User:Erik/Citizen Kane/Draft

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Citizen Kane
Directed by	Orson Welles
Produced by	Orson Welles
Written by	Orson Welles Herman J. Mankiewicz
Starring	Orson Welles Joseph Cotten
Music by	Bernard Herrmann
Cinematography	Gregg Toland
Editing by	Robert Wise Mark Robson
Distributed by	RKO Pictures
Release date(s)	May 1, 1941
Running time	120 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$686,033
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film that was the directorial debut of Orson Welles, who also produced the film and co-wrote the script with Herman J. Mankiewicz. The film traces the life and career of Charles Foster Kane (played by Welles), a fictional media proprietor inspired by the real-life figure William Randolph Hearst. His story is retold through flashback, as reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) attempts to decipher his dying words: "Rosebud".

Contents 1 Production 1.1 Development 1.2 Screenplay 1.3 Cinematography 1.4 Special effects 1.5 Makeup 1.6 Sound 1.7 Editing 1.8 Music 2 Release 2.1 Controversy 2.2 Reception 3 References 3.1 Notes 3.2 Bibliography 3.3 For further reading

[edit] Production

[edit] Development

Orson Welles' notoriety following The War of the Worlds broadcast earned him Hollywood's interest, and RKO studio head George J. Schaefer's unusual contract.^[1] Welles made a deal with Schaefer on July 21, 1939 to produce, direct, write, and act in two feature films.^[2] The studio had to approve the story and the budget if it exceeded $500,000. Welles was allowed to develop the story without interference, cast his own actors and crew members, and have the privilege of final cut – unheard of at the time for a first-time director.^[2] He had spent the first five months of his RKO contract trying to get several projects – including Smiler with the Knife and a film adaptation of Heart of Darkness – going with no success. The Hollywood Reporter said, "They are laying bets over on the RKO lot that the Orson Welles deal will end up without Orson ever doing a picture there."^[3] Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz was recuperating from a car accident and in-between jobs. He had originally been hired by Welles to work on the "Campbell Playhouse" radio program and was available to work on the screenplay for Welles' film. The writer had only received two screenplay credits between 1935 and his work on Citizen Kane and needed the job.^[4]

There is dispute amongst historians regarding whose idea was to use William Randolph Hearst as the basis for Charles Foster Kane. Welles claims that it was his idea while film critic Pauline Kael and Welles' former business partner John Houseman claim that it was Mankiewicz's idea.^[5] For some time, Mankiewicz had wanted to write a screenplay about a public figure – perhaps a gangster – whose story would be told by the people that knew him.^[6] He had already written an unperformed play entitled, The Tree Will Grow about John Dillinger. Welles liked the idea of multiple viewpoints but was not interested in playing Dillinger. Mankiewicz and Welles talked about picking someone else to use a model. They hit on the idea of using Hearst as their central character.^[6] Mankiewicz had frequented Hearst's parties until his alcoholism got him barred. The writer resented this and became obsessed with Hearst and Marion Davies.^[6] Hearst had great influence and the power to retaliate within Hollywood so Welles had Mankiewicz work on the script outside of the city. Because of the writer's drinking problem, Houseman went along to provide assistance and make sure that he stayed focused.^[5]

[edit] Screenplay

Mankiewicz wrote the first installments of the script from March to early May 1940.^[5] He completed the first two drafts during this time period and Houseman edited them. The first draft, coming in at 250 pages, was called American and was delivered on April 16, 1940.^[7] The second followed on May 9 with input from Houseman. It provided the basic story structure but there was too much content. In addition, a large amount of material was taken directly from Heart's life with little or no dramatizing of them and risked serious copyright infringement.^[8] After completing the second draft, a paid Mankiewicz went to MGM on another assignment.^[8] A copy was given to Schaefer and he greenlighted it.^[9]

In the first two weeks of June 1940, 140 pages of the script were revised by Welles. A third draft was completed June 14 with more than 170 pages added or revised.^[9] A preliminary budget estimate stated a total picture cost of over a million dollars – double the amount specified in Welles' RKO contract. In the next month, the estimate was reduced by more than $300,000 when Welles made additional revisions to the script. His rewrite added the breakfast montage, reducing the sequence from five pages to one. The fourth draft was the first one to feature Citizen Kane as its title,^[10] which was suggested by Schaefer.^[1] However, this still did not satisfy RKO. Mankiewicz returned as to assist the writing, and he helped satisfy RKO's legal department (who considered the script too derogatory of Hearst) with the fifth and final draft, dated June 24.^[1]

