AFI: "Why is KANE the best film ever?"

[NoFake]

The American Film Institute just sent members a newsletter posing the subject question. Here's what it says:

CITIZEN KANE will be one of our upcoming titles for AFI Movie Club and it’s one of the TOP PICKS by AFI members.

Why do you think CITIZEN KANE is the best film ever made?

WRITE IT, SAY IT, RECORD IT!
Email membership@afi.com with your audio recordings or write-in responses – or upload your videos – by noon PST on Tuesday, June 2. On the day the film is announced, we’ll share messages from you and your fellow AFI members on the AFI social media channels.

Remember, with social media, brevity is key – so be sure to keep your answers under 30 seconds!

Let your voice be heard and share your passion for film – thank you again for participating.

Please submit your comments by noon PST on Tuesday, June 2

JOIN THE CONVERSATION
#AFIMovieClub

Any takers?

[Wellesnet]

Thanks No Fake. We put it on Wellesnet Facebook as well.

[NoFake]

Super! Thanks, Wellesnet. I know AFI will get a number of astute entries from Wellesnetters.

[Wich2]

There can be no one, "best film ever made," any more there is one single best-ever painting, musical composition, play, or novel.

Now, why is CITIZEN KANE a very, very good film?

Because the man making it, as his first real project in that medium, learned from those he called Masters of it: folks like Ford and Griffith.

Because he had the wisdom to surround himself with a gifted cast and crew.

And most of all (as is always the situation in such cases) because he had a sound mind and a healthy heart; and because, above else, across many years and many media,

He loved Storytelling.

- Craig

[Le Chiffre]

Agree, Craig, it does seem a little absurd to try and call one film the greatest ever, given how many movies have existed since 1900 (one website estimated about 500,000 worldwide). However, my feeling is that Citizen Kane is considered the greatest film by many critics and film historians worldwide because, as was said in the IT'S ALL TRUE documentary from 1993, it basically invented modern cinema. Welles took old-fashioned visual techniques going back to the silent era and wedded them seamlessly to radio sound techniques to come up with a new kind of movie that has been emulated ever since. And that's just part of its genius. At the very least, Welles's masterpiece is probably the greatest one-man tour-de-force in film history. It exemplifies the "auteur theory" like no other film.

[Colmena]

I recall somewhere Welles noting that it was the complex structure of Kane that he was most proud of...
Or was it that it was the structure of Kane that he expected to an influence, and was then surprised that it was not?

For me, it is the complexity (both structural and thematic) and the speed of Kane that remain so stunning.

So,
You have to watch it at least three times to get it!
At least...

[tonyw]

Good responses. Significantly, Larry Cohen once mentioned to me that much of VERTIGO'S success was due to Bernard Herrmann especially in providing musical accompaniment to those boring scenes of Scotty stalking Madeline while driving in an Francisco. At the 1979 Athenns, Ohio Film festival, Jerry Fielding ran a reel of Josey Wales without a score, ten with one to show how important musical background was to any film. With CITIZEN KANE, the score acts as part of the ensemble, collaborative aspect of the film, not filling up a gap as in VERTIGO, but being an integral contribution with Welles (who dismissed the auteur theory) mentioning the importance of the director as a key force in wielding all these different contributions together into a unified whole. Welles respected his collaborators and did not fear them as Hitchcock did whenever his judgment came into question. Welles always chose the appropriate collaborators many of whom welcomed the opportunity to work with him.

[jbrooks]

much of VERTIGO'S success was due to Bernard Herrmann especially in providing musical accompaniment to those boring scenes of Scotty stalking Madeline while driving in San Francisco.

Hermann's Vertigo score is magnificent, yes. But there are no boring scenes in Vertigo.

Welles respected his collaborators and did not fear them as Hitchcock did whenever his judgment came into question.

This statement is hard to defend considering that Welles tried to take sole credit for the Kane screenplay and the War of the World radio script and given that Welles' sometimes very disrespectful attitude toward collaborators was well documented.

[tonyw]

Actually, if you run those interminable scenes of Scotty driving his car in pursuit of M, they are boring. Hermann gave the scenes an added dimension with his music in the same way he argued successfully with Hitchcock to not leave the shower sequence silent.As for the second point, i'll pass and leave others to comment.

