Kane links and info

[Jeff Wilson]

As part of a series detailing his Top 10 films (prior to the announcement of the Sight and Sound poll this year), David Thomson has been writing brief articles about each film he selected. Here's his Kane piece:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 80443.html

[Harvey Chartrand]

I usually enjoy David Thomson's writing. I thought 'Rosebud' was fine. An easy read that I zipped through in one sitting. I still remember Thomson's catty line about Welles in 'Is Paris Burning?', hiding French Resistance fighters in his expansive lounge suit.
But this appraisal of 'Citizen Kane' is the wooliest piece of crap that Thomson ever wrote.

[LA]

Thanks for that link, Jeff.

Well, if he's nothing else, Thomson is at least consistent in his opinions. The last sentence of that article reads like self-parody though. Could it be he's getting tired of repeating himself?

I'd be interested to read anything he might write about Howard Hawks, as he seems to think a lot more of him than he does of Welles. Has he written anything about Howard Hawks, apart from that rather substanceless article about His Girl Friday?

[Vidamonte]

HI,

I have wondered why I have never read from anywhere about this. I guess it was an inside joke and I think a nice one.
In " Ambersons" towards the end there is a frontpage of the newspaper and you can see a picture of Joe Cotten in a box and words STAGE and Jed Leland. Is it his father or...?

[ChristopherBanks]

The whole newspaper is an "in-joke" of sorts. It's a Kane newspaper, and on the front page is Jed Leland's Stage Views column.

The suggestion is that the events in Ambersons are taking place in the same universe as Citizen Kane.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Orson was on his way to creating an 'univers Wellesien', as D.W. Griffith had created his own cinematic universe 30 years earlier. Richard Schickel points out that, even if Griffith had been offered a chance to direct in 1947, the year before his death, when he was an elderly alcoholic living in a crummy hotel in downtown L.A., the alternate reality that he had created and his ability to resurrect it were lost forever.

[tonyw]

??? According to recent information, the call for poapers at the Eeastern Illinois Toland Centenary Celebrations has been poor. Those of us who have submiited prposals have been
informed that the end result may be "informal discussion" unless things change.

I've suggested Jonathan Rosenbaum and Bill Krohn as possible guest speakers.

Obviously, Toland is not as "cool" as Tarantino and the poor response reflects the "market
values" syndrome for academic paper proposals.

So sad!

Tonyw

[R Kadin]

Sorry to hear that, Tony. It goes to show just how unheralded an art cinematography truly is. I mean, just look at the man's body of work! I guess the local connection isn't enough, on its own.

Perhaps in a town like Los Angeles or NYC the pick-up for a Toland tribute would fare a little better, where audiences for the photgraphic arts, per se, are a little more established.

Maybe we Wellesnetters could resolve to do our part and make a point of buying/renting at least one other (i.e., non-Kane) example of Toland's artistry in the near term. With titles like The Grapes of Wrath and The Best Years of Our Lives to choose from we're sure of a rich and rewarding viewing experience.

And, with Jeff looking for articles for the proposed Wellesnet Journal, a paper on Toland might make a good thematic fit.

[PT Caffey]

Toland's "The Westerner" airs this month (July) on Turner Classic Movies.

[NoFake]

The elections have elicited cinematic reflections on the part of The Washington Post’s movie critic. The front page of Sunday’s Arts & Living section has a 5-1/2 x 7-1/2 inch photo of the Kane speech scene:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn....35.html

while the inside article

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn....81.html

projects Kane as a depiction of “...something rotten in politics, something that has too long dogged our shores and tainted institutions. That is the sense of entitlement and moral superiority that the rich have, the sense that they are vouchsafed entry into the higher levels of the ruling profession based on nothing more than a shrewd selection of extremely wealthy people as parents.”

[Glenn Anders]

True, nofake.

How sad that most States tomorrow will be pleased to have a 50% turn-out of REGISTERED VOTERS (not eligible voters), and of those, a majority, or a near majority, will vote as if they were millionaires, or will one day be. They will naturally be voting against their own best interests, at the moment.