On June 18, Mankiewicz came back to the project and worked on new drafts, reducing it by more than 25 pages.^[10] The seventh draft – the shooting script – was completed on July 16 and included input from cast rehearsals.^[11] Even though Mankiewicz signed a Mercury Theatre contract to receive no screenwriting credit for Kane,^[12] he began to have second thoughts once the production began and rumors started to leak out that early footage was exceptional. He began to complain publicly and generated a word-of-mouth campaign for his cause. When faced with the threat of public exposure and being ostracized from Hollywood, Welles conceded co-screenwriting credit to Mankiewicz.^[13]

[edit] Cinematography

Welles made it known that he wanted to work veteran cinematographer Gregg Toland.^[14] Welles knew of Toland's Academy Award-winning work on Wuthering Heights and his reputation for being "the fastest cameraman alive". Once Toland got word of this, he contacted Welles and offered his services. Toland worked under contract for Samuel Goldwyn Studios, one of the smaller Hollywood studios, that allowed him to design or modify his own equipment and hand-pick his own crew. He disliked conventional photography and was drawn to working with mavericks like John Ford and Howard Hawks. Toland knew of Welles and admired his theatrical production of Julius Caesar.^[14] Goldwyn agreed to loan Toland and his crew out to Welles.^[15]

Toland reported for work on the first week in June 1940.^[15] In the mornings, he worked on the film's overall design plan, and in the afternoons and evenings, discussing Kane with Welles and teaching him the basics of cinematography. Welles claims that Toland patiently spent time teaching him the fundamentals of cameras, lenses, camera angles, and lighting. When a budgetary crisis developed and Welles was eager to try out some things, he created a cover story. Sets had not been built forcing him to improvise.^[15] The studio's furious front office sent a memo to Schaefer warning him Welles would go over-budget.^[1] In fact, Welles went under-schedule by beginning with the Projection Room sequence in a real projection room on the RKO lot on June 29, 1940. Welles listed the first three days of shooting on the daily production reports as, "Orson Welles Tests."^[15] He did not want the studio to know the kind of unusual experimentation he was doing in terms of style, including dramatically minimal lighting, constant overlapping dialogue, and elaborate camera techniques that were a radical departure from the conventions of studio filmmaking at the time.^[16]

Toland and Welles' photographic approach to Kane involved deep focus cinematography, long takes, multiplane compositions, elaborate camera choreography, and low-angle camera setups.^[16] On Kane, Welles insisted Toland experiment with the camera. Throughout the shoot, Welles constantly challenged Toland to produce one outrageous idea after another. Some of the devices and techniques Toland used in Kane he had already pioneered on previous films, but others were new or modified in new ways.^[16] For example, to achieve the distorted image of the nurse entering Kane's death room from the perspective of a piece of broken glass, Toland fitted the camera with a viewing device that produced an optical effect of looking through the wrong end of a telescope. This was placed a short distance in front of Toland's Wide-angle lens.^[17]

RKO hired Perry Ferguson to keep an eye on Welles, making sure his extravagant art direction was not too costly.^[1] Despite this bureaucratic move on the studio's part, Ferguson was known as an affable man and go on with Welles, concurring that the film would look unique from other Hollywood productions. Welles's style is visible in many scenes, including the one where Thompson enters the library of Walter Parks Thatcher to learn of Kane's childhood. The light shone on the table is reminiscent of Welles's stage production of Julius Caesar. The Xanadu mansion was modeled on Heart's estate, and a French castle.^[1]

Welles employed deep focus photography because it allowed him to transport the Mercury Theatre performance style to film. Extreme depth of field, long takes, and the Wide-angle lens allowed him to replicate what he did on stage.^[18] Principal photography was completed in late October 1940 during which time there was 573 camera set-ups,^[1] and Toland stayed on for several weeks to shoot retakes.^[19]

[edit] Special effects

To keep the film's budget down, Welles opted to use special effects instead of staging large set-pieces with many extras.^[20] For example, in Kane's political rally at Madison Square Garden, only the speaker's platform is a live action set from the audience side – the rest is painted in.^[20] The most important technique used in Kane is optical printing.^[21] Despite Toland's resistance to using optically printed devices, Welles employed several, including the curtain wipe, in which a horizontal bar moves up or down pushing one image out of the frame to reveal another. For example, the scene about Susan's opera debut appears to be a single sustained camera movement from stage level to high up in the flies. This shot was created with a live action shot, a curtain wipe to a miniature of the backstage rigging, another curtain wipe back to live action of two workmen on a platform.^[22] For a shot where Kane's staff waves goodbye as he goes on his honeymoon, the New York Daily Inquirer was a Matte painting.^[1] A shot where Kane and Susan travel on a beach in Florida was shot in Malibu, California: the right side of the image was cut out and replaced with Florida forests and beaches. A shot of Kane alone at a door was resized via miniature projection. The middle ground was a Matte painting of an elaborate corridor, and the foreground of a servant looking on was shot in the foreground. A cockatoo screeching and flying as Susan walks out on Kane shows the limitations of the optical printer: the bird's eye was rendered invisible.^[1] One estimate is that more than 50% of the film's total footage involves one kind of special effect or another. However, it is so well done that it does not seem readily apparent.^[23] Toland loathed this technique because it reduced the sharpness of the original image.^[1]