[JMcBride]

I find the long sequence of Scottie following Madeleine around San Francisco
mesmerizing. The music helps a great deal, of course, but there's a mixture
of mystery, obsession, and suspenseful tension in his pursuit of this enigmatic
woman he barely understands but is becoming inexorably drawn to know. The
settings, including the vertigious city streets and the Palace of Fine Arts (the
last remaining building from the 1915 exposition), are an integral part of
the film's drama. So what he is driving through is as important as the
expressions on his face -- and it's Jimmy Stewart, one of the best screen
actors, we are watching -- and the editing and camerawork are gripping.
I use that sequence in screenwriting classes to discuss the power
of silent storytelling. Hitchcock was one of the silent film directors
who carried over lengthy silent sequences into his talking pictures. And
the silents always had musical accompaniment, which Hitchcock had
a keen ear for, as evidenced by his importing of the only surviving
recording of the score for the 1920 MARY ROSE stage production from London
to help guide Herrmann's eerie work; I wrote a piece for Cineaste on
Hitchcock's fascination with the Barrie play, his attempts to film it, and
its influence on VERTIGO.

[tonyw]

Larry Cohen made the point about the driving sequences but he was a very good friend of Benny and regretted that he anbd Hitchcock had that falling out. It was a shame that Larry never got funding for THE MAN WHO THOUGHT HE WAS HITCHCOCK when Peter Ustinov was still around to play "The Master." It is one of Larry's most ingenious screenplays.

Thanks, Joe, for your perspective as a screenplay maestro.

[Le Chiffre]

Thanks Joe, for that interesting observation. Yes, some of Hitchcock's greatest sequences are essentially silent, or at least without dialogue, like the shower scene in PSYCHO, or that great scene in THE BIRDS, where Tippi Hedren smokes a cigarette outside of a school, while a big flock of killer birds gathers silently behind her. By 1958 Hitchcock was one of only four or five silent film giants still at the top of their game as directors ( along with Ford, Dryer, Ozu, Lang and a couple of others).

I'd like to read your Cineaste article on MARY ROSE sometime. Too bad Hitchcock didn't get his chance with it. Sounds like an interesting, ethereal story that he could have done a lot with. Faye Compton, who played the lead in the original 1920 production, played Emelia in Welles's OTHELLO.

Here are some excerpts from Norman O'Neill's Mary Rose Incidental Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef1oN0zM0eY

Interesting that Bernard Hermann wrote the music for both films considered by Sight and Sound as the greatest ever.

Has anyone else ever heard the theory that the entire second half of VERTIGO is not real? that it all takes place in Scotty's head as he sits in the hospital, trying to figure out what happened to him and why? I seem to remember hearing it from a critic years ago, but I can find nothing on it online, so maybe I remembered it incorrectly.

Welles never adapted MARY ROSE or PETER PAN, but he did adapt one of JM Barrie's other plays, WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS, for radio in 1939, complete with Scottish accents like in MACBETH:
viewtopic.php?f=45&t=2363

[Wellesnet]

Hangin' Out by Robert Alan Aurthur
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/ ... ent=safari

In the 1982 Arena documentary, Welles said it was Joan Didion who wrote this, but it was screenwriter Robert Alan Arthur, writing in Esquire, April 1974. Arthur died in 1978, before Welles told the story to the BBC, so maybe that's why Welles switched the author to Didion:

Let me now get off two of my favorite nonlethal actor stories; so told, the two-year folder will finally be bare. One story is about an American actor in England, the other involves an English actor in America. Splendid balance but mere coincidence.

Okay. Six years ago, a restaurant in London, your hangabout having dinner with a lady not yet his wife. Into the room comes Orson Welles, massive, alone. He goes to a nearby banquette, sits, opens a book, starts reading. Instant attention from the captain, but even as he orders, Welles never diverts from the book. Now, we all understand that there are two sorts of people who sit alone in restaurants and read. The first kind is working. Like David Frost. If you ever see David Frost eating and reading it’s because in eighteen minutes he has to interview the author on television. Then there’s the person who is alone not by choice, and the book is his cover.

Orson Welles was not working. Sternly he read his book, at no time acknowledging the admiring glances turned his way. Soon, in deference to the great man, people stopped looking. The performance then became too much even for a genius actor to sustain. The book was set facedown; he lit a huge cigar. The waiter, a Chinese, stood staring, frozen-faced, clearly not listening, as Welles, his voice ringing and familiar, said, “The second picture I directed and starred in was The Magnificent Ambersons, which some critics said was better than Citizen Kane. . . .”