But the larger quesion the Times article raises applies to both our major political parties and most of their supporters. The Country continues to move to the Right, and even the new representatives and senators from the Democratic Party will tend to follow that trend.

I assume that Charles Foster Kane would have been a "Reform Republican" early in the last century. He would have known, in a paternalistic way, that what was good for the Inquirer was good for the common man.

Thank you for bringing this article to our attention.

[Glenn Anders]

Peter: I'm willing to cut Jose Luis Borges some slack because he came from another culture, and was writing from a distant place, in 1941. But as a review, it suffers from the same failings he attributes to CITIZEN KANE. His piece is diffuse, ideasyncratic, sketchy, and irritating. [Sounds like D.I.S.H., what I suffer from.]

I have never read a review of CITIZEN KANE, the picture itself, which succeeds in putting it down. Borges review is no exception.

He seems not to appreciate that the film is indeed essentially a jigsaw puzzle, and that the picture, if we had the last piece of the puzzle, is that of "A Great American" -- the kind of person we like to say represents "The American Success Story." In creating his story with such incredible skill, Welles has insured that Charles Foster Kane still stands for "The American" and Americans in general, 65 years after it was made. Perhaps for centuries into the future.

Borges apparently regards the picture's "magical" (genial) qualities as a drawback. Yet they are what help keep the film fresh.

He also does not appear to recognize that there is actually something in the center of Kane's labyrinth. Borges has simply overlooked or discounted it. What is there explains a life Kane never quite understood in the conventional terms of the philistine he was raised to become, the person he was at war with, the man he tried unsuccessfully to escape. And when he could not, tried to free others in his stead. He failed in that, too, as Susan Alexander Kane would attest to. What is at the center of Kane's childhood labyrinth stands for the loss of his mother who, even in her despair, might have given him what he needed to become fully human; in the way that Welles at a very young age knew that he had been crippled by the loss of his own mother.

Really, it is not vital that the loss mean the same thing to us, only that it meant something like that emotionally to him [to them?], and the impact of that realization is endlessly heartbreaking, if we have a heart to break.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

Glenn:

I agree with nearly everything you say.

The big exception being I found Jorge Luis Borges comments to also be instructive, and not the least bit irritating.

In fact, it's rather amazing to see Borges deducing such a great number of authors we know Welles certainly read and admired. From the book of Ecclesiastes, to Kafka, Conrad, Chesterton and even Preston Sturges. Or maybe they were just authors Borges admired, a list that also included Cervantes and H. G. Wells.

I guess it takes one genius to know another!

[Glenn Anders]

Perhaps, Todd.

I think it just as likely that various writers and artists would have been in correspondence with Borges about this extraordinary film. CITIZEN KANE created great buzz initially. Then, the War came, and afterward, the film was forgotten for ten years or so. All the influences you mention were either mentioned by Welles himself in general comment, or by the Mercury Players PR Office. He hung out at Sturges' Players Club, and look at the stories Welles chose to dramatize for the Mercury Theater on the Air, the Campbell Playhouse, or the Almanac: "A Time for Everything" (Ecclesiastes), "The Heart of Darkness" (Joseph Conrad), "The Man Who Was Thursday" (G.K. Chesterton). I don't find a direct reference to Franz Kafka though until much later.

Borges' review is certainly one of those pieces always brought up by those who want to disparage CITIZEN KANE.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

***

Charles Foster Kane thought it would be fun to run a newspaper, and it still may be, but it seems that these days nobody wants to read or advertise in them.

This piece in The New York Time reports on what seems is more than likely to happen to most newspapers in todays gloomy economy.

Rather strangely, the San Francisco Chronicle, owned now by the once mighty Hearst empire seems to be one of the first papers heading towards a rapid demise.

According to the article in the Times, they lost a million dollars a week last year. Unfortunately, there is no Mr. Kane around to keep them open, so it looks like they will have to close their doors in 60 more years -- or should I say weeks!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/busin ... rs.html?hp