[edit] Makeup

The non-union make up artist Maurice Seiderman created the make-up for the film.^[1] RKO wanted the young Kane to look handsome and dashing, and Seiderman transformed the already-overweight Welles, beginning with his nose, which Welles always disliked. Welles was as made up as a young man as he was an old man, and could barely move. For the old Kane, Seiberman created a red plastic compound which he applied to Welles, allowing the wrinkles to move naturally.^[1] Kane's mustache was made of several hair tufts. Transforming Welles into the old Kane required six to seven hours, meaning he had to start at two in the morning to begin filming at nine, meaning he held conferences in the make-up chair, and would also work a total of 16 hours a day. Even breaking a leg during filming could not stop him from directing around-the-clock, and he quickly returned to acting, using a steel leg bracer.^[1]

[edit] Sound

Welles' background in radio was a significant influence on Kane and this included employing many of the actors he had worked with in radio, the use of exaggerated sound effects, and extreme voice effects. He did not use RKO's stock library of effects and instead employed his own sound specialist from radio.^[24] Other radio influences included overlapping dialogue and the use of sounds as aural punctuation, like the closing of a door cuing the end of a scene.^[25] Welles strove for the same kind of sound realism he had in his radio shows on Kane. For example, in the Colorado scene with the young Kane, the adult conversation dominates the soundtrack in the foreground, but the distant voice of the boy playing in the snow can still be distinctly heard.^[26]

Welles shot with the camera looking up at the actors, and built ceilings in a nod to Ford's Stagecoach to make the indoor scenes look realistic.^[1] This was also done to make the audience feel like they were in a theater. Welles acknowledged this would cause problems for placing the microphones and lights. To the horror of RKO, trenches were dug in the studio to allow the camera its freedom, but this meant there was no room for the sound equipment. Welles's solution was to the hide them with muslin on the ceilings. For the party scene after Kane buys out the Chronicle's journalists, the strategic placing of the microphones on the whole ceiling allowed dialogue and music to be recorded live and simultaneously.^[1]

[edit] Editing

Robert Wise was the film's editor and he replaced an older one that was not right for Welles. Wise claims that Welles would give him instructions and then leave him alone to do his work.^[27] Welles had a lot of the film pre-edited as Toland taught him how to edit in the camera so that the footage dictated the way it should be cut thus making Wise's job easier. Most of Kane was shot with one camera without any covering footage and very few close ups or reaction shots. Welles and Toland did this on purpose so that the editor could not tamper with the film's unusually long takes.^[28]

[edit] Music

Composer Bernard Herrmann, a close collaborator of Welles since 1936 when he started creating scores for the Mercury Theatre radio shows,^[29] also made his film debut with Citizen Kane.^[1] Unlike other film scores, Herrmann used small musical themes to build up to larger musical moments that would require a full orchestra. The opening scene used low brass and woodwind for a dark mood, but he also used the latter instrument for the wonder of childhood curiosity in the first flashback.^[1] Only the opera sequences and the ending are scored to a full symphony orchestra.^[29] The composer created his own opera for the film, Salaambo, because he and Welles could not think of an opera that began with an aria. To create Susan's bad voice, Herrmann hired a soprano to sing above her natural range, to make her sound inadequate. Herrmann also used excerpts by Frédéric Chopin, Gioachino Rossini and George Frideric Handel. Nat King Cole also played the piano for the first scene with the alcoholic Susan. Welles heard him playing the song at a nightclub and thought it would fit in the film.^[1] Herrmann worked reel by reel as the film was being shot and edited.^[30] Typical Hollywood scores often used overstated orchestrations to convey melodramatic emotion, however, the composer went for a more understated approach. For example, in the sequence of Kane's boyhood in Colorado, Herrmann provided little musical accompaniment and what is there is subdued and restrained.^[29] He worked on the film for 14 weeks with the last two spent supervising the rerecording process so that the sound level and dynamics were correct.^[31]

[edit] Release

[edit] Controversy

Welles ran a closed set, limited access to rushes and managed the publicity of Kane to make sure that its influence from Hearst's life was a secret.^[32] RKO hoped to release the film in mid-February 1941. Writers for national magazines had early deadlines and so a rough cut was previewed for a select few on January 3, 1941. Friday magazine ran an article drawing point-by-point comparisons between Kane and Hearst and documented how Welles had led on Louella Parsons, Hollywood correspondent for Hearst papers, and made a fool of her in public. Reportedly, she was furious and demanded an immediate preview of the film. James Stewart, who was present at the screening, said that she walked out of the film. Soon after, Parsons called George Schaefer and threatened RKO with a lawsuit if they released Kane.^[32] The next day, the front page headline in Daily Variety read, "HEARST BANS RKO FROM PAPERS".^[33] In two weeks, the ban was lifted for everything except Kane.^[32]

