Quarto Potere

[Alan Brody]

The end of Citizen Kane, in Italian:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7SFv1Bklc8

Rosabella!

[Glenn Anders]

Wonderful, Alan!

In Italian, one might almost think that Fellini made CITIZEN KANE.

And all the Roman statuary gives reinforcement to the emotional meaning of this ending, that we are all mysteries, and that men like empires (including our own), no matter how pastoral and beautiful the beginnings, eventually go up in smoke.

Rosabella.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

Very interesting to see this clip from KANE in Italian, as if you don't understand the language you concentrate on the camerawork and visuals of the scene, which as Glenn notes feel almost like the Fellini of 8 1/2!

Then it switches and becomes a visual tone poem in any language, since there's no dialouge, just Herrmann's music and the camera craning over the boxes and crates until the world's most famous sled is chucked into the furnace and we get the voice over in an Italian accent: "Rosebella."

[ToddBaesen]

Keats, I'm afraid we will have to agree to disagree on this one, although I'm not sure if I expressed the point I was trying to make clearly enough.

Naturally, you don't need to see KANE in Italian to see it as visual poetry... I thought that I made that point clear enough, as the last portion of the film has no dialouge.

What perhaps you misunderstood was that for ME, seeing the film in Italian brought out some subtle camera moves that I had never noticed before. I'm sure watching the entire film in Italian or in silence would bring out many more such associations (again for me). Maybe not to you, or possibly to anyone else, but that last scene in Xanadau reminded me of Fellini's camerawork in 8 1/2. So I'm not pretending that seeing KANE in Italian taught me something. It in fact did teach me something, which I found very enlightening and I actually found watching the ending of KANE in Italian was more emotionally moving (for me) than any other time I've seen the film!

[Tony]

I've always found that watching any movie I know in another language brings out something interesting; it's something to do with the fact that we don't understand the new language, so more of our attention must be focussed on other elements. This seems a no-brainer to understand; Keats: why are you so adamant that this does not happen, when other people tell you that it has happened to them? Do you perhaps think they are delusional, and that you know better than they exactly what happened to them?

And where do you get this word "fabricators"? Is this some term from an arcane theory of art? Fabricator reminds me of "liar". Oh, I get it: it's a subtle allusion to "F For Fake"!!!

[Roger Ryan]

Certainly the performances are changed due to the Italian voice actors replacing the original spoken dialogue. I've always thought that the actors playing the "Time On The March" reporters in KANE were directed to give slightly arch performances. This combined with their faces being obscured gave them an air of exaggerated modernity to counterbalance the more realistic, subtle performances of the lead actors seen in flashback. To me, the dubbed Italian voice performances are just a shade less stylized than their American counterparts; therefore the effect of the final sequence is subtly different. This could be considered better or worse than what Welles intended, but it obviously is not what Welles intended.

Of course, for pure quality's sake, one should avoid any movie dubbed in something other than it's intended language...with the exception of "What's Up, Tigerlily?"!

[ToddBaesen]

Keats:

You state: If I was moved by the ending it might be that for whatever reason I was prepared to be receptive to the author's intention - "It had nothing to do with it being in Italian."

I hope you realize how absurd this statement is, because as Tony points out, watching a film in another language can bring out some interesting things.

Now neither I, Tony, or I daresay anyone else on the board would claim that KANE dubbed into Italian represents Orson Welles's version of the film. However, that brings up an interesting point in itself. Did Welles contract give him approval over dubbing KANE for foreign countries?

In any case, I've seen KANE over 20 times in English, but was never so emotionally moved by the final scene of the picture as when I saw it in Italian, which of course, was also in a very poor quality version on YouTube.

So, for whatever reason, seeing that clip effected me more than the English version ever has. Like many people, I'd always found KANE a bit cold. So how can you possibly tell me what MY own personal reactions to that clip were and that they had nothing to do with it being in Italian?

