Orson Welles, Vol I (101 page)

The
flashback technique of the film ensures that we think of the actors as actors at all times, monitoring their make-ups and noting the angle of their stoops as they proceed towards and away from the grave. Only Agnes Moorhead is exempt from this consideration, and her performance, with the sturdy gravity of an American primitive artist, has an actuality that gives Kane’s mother an intensified feel
quite different from any of the other characters. Perhaps this was Moorhead’s instinct; perhaps the character lends itself to such an approach. Moorhead always spoke of Welles’s abilities as a director of actors with immense warmth, so no doubt Welles had encouraged and helped her. These scenes are filled with a degree of emotion rarely encountered elsewhere in the film. It may be, too, that he had
a special understanding of the severely loving mother who believes that success in the world is more important than the provision of maternal warmth. He allows himself a moment of sentimental pause in the scene of Kane’s wooing of Susan Alexander: ‘you know what mothers are,’ she says, and he hesitates before his ‘yes’. That we are able instantly to recall Kane’s mother, halfway through the film,
only having met her for a few minutes, is high tribute to Moorhead.

Ferguson is interesting about Welles’s own performance: ‘it is as though Welles, as the man who conceived and produced this film story, had little enough grasp of the issues involved; but Welles as the actor somehow managed, by the genius that is in actors when they have it, to be more of the thing than he could realise. His
presence in the picture is always a vital thing, an object of fascination to the beholder … without him the picture would have fallen all into its various component pieces of effect, allusion and display. He is the
big part, and no one will say he is not worth it.’ Pauline Kael in her sloppily researched, entertainingly written introduction to the printed script, reveals greater delight in Welles’s
performance than she had originally taken, finding his youthfulness and vulnerability touching now, where before it simply seemed bombastic. Another point she makes with great force echoes Ferguson: ‘Welles … has an almost total empathy with the audience. It’s the same kind of empathy we’re likely to feel for smart kids who grin at us when they’re showing off in the school play … without Orson
Welles’s physical presence – the pudgy, big prodigy who incarnates egotism –
Citizen Kane
might … have disintegrated into vignettes. We feel that he’s making it all happen. Like the actor-managers of the old school, he’s the man onstage running the show, pulling it all together.’
¹⁶

Citizen Kane
is palpably an effort of Orson Welles’s will, as Xanadu, the success of the
Inquirer
and Susan Alexander’s
career are efforts of Kane’s. Rosamond Gilder, in
Theatre Arts Quarterly
, was unconvinced: ‘Just as Orson Welles, producer and director, deserves credit for the excellence of
Citizen Kane
, Orson Welles, co-author (with Herman J. Mankiewicz) and Orson Welles, actor, must be held responsible for the fact that it falls short of greatness … Orson Welles would be even more successful if he were willing
to build his emotional scenes through the actor’s power to develop feeling from within himself. Instead he resorts frequently to the trick of bursting in with his lines without allowing another actor to finish.’ (So much for over-lapping dialogue!) It is hard to disagree with Gilder that Welles fails to create the inner emotional life of the character. Again, however, it is at least possible
that this is the very point that Welles wants to make.

The questions What does the film mean? and What did Welles mean? clung to
Citizen Kane
from the beginning. Borges’s terrible verdict that it is a labyrinth without a centre is another way of saying that it is endlessly enigmatic. Otis Ferguson was unaware of any complexity in the film’s content: ‘His troubles are personal, and his death
is that of a domineering and lonely man, known to all for his money, loved by none. The only possible moral of the picture is, don’t be that way or you’ll be sorry.’ For the FBI, to quote their report, ‘
Citizen Kane
was inspired by Welles’s close associations with communists over a period of years. The evidence before us leads inevitably to the conclusion that the film
Citizen Kane
is nothing
more than an extension of the Communist Party’s campaign to smear one of its most effective and consistent opponents
in the United States.’
¹⁷
David Bordwell, in an elegant summary holds that ‘
Citizen Kane
is a tragedy on Marlovian lines, the story of the rise and fall of an overreacher. Like Tamburlaine and Faustus, Kane dares to test the limits of mortal power; like them, he fabricates endless
personae which he takes as identical with his true self; and like them, he is a victim of the egotism of his own imagination,’
¹⁸
an account of the film that would surely appeal to Welles. For Peter Bogdanovich, ‘it is not his best film, but its aura is the most romantic: the initial courtship of an artist with his art.’
¹⁹
(Courtship scarcely seems the word: the ravishment of his art, the twenty-four-hour
copulation with his art, more likely.) For Pauline Kael,
Citizen Kane
is a magic show; for the present writer it is about size and the doomed quest for significance. The little boy versus the big man, getting more and feeling less; getting bigger and seeming smaller, projecting the image bigger and bigger, so the centre seems further and further from the surface. It is curious that it did not
occur to Welles to make Kane grow fat.