The Hollywood Reporter ran a front-page story on January 13 that Hearst papers were about to run a series of editorials attacking Hollywood's practice of hiring refugees and immigrants for jobs that could be done by Americans. The goal was to put pressure on the other studios in order to force RKO to shelve Kane.^[32] Soon afterwards, Schaefer was approached by Nicholas Scheck, head of MGM's parent company, with an offer on the behalf of Louis B. Mayer and other Hollywood executives to reimburse RKO if it would destroy the film.^[34] Once RKO's legal team reassured Schaefer, the studio announced on January 21, that Kane would be released as scheduled and with one of the largest promotional campaigns in the studio's history. Schaefer brought Welles to New York City for a private screening of the film with the New York corporate heads of the studios and their lawyers.^[35] There was no objection to its release provided that certain changes, including the removal or softening of specific references that might offend Hearst.^[36] Welles agreed and Wise was brought in to cut the film's running time from two hours, two minutes and 40 seconds to one hour, 59 minutes and 16 seconds. This cut of Kane satisfied the corporate lawyers.^[37]

It was believed that Hearst disliked the film's representation of Marion Davies. In 1982, Welles acknowledged the character of Susan was a "dirty trick" on Davies. Hearst attacked the film by not advertising, reviewing or mentioning it in his papers, and had his journalists slander Welles. He even hired an underage girl to lie in wait at Welles's hotel room, with photographers waiting to pounce once he returned. Fortunately, Welles was warned by a policeman beforehand, so he did not return to his hotel. The original negative of the film was burned in the early 1950s under highly suspicious circumstances, though a duplicate negative still exists.^[1]

[edit] Reception

Citizen Kane was supposed to open at Radio City Music Hall but did not because Parsons told Nelson Rockefeller that if the film was screened, Hearst's American Weekly magazine would run a negative article about his grandfather.^[38] Other exhibitors feared retaliation and refused to handle the film. Schaefer lined up a few theaters but Welles grew impatient and threatened RKO with a lawsuit. Hearst papers refused to accept advertising for the film. Kane opened at the RKO Palace on Broadway in New York on May 1, 1941, in Chicago on May 6, and in Los Angeles on May 8.^[38] The reviews for the film were overwhelmingly positive. Kate Cameron, in her review for the New York Daily-News, said that Kane was "one of the most interesting and technically superior films that has ever come out of a Hollywood studio".^[39] In his review for theNew World Telegram, William Boehnel said that the film was "staggering and belongs at once among the greatest screen achievements".^[40] Otis Ferguson, in his review for The New Republic, said that Kane was "the boldest free-hand stroke in major screen production since Griffith and Bitzer were running wild to unshackle the camera".^[41] Kane did well in cities and larger towns but fared poorly in more remote areas. RKO still had problems getting exhibitors to show the film. For example, one chain controlling more than 500 theaters got Welles' film as part of a package but refused to play it, reportedly out of fear of Hearst.^[42]

Both the New York Film Critics and the National Board of Review voted Citizen Kane Best Film of 1941. It also received nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Editing and Best Music Score. It only won the Oscar for Screenplay. The film was widely thought that it would win most of the awards it was nominated for but only ended up with Best Screenplay.^[42] According to Variety, block voting against Welles by screen extras denied him Best Picture and Actor awards.^[43] Historian Barry Norman attributed this to Hearst's wrath.^[1] Kane played the occasional brief engagements at big-city retrospective houses through the 1940s but virtually disappeared after 1950.^[42]

The film's reputation among American critics began to diminish but in Europe, it was championed by critics, chief among them, Andre Bazin and the critics at the Cahiers du cinema, including Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. In 1962, Sight and Sound magazine polled a panel of leading film critics who selected Kane as the Best Film of All-Time.^[44] RKO was the first of the major studio libraries to be sold to television and Welles' film began appearing on it as early as 1956. The rise of art house and film society circuits also aided in the film's rediscovery.^[45] Influential critics like Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris championed Kane with Sarris calling it, "the great American film".^[46] During the 1960s, influential books like Peter Cowie's The Cinema of Orson Welles, Ronald Gottesman's Focus on Citizen Kane, a collection of significant reviews and background pieces, and Kael's essay, "Raising Kane", promoted the value of the film to a much wider audience than it had reached before.^[47]

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] For further reading