I'm willing to admit I may have been remembering the pristine prints I've seen in the past, but in none of the many times I've seen KANE before, have tears ever come to my eyes. In fact, now that I've had a chance to think about it, perhaps it was the combination of Bernard Herrmann's music and the last key line being spoken in a different language, by a different actor than Welles, but one which effected me greatly: "Rosebella."

It may have triggered a subconscious effect, because Italy is a country I've spent a lot of time in and I love dearly (as did Welles). So I may relate to this "dubbed" version for some personal reasons you obviously have no knowledge of, because you don't know anything about me.

Which is why I think it is rather absurd for you to tell me: "It had nothing to do with it being in Italian." How could you possibly know that in less you are either a mind reader or else a "fabricator?"

Auguri and arrivederci,

[Tony]

Dear Mr. Keats: I have a question and two comments regarding your latest poetic reveries:

1. You wrote: "I slapped this tar baby once and sure as hell ain't gonna do it again."

So beautifully and poetically put: the real Keats couldn't have said this better. So I was wondering: am I the "tar baby" you slapped once before, or is the question about your use of the term "fabricators" the "tar baby" you slapped once before? Because even though I worded my question in what I thought was a humorous way, it was nevertheless a serious question: I have never before seen this use of "fabricators". so perhaps you could slap this "tar baby" once more, for me?

2. You quote Todd Baeson: "I hope you realize how absurd this statement is, because as *** points out, watching a film in another language can bring out some interesting things[…]"

Now the three asterisks (***) replace my name in Todd's original quote; now really, has it come to this? You can't even bring yourself to quote my name? Well, what more can I say than that this is extremely immature, though I have now come to expect it from you.

3. Your condescension towards others' points of views is also now firmly established: never have I seen so much typing (in this case, on your part) to deny the existence of what others have clearly told you is an experience they are having, or have had. They and I have said that the experience of watching films in another language alters the experience of watching the film, and you simply deny our reality. This really is a perfect example of an intellectual theory being used to overide the simple truths of others' experiences. I'm actually flabbergasted at your 'unmitigated gall'. You can pull out 50 theories but they'll never negate the actual experiences that people have.

You've really established a new standard on the board! I look forward to more pleasant exchanges with you in the future.

[Terry]

All I can think to post in this thread is the copy of a page from H2G2:

Flaming and Trolling

Flaming and trolling are two linked terms that refer to types of behaviour on the Internet, and most notably derive from Usenet and BBS (bulletin board systems) systems. This type of behaviour is still fairly common in IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and at sites such as Slashdot.org.

Flaming

The term 'flaming' is defined slightly differently depending on which site you're on, but generally it means the same thing wherever you go. h2g2 defines it thus:

Flaming means posting something that's angry and mean-spirited - the online equivalent of flying off the handle.

... whereas, according to the Jargon Dictionary, the term 'flaming' originates at MIT1 from the phrase 'flaming a.....e'. The definition of 'flame' on this site goes on to define flaming in the following four ways:

* To post an email message intended to insult and provoke.
* To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude.
* Either of senses 1 or 2, directed with hostility at a particular person or people.
* (n) An instance of flaming. When a discussion degenerates into useless controversy, one might tell the participants 'Now you're just flaming' or 'Stop all that flamage!' to try to get them to cool down (so to speak).

Interestingly, the Jargon Dictionary also goes on to speculate:

It is possible that the hackish sense of 'flame' is much older than that. The poet Chaucer was also what passed for a wizard hacker in his time; he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe, the most advanced computing device of the day. In Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida, Cressida laments her inability to grasp the proof of a particular mathematical theorem; her uncle Pandarus then observes that it's called 'the fleminge of wrecches'. This phrase seems to have been intended in context as 'that which puts the wretches to flight' but was probably just as ambiguous in Middle English as 'the flaming of wretches' would be today. One suspects that Chaucer would feel right at home on Usenet.

Trolling

For many years, Usenet was the dominant form of online communication. It defined 'trolling' in three ways:

... a posting designed to attract predictable responses or 'flames'; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase 'trolling for newbies' which in turn comes from mainstream 'trolling', a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.

... an individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognisable by the fact that the have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to utter flame-bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, 'Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll.'