Citizen Kane
may be any or all of these things and many more besides. Part of its seeming multifariousness is due to the circumstances of its creation. It is the work of many people influencing Welles, principally Toland and Mankiewicz. Contrary to reputation (the reputation Welles and RKO between them sought to give it) it is emphatically not the work
of one man. A great deal of what is on the screen is there not because it grew out of his vision but because it was what his collaborators wanted. Only in the area of sound is it uniquely his. His own presence in the film of course lends it tremendous brio and colour, and an ineffable flavour. Truffaut’s observation that it is the only first film directed by a famous man has a deep relevance; public
as he was, he had little time for private reflection. In his later career, he had all too much time for that; alas, the means to put his reflections into practice were no longer available to him. That he was able – in cahoots with RKO’s special effects division – to accommodate the influences and weld them into something that seems coherent and organic is another brilliant trick of the great
conjuror. The truth is that after
Citizen Kane
he needed to start all over again. It was an end, as much as a beginning for him. Well, why not? He was young, hugely acclaimed and with a splendid contract. He was only at the beginning. ‘Orson Welles is 26,’
²⁰
wrote Tangye Lean at the end of his review in
Horizon
, ‘with say 40 years work ahead of him.’ Welles became a symbolic figure for some in
the struggle for film-makers’ independence, of the press, and of the system, a dangerous thing for his future: ‘There has never
been a more exciting press show,’
²¹
averred Cedric Belfrage in the little magazine,
The Clipper
. ‘For on that screen the slaves, the houris, and the camp-followers of the press lords saw some of the truth told about what enslaves, degrades, and makes prostitutes of them.
And at the same time, they saw the whole spangled pyramid of Hollywood movie conventions, which they had had to support with their bodies in their advertisement-controlled “criticism”, toppled over by the heroic Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre nobodies.’

Rampaging in all directions, Belfrage reports that ‘there are in Hollywood a score of cameramen, a score of writers, a score of sound
experts, a score of make-up artists – all equal to Orson’s men in their own field – is probably to underestimate. For years they have been hoping and trying for a chance to show their skill and originality, but always the film salesman, speaking through the producer, has the last word; and the film salesman is one trained in not seeing the wood for the trees.’ Belfrage’s peroration elects Welles
to supreme status among film-makers. ‘
Citizen Kane
is correctly described as being “by Orson Welles” – not “produced” or “directed” or “from a story” by Welles, but
by
him. And because it is all
by
him, because of his conception and coordination of the work, his collaborators on camera and art direction and sound and all the rest shine more brightly. He is the biggest man in Hollywood today. And
he is the Prince Charming whose bold smacking kiss on the brow of a bewitched art puts us all in his debt.’ Once again, Welles and Welles’s film become causes célèbres: once again, it is almost impossible to separate his real merits, personally and as an artist, from the circumambient hyperbole.

Now the task was to sell the movie. Whatever criticisms or cavils there may have been, there was
no shortage of selling angles; the press pack bulged with ecstatic quotes, including many in the exhibitors’ press: ‘A super effort!’ hollered Chick Lewis in the
Showmen’s Trade Review
. ‘To showmen we say, see this picture! To those who play it there is the plain duty to themselves to give it every ounce of showmanship they possess in exploiting its extraordinary box-office potentialities.’ Schaefer
set about doing what he did best: selling. He launched into a positive orgy of salesmanship. The RKO Publicity Department turned out an interesting booklet for distribution to exhibitors: it starts with a picture of Welles/Kane, in his legs akimbo, arms outstretched poster position, now standing astride the globe:
AMERICA, LAND OF OPPORTUNITY: EVERYWHERE NEWSPAPER, MAGAZINE AND RADIO VOICES SAID:
GO WEST ORSON WELLES TO HOLLYWOOD.
There is a picture of a cactus, then
a palm tree, then the gates of Xanadu.
BUT THE GATES WERE CLOSED:
there is a padlock on this last word, and a huge hand held up minatorily. The page is studded with unfavourable quotes from Welles’s first year in Hollywood. Then:
CAME THE PREVIEW, CAME THE VERDICT.
Ecstatic quotes now vie with each other on the page. The climax
of the booklet is a personal message from George J. Schaefer:
‘THANK YOU ORSON WELLES! CITIZEN KANE IS A VERY FINE PRODUCTION, THE RESULT OF GREAT INITIATIVE AND COURAGE, ESPECIALLY UNDER THE MOST TRYING OF CIRCUMSTANCES.
The essence of show business is to present the new, the novel and the unusual to the public. You were not given the chance to present your ideas, but you were severely criticised
for even daring to have an idea! You were condemned before being tried! Your triumph is one of the great accomplishments in motion picture history, and proof that America is still the land of opportunity, where there will always be room for those with dreams and the courage to bring them to reality.
RKO PICTURES INC
–
GEORGE J. SCHAEFER, PRESIDENT.’
This personal endorsement is surely unprecedented
in the history of film publicity.

