A Deep Welles of Ideas: “It’s Still Terrific: Citizen Kane at 75”

REVIEW VISUAL ART

Citizen

A stand-up Citizen

Get over it: Citizen Kane is smarter than you. It’s smarter than any and all of us—or even its own creator, for that matter.

It’s smarter, because—if as has sometimes been said—the making of any movie is a miracle, then Citizen Kane is more than a miracle. It’s the Mona Lisa of film-making: inscrutable, ineffable, and unfathomable to whomever views it.

It’s also not a bad effort for a 25-year-old first time-out-of-the-chute theatrical amateur who by his own admission in the University of Michigan Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library’s It’s Still Terrific: Citizen Kane at 75 tells us that he had no real idea of what he was doing.

Indeed, as this exhibit at the U-M Hatcher Graduate Library Audubon Room illustrates through both sight and sound, it’s very likely the film is superior because enfant terrible Orson Welles didn’t know what he was doing. Which, of course, only makes the film that much more impressive.

Mounted by U-M staffers Karmen Beecroft, Anne Elias, Tom Hogarth, Brooke Adams, Shannon Zachary, Kirsten Neelands, Mary Morris, and Loralei Byatt—with a healthy assist from U-M Film Studies Field Librarian as well as Screen Arts and Culture cinema maven Phil Hallman— It’s Still Terrific covers all the phases of Citizen Kane’s remarkable production cycle and troubled afterlife.

In fact, the film’s production history (as outlined in the exhibit) is as fantastic as the final result. After all, RKO Radio Pictures’ president, George Schaefer, had given the youthful Welles unprecedented control in the choosing and making of two film projects. Never mind that Welles had never directed a film before: His prior credits included the unprecedented 1936 African-American production of Voodoo Macbeth for the nascent Federal Theater Project; the politically-charged, quasi-Brechtian The Cradle Will Rock; and 1938’s CBS Mercury Theatre on the Air version of H.G. Welles’ The War of the Worlds that terrorized the entire East Coast of the U.S.

Also, never mind that Welles’ first two attempts at filmmaking fell flat out of the gate. Abortive attempts at Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Cecil Day-Lewis’ The Smiler With the Knife got nowhere. Therefore, as It’s Still Terrific shows us, Citizen Kane was a pressure-induced instance of cinema dog (namely Schaffer’s RKO Pictures) biting bigger print dog, publisher William Randolph Heart—then getting bit back in return.

On display at the Audubon Room is a April 1940 first rough draft of American co-written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz (whose prior credits and participations included 1931’s The Front Page; 1933's Dinner at Eight and Duck Soup; as well as unattributed work on 1939's The Wizard of Oz), telling the story of Charles Foster Craig—an anonymous capitalist tycoon.

But most remarkably because of the story’s breathtaking rapid change of emphasis from fiction to roman á clef—and set next to this first draft in the exhibit—is a June 1940 shot breakdown script and final shooting script for Citizen Kane.

By anyone’s terms, this is fast filmmaking. Essentially, once the boy wonder and the veteran alcoholic scribe got on a hot streak, Welles’ unerring instinct for controversial showmanship was wedded to Mankiewicz’s acerbic sense of humor to create one of the most pregnant screenplays of all-time.

Citizen

The original poster, the snow globe, and a later poster—all terrific.

Yet as It’s Still Terrific also shows us, even the soundest of scaffoldings can amount to nothing without technical expertise in the other phases of production. Here, too, Citizen Kane is an embarrassment of riches. For example, cinematographer Gregg Toland’s experiments with deep-focus photography coupled with his experimental use of camera lens and chiaroscuro lighting, gave the project its mysterious visual ambiance. Just as film editor (and later famed filmmaker in his own right), Robert Wise’s cobbling together of the film’s various thematic elements serves as a subtle glue holding the story together.

Likewise, audio engineers Bailey Fesler and James G. Stewart’s sound collage gave Kane a naturalistic yet complex authenticity because of Welles’ need for aural montage through effects and dialogue. And one of actress Ruth Warwick’s outfits set on a mannequin as Kane’s first wife, Emily Monroe Norton Kane, gives the exhibit a special flavor as the production’s attention to rich detail supplements a series of on-set continuity photographs detailing Welles’ laborious make up and prosthetics as Kane progressively ages during the film.

These artifacts from the U-M Library Special Collections Library Richard Wilson and Orson Welles papers; Orson Welles and Oja Kodar Papers; and the Orson Welles Collection are supplemented by other archival rarities, such as a vinyl 1978 Grammy award-winning Citizen Kane original motion picture soundtrack featuring Bernard Herrmann’s Oscar-nominated score and a reprint of Otis Ferguson’s seminal June 1941 review for The New Republic.

Mention should also be made of the exhibit’s video display featuring a 1941 trailer introducing the film and Welles’ Mercury Theater collaborators (all of whom were making a first screen appearance, including future stars Joseph Cotton and Agnes Moorehead) and a 1960 BBC Monitor interview where moderator Huw Wheldon and Welles discuss the film’s troubled history.

The irony, of course, is that despite the film’s quality, its many Academy Award nominations (and win for Original Screenplay) as well as its controversy (including Hearst’s attempt to purchase the film’s negatives to destroy it and Schaffer’s ultimate dismissal for sponsoring the film ), Citizen Kane was a decided box-office failure. Hearst’s vendetta, the film’s harried production, and its complicated narrative structure left the public cold.

As such, the exhibit’s setting in the U-M Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library is appropriate as it’s only through scholarly evaluation—and continued cinematic re-evaluation—since the 1950s that Citizen Kane has reached its current enduring reputation. It is the ironic high point of most of its artist’s career—obviously including Welles himself.

After three-quarters of a century, Kane endures as a landmark cinematic achievement. Like all great art, Kane is some parts luck and some parts inspiration. But as It’s Still Terrific heartily shows us—like the best of all artistry, Citizen Kane was a calculated and concentrated act of willful perspiration.


John Carlos Cantú has written on our community's visual arts in a number of different periodicals.


University of Michigan Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library Audubon Room: “It’s Still Terrific : Citizen Kane at 75” will run through February 5. The Hatcher Graduate Library Audubon Room is located at 525 S. State Street. The Audubon Room is open Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m.–7 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Sunday 1–7 p.m. For information, call 734-615-0445.