... [Berkeley] Computer lab monitor. A popular campus job for C[omputer] S[tudies] students. Duties include helping newbies and ensuring that lab policies are followed. Probably so-called because it involves lurking in dark, cave-like corners.

Trolling is generally recognised as being an occupation rather than an occurrence, ie while people can (and do) flame for the sake of flaming, flaming can often simply be a manifestation of someone's overreaction to something someone else said. It is for this reason that while flaming is, almost without exception, frowned upon, trolling is more looked upon with scorn than its erstwhile counterpart. The website Slashdot.org, mentioned above, even goes so far as to have a method of forum moderation which allows postings to be classified as 'troll' (as well as such other labels as 'interesting', 'funny', and 'irrelevant'). Users who troll in situations like this generally troll for bait, as mentioned in the definition above.

Methods of Flaming or Trolling

IRC

IRC channels are regularly inhabited by a set of channel 'regulars', a situation which can lead to a fair degree of in-fighting and argument, especially since many IRC channels grow to be fairly big. In the late 1990s, as IRC Channels grew even more sizable and the Internet's user base grew exponentially, conduct in IRC channels on the whole took a turn for the worse; even amongst smaller channels, IRC's vibe was not what it used to be prior to the start of the Internet boom. As Michael Lawrie explains in his history of the #gb IRC channel from 1994 - 96:

There was so much in-fighting on the channel that none of these were successful, but it did drive more and more people away for no sensible reasons. The channel was still being used by Internet staff during the daytime but when the cheap-rate crowd came on after 6pm, #gb was at its worse. There was huge amounts of bigotry, people weren't allowed to hold any views that contradicted with the clique who thought they owned the channel and since it would be rather difficult to hold views that did agree with theirs a general screen full of channel activity would have one line of message text to a screen of status messages (joins, ops, deops, kicks and bans). One thing that did thrive over these two years was the 'off IRC' socialising, once a month or so until most people came to the conclusion that they couldn't actually bear one another and they soon vanished into meets of just three or four lost souls.

As IRC grew larger yet, IRC networks such as Dalnet were forced to implement services to safeguard people's channels and nicknames not only against flaming and trolling, but against the theft of their identity and channels. There are channels on EFNet (which has never implemented such services) that are still unusable after having been taken over years in the past by trolling users who weren't abided by the channel operators and ended up banned. Countless more lie empty, their user base fragmented and dissipated. Flaming and trolling became especially common in help channels - of which there are many on IRC - and the character of IRC has changed accordingly.

Usenet / Forums

With the increasingly popular use of web forums and Usenet, flaming often becomes a cause of public humiliation. Potential targets are people with obscure viewpoints, outmoded opinions or over-inflated value of self importance. Trolling in order to cause people with strong opinions of this kind to flame back is also fairly common, and once peer groups begin to become involved, this can lead to a 'flame war'. There are certain areas of Usenet which are inhabited by virtually nothing but people in search of pornography and trollers and their victims.

As one Researcher recalls:

I take the peak of flaming from personal experience, when I was at college and it was everywhere for about six months. Then people started clamping down on it (all colleges in the highlands are linked through the UHI (University of Highlands and Islands) system) and we laughed so hard when every student in Orkney got banned from the email/posting system. They were flaming everyone.

Another relates:

I've been party to many things on the Internet, but flame wars are among the least satisfying of all my experiences. When you let your emotion take over online, it is easy to say things that you truly do not mean because it is a way to vent frustration or anger. The trouble is that in online conversations, emotion does not always carry over as intended, and your flame is either magnified a great deal, or lost altogether because tone and expression are not easy to convey with text. The good thing about a verbal argument is that one can catch all the subtleties that make up a statement, along with the textual component of that statement: When discussing something online, all the non-textual portions of your comments are lost.

Especially in forums well-frequented by such behaviour, it's fairly common for a comment which someone makes to be taken in the wrong way and for trigger happy moderators to act accordingly. However, it's equally common for trollers to follow up with excuses such as:

Sorry, I didn't mean to start an argument. My posting has been misconstrued. I didn't mean to cause offence.