It was backed by a souvenir booklet which might have been entitled
He’s Terrific!
The frontispiece shows a pipe-sucking, deep-thinking Orson. Page one tells us about
THE AMAZING MR WELLES,
accompanied by photographs of him on the radio, as Faustus, as Brutus, as himself, hatted and bearded looking merrily into the mirror: the text tells us that after a couple
of false starts ‘finally he went to work producing
Citizen Kane
from his own story of an American colossus striding across sixty years of living history. He directed it, starred in it, learned to dance for it, put all his recently acquired knowledge to work, picked up more as he went along. When it was finished, he supervised the scoring, too.’
²²
This was news, perhaps, to Bernard Herrmann. Page
two, optimistically entitled
MAN OF ENDLESS SURPRISES
tells ‘the story of Orson Welles, or the case history of one of America’s most amazing young geniuses … he showed a surprising proclivity for painting. He was so good, as a matter of fact, that his instructor predicted he would become America’s greatest painter.’ That
is
new. Page three brings
HIGHLIGHTS IN THE LIFE OF CITIZEN KANE,
page four
the credits for
Kane
. Pages five and six break into capital letters again:
NOW IT’S ORSON WELLES OF HOLLYWOOD: QUICK-STEPPING THROUGH A FEW OF THE OUTSTANDING SCENES OF CITIZEN KANE WITH THAT UNPREDICTABLE PERSONALITY, ORSON WELLES, WHO BRINGS TO THE SCREEN IN HIS FIRST PRODUCTION AN UNUSUAL,
COMPELLING, DRAMATIC ENTERTAINMENT – AND A DISTINCT NEW MOTION PICTURE TECHNIQUE THAT IS YEARS AHEAD OF
ITS TIME.
Pages seven and eight celebrate
THE ‘FOUR-MOST’ PERSONALITY OF MOTION PICTURES
! in four photographs of Welles as author, director, producer, star. Page nine introduces us to those shadowy figures,
THE MERCURY ACTORS.
Their photographs are dominated by a much larger one of Welles, his arms outstretched. Pages ten and eleven give us
THE MASTER OF MAKE-UP. (EVEN THE FIGURES PROVE THAT ORSON
WELLES DOES THINGS IN A BIG WAY.)
Pages twelve and thirteen describe how Welles reinvented the cinema,
STAR ORSON WELLES MAKES FLUID CAMERA THE STAR OF CITIZEN KANE:
‘It’s a revolution: Welles blandly said a room wasn’t a room without ceilings, and he wanted ceilings.’ The final page is the celebrated shot of Kane standing on the piles of newspapers, which, in this context, looks like an image
of Welles’s own destiny: a man made into a giant by standing on top of a mountain of newsprint.

Under a particularly noble head of Welles as the middle-aged Kane, drawn by von Hentschel, the text further tells us that ‘Orson Welles comes to the film industry with more salvos of advance and current publicity than have ever been given to any showman. His career, past and present, makes national
and international news. Every publication in the country reports his spectacular activities. He has become the best-known showman of his generation.’ An interesting phrase, and indubitably true. Early on, the campaign shifted its emphasis from the controversial many-sidedness of Kane to the love interest.
‘THE FILM THAT HIT FRONT PAGES FROM COAST TO COAST
. The love story that “dared not be made.”
WIFE NO 1:
society belle. He gave her everything but the one thing she wanted.
WIFE NO 2
: shop girl. She scoffed at his $60,000,000 – broke his heart. What was the fatal weakness of the world’s richest man?’
IT’S TERRIFIC! SEE WHY AMERICA IS ONE BIG GOSSIP COLUMN ABOUT ORSON WELLES/CITIZEN KANE.
So she walked out on $60,000,000! Would you?
THE LOVE STORY HOLLYWOOD DARED US TO FILM! WHISPERED AND
RAVED ABOUT FOR ONE SOLID YEAR … AND AT LAST IT’S HERE.’
This press release (designed for exhibitors) emphasised Welles’s marketability. ‘91% of the population know of and are curious about Welles.
Citizen Kane
… was a sensation even before it was released … into
Citizen Kane
Welles has put all the fascinating vitality which distinguished him from the ordinary showman. The result is simply
TERRIFIC.
The phrase’ confides the press release, ‘has great shock value to the reader. Standing alone, it permits no argument, no choice. A
solid use of the campaign cannot fail to excite tremendous audience attention.’