (equivalent to $3.2 million today). And this despite the rave reviews of film critics. For example, Bosley Crowther, a film reviewer for The New York Times, who usually didn't miss an opportunity to "turn the tar in the ointment" of the sympathetic choir of critics for almost every film, wrote about Welles' film:
"in spite of some disconcerting lapses and strange ambiguities in the creation of the principal character, "Citizen Kane" is far and away the most surprising and cinematically exciting motion picture to be seen here in many a moon. As a matter of fact, it comes close to being the most sensational film ever made in Hollywood." (Orson Welles's Controversial 'Citizen Kane' Proves a Sensational Film at Palace - Bosley Crowther, May 2, 1941- The New York Times).
The fight with Hearst for the film's release was not the only fight that Orson Welles had in the run-up to the premiere. The political situation in the world and in the United States in 1940-1941 changed dramatically compared to the situation in 1939, which most directly affected Herman Mankiewicz. The fact is that the outbreak of World War II in Europe actually cut off the European film market from American film production, and, therefore, it became senseless to follow the Goebbels ban on mentioning Mankiewicz in movie credits. Mankiewicz began to demand that Welles include his last name in the credits of the film as the author of the script. This demand became more and more insistent as the speculation that the film would be nominated for an Academy Award took hold.
From the point of view of fairness, Mankiewicz's claim was quite reasonable: he, indeed, was the main author of the script. But this requirement at the same time contradicted the previously concluded contract. Orson suggested a compromise: credit both as co-authors of the script. Mankiewicz was not satisfied with this option.
And the film was indeed nominated for an Oscar, with 9 nominations, including Best Screenplay. And Hearst reappeared. He did his best to keep "Citizen Kane" from winning. And he almost achieved his goal: in 8 out of 9 nominations, the film lost to other, perhaps quite worthy films, but still of a slightly lower level. For example, in the Best Picture category, the Oscar was awarded to John Ford's movie "How Green Was My Valley". But in the most important nomination for Mankiewicz - for the Best script - "Citizen Kane" won. At the award ceremony, when the names of the winners were announced, the name of Mankiewicz was the first to be mentioned. And no one heard the second name - Welles: such a roar of delight rose in the hall as soon as the name of Herman sounded. By the way, neither one nor the other triumphant at the ceremony was not. Orson Welles was filming in South Africa, and Mankiewicz, not sure of success, was afraid of being humiliated.
In 1998, Roger Ebert, who gave the film 4 out of 4 stars and included it in his "Great Movies" list, wrote in his review:
"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."
One of the most authoritative Russian film critics, Sergey Kudryavtsev, rated the film with a maximum of 10 points and in his 2006 review noted:
"over the decades, the incredible foresight of the young author, who, on the basis of modern real material for him, created, in fact, a mythological personality, at the same time trying to destroy the idea of this myth, has become much more obvious. The unknowability of Kane is already laid down at the level of the narrative, built in the aesthetics of the fundamental discrepancy between the chronological sequence of events and the compositional order of the components of the work (they are five different stories told by different people who thought they knew this person), unthinkable for the cinema of that time... “Citizen Kane” proves ... an amazing insight about the total nature of the art of cinema, which has become both an eyewitness and a myth-maker of the twentieth century, in order to transfer these artistic functions with him into the next century, moreover, into another millennium."
Another Russian film critic, Yevgeny Nefyodov, who has the ability to detect political overtones in almost every film production, saw a very important political component in this film. In his review from 2013, in which he rated the film 10 points on a 10-point system, he writes:
"the film should have been called, rather, "Supercitizen Kane". Welles, as if the very embodiment of directing, explores the mechanism of fooling the masses – manipulating the consciousness of entire peoples, which gradually gets out of control of a particular person, acquires an objective character and in the extreme case is able, like a boomerang, to hit the manipulator himself. The Nietzschean "superman" gradually, before the eyes of one generation, became a tangible reality – in its social hypostasis, in the hypostasis of a "super citizen".
Modern moviegoers, even though several decades has passed since the release of the picture on the screens, highly appreciate the picture. 71% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10, and 27% of users rated the film with the highest score - "ten". Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Orson Welles' film "Citizen Kane" according to FilmGourmand is 8,228, thanks to which it occupies the 460th Rank in the Golden Thousand. Among the films produced by world cinema in 1941, this is the highest figure. On this basis, it can be assumed that "Citizen Kane" is the best film of world cinema in 1941.