As such, it's hard to catch the clever troller out. Other, less subtle, troll messages are easier to spot, for instance messages which centre around topics such as gender relations, politics, sex and religion.

Reasons for Flaming/Trolling

The troll has but one purpose, to inflame the people who read it and draw them into an argument, and as such is a deliberate attempt to provoke. Aside from sheer immaturity, there are many reasons for the flame, such as:

Ranting

Most people feel the need to have a good rant or vent at someone, usually after frustration at lack of service, an unsatisfactory experience or just general bad mood. It is not unheard of for pupils to anonymously flame their teachers. Most people feel the need to have a good rant at some point, but usually restrict their outburst to friends, family or even a diary.

Complaint

Unsatisfactory service, poor customer care, lack of information, or late delivery of a product can all result in a flame to the company. Most are simply complaints with 'colourful metaphors', but some are plainly abusive, and many companies operate a zero tolerance on this, even in emails, and will ignore/delete the message.

It should be noted that abusive comments do not make companies want to deal with them any faster. Customer advisors will sometimes deliberately 'misdirect' the customer's comments to the wrong department, although most reputable companies do deal with complaints correctly. On the contrary, a polite, professional, and pointed phone manner works wonders with first-level agents (the staff who initially ask phonecalls), and their supervisors. It isn't unheard of for a canny customer to have him/herself escalated to second-level employees (who are generally better equipped to handle queries) by a supervisor, or even the third level (in IT, generally the staff who designed the product or have something to do with the development team).

Insult

Many flames are just insulting emails or messages. Usually the person sending the flame had little reason for flaming, it may even be as trivial as a long delay for an answer they need.

The insult can be a joke between friends, such as:

Hey donkey brains! Fancy a pint tonight?

But even this can get out of hand. As the recipient has no emotional clues to go by (tone of voice, slight smile, etc), the flame can be misinterpreted as a genuine insult. Emoticons or 'Smileys' can help (a smiley face to denote humour or a 'winkeye' smiley - - to denote irony or playful malevolence both work wonders). However, these are not foolproof - many people dislike the use of emoticons as they are sometimes used to mask genuinely unpleasant comments with pretences of friendliness.

Challenge

Few pleasures in life are greater than a lively, cordial debate and a troll can often get one going. More scathing trolls, however, are likely to provoke a so-called domain (or site) war. These have a tendency to get seriously out-of-hand and drag everyone in, as sooner or later everyone has an online friend who has been insulted, flamed and/or trolled.

Generally, a flame or troll is an unpleasant (intentional or not - though usually intentional) message which lambastes the recipient.

Accident

The worst flame of all. This is one that the sender never meant to direct at the recipient. It is usually either an email sent to a friend that is accidentally sent to the wrong person (or every person, using the 'Send All' or 'Reply All' button accidentally) or is passed on from the recipient to someone else.

Offices are the usual location of this faux pas. Usually someone complains about their boss to a friend via email, but accidentally sends it to the whole office, or the friend passes it on until it reaches the boss. It demonstrates the dangers of email, as many people send off a message while still angry, without thinking. The best advice on this is; never send anything via email that you wouldn't shout across a crowded room.

How To Deal With A Flame or Troll

Choosing how to deal with a flame can be a difficult choice. The wrong one can lead to further flames, insults and even exclusion.

Ignore It

Usually the best method, but not always appropriate for flames. Public (newsgroup/forum) flaming needs some sort of response, even if it's just a friendly request to tone the language down. Moderators will normally do this, either through regular monitoring, or through a reporting service.

Ignoring a troll is almost always the best policy. Since no-one rises to the bait, the troller will get bored and go away. Users in newsgroups and forums frequented by trolls often swiftly append to any such thread (or in reply to a baiting message) a warning like: 'Do not feed the troll'. Some online communities have measures in place to deal with offensive and ill-spirited content, such as Userfriendly.org, which deletes inappropriate messages. Other sites have moderation or complaints buttons in place in order to deal with inappropriate content, whereas, as mentioned previously, the technology news site Slashdot.org has a system in place for randomly-nominated users to rate messages, either through votes out of five or by character - including 'troll'. The default forum view in slashdot.org excludes messages with ratings beneath a certain level (ie, messages that have received a handful of 'moderator points' from randomly-nominated moderators).

