Pauline Kael - 100th birthday anniversary

[Le Chiffre]

Here's an absurd error in the Suber article:

But perhaps most provocatively, the article for the first time laid bare one of the major contradictions in the film: The dying Kane mutters the immortal line “Rosebud” to an empty room.
Until Kael’s piece, no one had noted that the movie’s central plot point — reporter Jedediah Leland’s search to discover what the newspaper baron’s dying phrase meant — is founded on an impossibility, since no one was around to take record of the fateful utterance.

Thomson was the reporter, not Jedediah Leland.

Suber's statement that it "felt like rape" seems pretty absurd too. Someone on Facebook described the $375 paid to Suber as a "paltry sum". Maybe it might seem so today, but back in 1971, $375 would have been a lot more.

[Le Chiffre]

Thanks to Joseph McBride for pointing out on Facebook the fact - unknown to me - that Orson Welles made royalties from THE CITIZEN KANE BOOK, since he was listed as the co-author of the screenplay, even though Kael's essay calls into question his co-authorship. That's what I call irony: Welles making money from a book that tried to trash his reputation.