By RAY KELLY
Harlan Lebo, author of Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey, has unveiled his painstaking research into the hundreds of differences between the landmark movie’s final script and what ended up on the screen — changes he says that made it into what many consider the greatest film ever made.
The contributions to the screenplay made individually by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles were expertly detailed by Robert L. Carringer in his 1978 study The Scripts of Citizen Kane. Mankiewicz and Welles conferred at considerable length before work began on the first of at least seven drafts that were penned. Further revisions by the pair were made on the screenplay before filming began in the summer of 1940 using the script referred to as Third Revised Final.
Lebo has created an overlay using that Third Revised Final script and a new transcript of the finished film he fashioned. This overlay reveals hundreds of deletions and additions made by Welles to the screenplay during the production of Citizen Kane.
A page from Orson Welles’ personal Third Revised Final shooting script for Citizen Kane with his handwritten notes, dated July 16, 1940. It was acquired by the Lilly Library in September 2015.
“We may never know the full details of how and when Welles changed the script during production. But the script-with-overlay at least provides us with a written record of how the script and production of Citizen Kane evolved as Welles created the film,” Lebo told Wellesnet.
Lebo has generously shared his overlay with Wellesnet readers (see below or on Scribd) and discussed some of his findings.
This is an impressive undertaking. What inspired you to do this?
While preparing to teach a class on Citizen Kane, I revisited the debate about who was most responsible for writing the original script: Herman Mankiewicz or Orson Welles.
My view is the eight-decade argument about authorship of the Citizen Kane script misses a more important issue about the creation of the film: Citizen Kane is significantly different from any of the draft scripts prepared before production began and while Mankiewicz was working on the project.
All of the draft scripts – even the supposedly-final script called the “Third Revised Final” – contain a large amount of superfluous material, and several major scenes lack focus on the topics that would eventually become the core of Welles’ vision for the final film. But more important: several key scenes that appear in the film had not yet been written for the Third Revised Final script.
So for me, the key question has always been: how did Orson Welles change the script during production, and how did his edits, additions, and deletions affect the final film? Editing “final” scripts is, of course, routine in filmmaking. But Welles’ revisions to the Third Revised Final script for Citizen Kane were extensive and profound. Welles’ work on the script during production changed almost every scene, sometimes through edits and tightening of dialogue; or by deleting material he saw as unnecessary; or by inserting new text and full scenes.
How long did this take?
The work took almost a month – retyping the manuscript, adding the edits and additions, and then viewing the film – in whole or in parts — more than a dozen times to ensure the final text was correct.
What was the biggest obstacle?
Ensuring that all of the hundreds of edits, additions, and deletions made by Welles were added to 183 pages of script.
What do you think is the biggest misconception about Citizen Kane?
The biggest misconception about Citizen Kane is that the content of the supposedly-final script is the key to what makes the film a masterpiece. Herman Mankiewicz deserves credit for writing original drafts for Citizen Kane, and Welles also deserves credit for his involvement in writing and honing the early material.
But their work, together or separately, created a relatively routine script that would not have made a great film as written – let alone a film many of us consider the greatest ever made.
What turned Citizen Kane into a masterpiece was how Welles transformed the script during production, along with how he worked with his production team to incorporate the matchless tools and techniques of filmmaking in the Hollywood studio system at its peak.
You’ve already written a book on Citizen Kane, what did you learn when doing this?
By layering Welles’ edits and additions directly on top of the supposedly-final script, I got a much clearer picture of the full extent of the impact of his work on the supposedly-final script, and how the script evolved during the production of the film.
Specifically, the points that leaped out for me during this project that I hadn’t written about before are #3 (Cutting to the heart of things), #4 (Dialogue with more punch and depth), and #8 (More physical movement of characters) in the list of the results of Welles’ work on the script, beginning on page 4 of the document.
Overall, looking at the script with edits clarifies how the late changes transformed the script from a relatively straightforward narrative into a platform for powerful visual images and innovative storytelling that allowed Welles, cinematographer Gregg Toland, and the production team to create the cinema masterpiece we know today.
Citizen Kane — Third Revised Final Script With Overlay
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