Respond Rationally

Also quite a good method, and one that has the advantage of making the flamer look irrational and testy, is to respond to any baiting calmly and rationally. However a troll can be a direct challenge to your authority. They are difficult to ignore, although a reference to an earlier posting that answers all or most of the troll's points can be a good defuser.

Flame Back

A bad idea generally is to return fire. It never accomplishes anything except to leave a lasting record of your own suitability for trolling and a general bad atmosphere on the forum2. Flaming back almost always only serves to provoke the flamer, as most people love a good argument.

Explanation

It is always useful if you can remain calm, although this is not easy in all situations. Reply to the flamer, indicating that the flamer has misunderstood what you were saying, and offering a re-explanation of your comments. Particularly on forums, it has the advantage of making the flamer look irrational, that they have 'flown off the handle' without checking facts first. This also works quite well with trolls.

_______________________________________________________________________________________
1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
2 It's generally a bad idea to use colourful metaphors or insulting language in any response.

[Terry]

I think it's fine if posts meander as far off the topic and away from Welles as they're wont to do. I stay away from forums where the moderator continuously weighs in to demand people stay on topic. Jeff has never restricted discussion to being exclusively about Welles, but he has tried to reduce the ugliness and has locked those threads where people refused to desist. This forum has lost most of its members over the years, precisely because people like me refused to play well with others.

I love that blooper tape, which I always called "Peas in July," and even the Paul Masson outtake with the hilarious line "mwah hah, the French champaign," but neither has a place on the radio page and will never be included. I'll continue being a contrarian in trying to respectfully honor the man and his work, unlike the still-common trend of making "fat jokes."

As for watching dubbed films, I'm reminded of Beatrice's intro on the VHS tape of her remastered Othello. She suggested watching it with the sound turned off - or at least suggested that you could still follow the film without audio. With her version that's probably preferable, but in general, studying either the video or audio independently, the video with any alternate audio track, or even the audio with an alternate video are all valid approaches. Once you've watched a film as released or as the director intended umpteen times, there's nothing wrong with seeing how a different composite might work or not. A lot of fan edits are rather interesting, and Roger adding the unused Bernard Herrmann cue to the Ambersons stairwell scene certainly transfigured and intensified it. I think Welles spoke of watching a production of Shakespeare entirely in Russian, which he could not speak, yet still following the story so closely that he didn't even realize it wasn't in English. Newtonian physics was sacrosanct until Einstein modified it to account for the orbit of Mercury, so never fear an alternative approach.

Terry

[Alan Brody]

Thanks for the spirited responses, guys. Here's my own opinion, for what it's worth: I think that the aura that surrounds a film is an important part of the film itself. I think a large reason, for example, why Citizen Kane is considered the greatest film ever made by so many is not just because of the outstanding qualities of the film itself, but because of the amazing story that surrounds the making, and near destruction of the film as well; not to mention what the film has come to represent symbolically in the history of Hollywood cinema: the ultimate case for 'auteur' cinema. For all these reasons, I suspect that many leading film critics and scholars feel that Kane, even if not the greatest film ever made, is nevertheless the best choice for greatest film.

In fact, I don't see how anyone can really judge a classic film apart from it's aura or reputation, or why they would even want to, unless they just stumble on the film accidently while channel surfing. Like it or not, the molestation scandal that surrounded Husbands and Wives is, and probably always will be if the film continues to be remembered, a permanent, if tangential, part of that film's reputation, just as the JFK assassination will probably always hang over The Manchurian Candidate. A classic film is more then just a film. It is an aura as well, although that aura is always subject to change.

Which brings us to Kane in Italian. Why do you suppose it is that the Italians decided to call the film 'Quarto Potere'? The Spanish version, which was until recently, also on Youtube in it's entirety, is simply called 'Cuidadano Kane', and Rosebud is still Rosebud, not 'Rosabella'. But the Italians felt the need not only to change that, but to call the film 'Quarto Potere' (The Fourth Estate) as well, probably because they, more acutely then anyone else, recognized Kane as a Mussolini-like figure and therefore chose to emphasize it as a film about media demagoguery. So even if Quarto Potere doesn't teach us anything new about Citizen Kane, it does teach us a lot about how Kane was perceived in Italy, where the the changed title makes it more likely that the Mussolini connection will probably always be a part of the film., In fact, I would think any Welles film in a foreign language can at least teach us about that film's reception in that particular country. That's important, since Welles was such a cosmopolitan figure.

Concerning dubbed vs. subtitled films, for me it depends on the individual film. Only the great films deserve to be seen with subtitles, but then, most of the time only the great foreign films make it to the US in the first place. It's true that most great foreign films lose much of their distinctive charm and power when they are seperated from their original language, unless they're action films. Instead of a good compromise it's more like a bad dilution that belongs to no culture in particular and seems like a grotesque puppet show. Subtitles are the lesser of two evils, but there is at least one filmmaker who made me wonder, and that would be Max Ophuls. His European films like Lola Montes and The Earrings of Madame D have the kind of exquisite and elegant camera movement that rivals the Wellesian camera and therefore becomes seriously marred by the subtitles. It's bothersome when you're trying to concentrate on this visual splendor and read dialogue at the same time. His films make me want to see them without subtitles, but then it's possible that the dubbed version might be even more bothersome in other ways unless it was done with extreme care. I remember reading in one of the OW biographies that Welles actually actually made a supplementary income in the 1950's by supervising the dubbing of Italian films for the American market. I'd like to know which ones.

[Alan Brody]

No prob. There are several other foreign versions of Welles films where the title change makes me wonder what other subtle changes may have been made, such as 'Vérités et Mensonges' (Lies and Dreams), the French version of F For Fake, and 'El Quarto Mandamiento' (The Fourth Commandment), the Spanish version of The Magnificent Ambersons.

[NoFake]

'Vérités et Mensonges' (Lies and Dreams), the French version of F For Fake

A direct translation of 'Vérités et Mensonges' would be 'Truths and Lies'. But if the former translation is what's on the disc, it's yet another commentary on the truth of the film, in that the "truth" of the title itself can be perceived in more than one way.

[Alan Brody]

Oops, thanks No Fake. 'Truths and Lies' does make more sense.

[Glenn Anders]

Alan: I might add a point which probably does not warrant clarification.

Benito Mussolini, son of a blacksmith, became first a school teacher like his mother, later a journalist and editor, and his life developed that mass of contradictions for which Charles Foster Kane is its American counterpart, and which has always given Fascism, the political philosophy Mussolini helped found, such an often benign or patriotic reformist appearance in its early stages. Seen briefly in CITIZEN KANE, Mussolini was against Italy's participation in World War I, but once the country was in, he was all for it. He had been a pacifist until he threw himself bravely into the front lines where, after nine months, he was invalided out with forty pieces of shrapnel in his hide. He returned to his newspaper, a populist hero, who gradually became a dictator. He was a strong, handsome looking man who degenerated into a characature of much that should be obviously foolish in fascism -- whether in Italy, America or anywhere else in the modern world:

"His Excellency Benito Mussolini, Head of Government, Duce of Fascism, and Founder of the Empire" And oh, yes, First Field Marshall of the Italian Army. Not to mention the welder of corporatism to the state.

Easy to see, Alan, how the polemicists, first calling Charles Foster Kane "a communist" and then "a fascist," would have had particular resonance for Italian citizens after World War II.

Your discussion of THE FOURTH ESTATE (QUARTO POTERE) and its rather uncanny application to the rise of Fascism in Italy reminded me of Mussolini's schizoid background.

We see the germ of all this in Welles 1937 modern dress Julius Caesar.

Thank you.

Glenn