Orson Welles, Vol I (88 page)

Names were culled from whoever was around: Susan Alexander got hers from Mankiewicz’s secretary Rita Alexander, Boss Jim Gettys from Hortense Hill’s maiden name, Mr Bernstein, of course, from Dadda. The central character was renamed. Mankiewicz had favoured Craig;
Welles felt it was weak, and he was right:
Citizen Craig
has the air of a minor sit-com. Kane was Welles’s choice, after his old colleague and sparring partner, Whitford Kane, also perhaps subconsciously recalling Kane County in the state of Illinois; he overrode Mankiewicz’s concern that it would suggest the biblical Cain. It amused Houseman enormously to model the butler Raymond after Welles’s
creepily indolent butler, Charles. In the same random way, things were absorbed whenever they seemed appropriate: Mankiewicz’s wife Sara had given him a snow-scene in a glass globe; as he worked on the new draft at home, he would idly pick it up and shake it about. Into the screenplay it went. Perhaps, too, as Carringer and others have suggested, he was vaguely remembering a sequence in
Kitty
Foyle
, 1939’s Ginger Rogers vehicle, which makes much of just such a snow scene in a crystal globe; perhaps not. As for Rosebud, various prurient suggestions have been offered (Hearst allegedly referred to Marion Davies’s pudenda by that name); in fact Mankiewicz had had in boyhood a bicycle named Rosebud. The sled, embodying the normal life from which Kane was ripped, comes, as we have seen,
from the Todd School, which represented as near to a childhood idyll as Welles knew. Thus the ingredients were assembled. What is important is that all these things were put together by controlling intelligences who were very aware of what they were aiming for. What came from where hardly matters; the question is why?

Some years later, Welles was required to make a deposition on the subject
of
Citizen Kane
before a court set up to establish, ironically enough, whether its authors had plagiarised Lundberg’s biography,
Imperial Hearst
. He outlined the story they were telling in terms which make it perfectly clear that they had a very strong conception of the meaning of the film. ‘We postulated a fairly classic psychological set-up,’ testified Welles, ‘involving the loss of a mother,
the failure to make what psychoanalysts speak of as a
“transference” to any other woman and the need to wield power as an expression of ego. Kane was a spoiled child, but spoiled without benefit of human affection. In other words, we wished to show a man with an urge to assume a position of responsibility in public affairs but having himself no sense of responsibility, only a series of good intentions,
fuzzy sentiments and numb, undefined yearnings … his failure in public life and the transference of his efforts from his own broken political career to those of an untalented woman, a singer at whom audiences laughed, all this grew out of the initial character set up. Kane’s retreat to one of those enormous imitation feudal kingdoms, which his type of public man tends to construct for himself,
was another natural result of the character as conceived. If the world did not behave the way he wanted it to behave, then he would build a world of his own where all the citizens were his subjects and on his payroll. Such men as Kane always tend toward the newspaper and entertainment world. They combine a morbid preoccupation with the public with a devastatingly low opinion of the public mentality
and moral character.’ The notion of a man who rebuilds the unsatisfactory real world in a parallel world of invention and propaganda was at the heart of the script as they had evolved it; this too was something Welles understood deeply.

Once the picture had been given the go-ahead, the collaborators, whatever tensions or distrust underlay their work, were in high spirits, so much so that the
New York Herald Tribune
of 19 May 1940 reported that ‘John Houseman, Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles announce the formation of United Productions. UP will present for Pacific Coast runs 5 new productions a year originating in Hollywood … the Mercury Theatre will operate in partnership with the new producing firm, furnishing it with 2 productions a season, directed and produced by Mr Welles.’
This expansion was a sure sign of Welles’s confidence; whenever things were going well, he announced a five-year plan. These were not to be taken seriously: an ambitious press release was for him the equivalent of a shot of vitamin B12. Of this particular plan, like most of them, no more was heard, though Houseman began to sound out properties. Houseman continued to be involved in the three-way
collaboration on the script of
Kane
: a telegram of 16 June 1940 shows both how basic to the project was Houseman’s participation, and how active was Welles’s work on the script: ‘dear mank received your cut version also several new scenes of orsons stop approve all cuts stop still don’t like rome scene and will try to work on it my humble self stop after much careful reading i
like all orsons
scene including new montages and Chicago opera scenes with exception of kane emily sequence stop don’t like scene on boat stop query any first meeting scene between them before oil scandal comes to shatter it stop simply don’t understand sequence or sense of orsons telescoped kane leland emily assassination scenes stop there again will try and make up my own version stop please keep me posted’.
¹⁵
Meanwhile, the accounts department had got their hands on the second draft. Their assessment was $1,082,798: twice the agreed budget. The third draft, which had been Welles’s exclusive responsibility, and which was further extensively trimmed, was received gloomily by accounts: Welles’s cuts had made no substantial difference to the cost. It was, they pointed out, fifty to sixty pages longer than
any film ever previously shot by RKO. Frustrated but still forging eagerly ahead, Welles was happy to put Mankiewicz back on payroll to work on further condensation and elimination, leaving him to work on it alone while he started to work on the physical aspect of the filming: the art work and, above all, the cinematography.

The art director assigned to him by Van Nest Polglase, overall head
of design at RKO, was Perry Ferguson, a man known, Carringer reveals, for his even temper, his diplomatic skills, his speed and his versatility. From
Gunga Din
to
Bringing up Baby
, from
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
to
The Swiss Family Robinson
he had easily moved from one period to another, from screwball comedy to romance, desert island drama to military epic. This admirable man worked
happily with Welles, story-boarding every scene, suggesting, modifying, advising. Welles was supremely confident visually; design in the cinema is essentially the same as design in the theatre if you believe, as Welles passionately did, in the expressive importance of it. He had a very clear concept of what he wanted from the settings: they should help to trace the rise and fall of the central character.
Making the story-board immediately brought Welles to the fundamental question: the framing of the shots. What would the film look like? He needed the input of his cameraman. The story-board process, which requires crucial decisions, is a severe test of a tyro director. Technically speaking, of course, Welles the superb illustrator naturally thought in terms of groupings, tableaux. The difficulty
is that the enormous number of successive images that is a film requires some sort of organic logic, like images in a poem. It is a language, and it has a grammar, but scarcely one that can be taught, except by experience. It is a different way of communicating, and no matter how heightened your
visual awareness, a grasp of the language is essential. It may even be said that the more visually
sophisticated the aspiring director, the firmer his grasp must be. Proliferating astonishing images is the easiest thing in the world; telling a story through them is another matter. A wonderful vocabulary will get you precisely nowhere if you can’t frame a sentence. The tyro director desperately depends on his cameraman for guidance.

The director of photography is the technician who records
the images, but, in the nature of things, he or she is often the person who engenders them. It is perfectly possible as a director to concern yourself with the dialogue, the characterisation, the hair-cuts or the extras and leave the pictures to the cinematographer. Many famous directors have done just that. Welles was not going to be among them. The appointment of his director of photography was
the crucial decision now the screenplay existed. In this instance, he needed someone who was open to suggestion, who had initiative and was good-humoured, who was also aware that his director, however imaginative and intelligent, was not going to have all the answers, nor would he resent him for that. Praying for such a paragon, Welles’s prayers were answered beyond his wildest expectations. Improbably,
the most famous cameraman in Hollywood, who was also its boldest experimenter, as well as being the most agreeable of men, approached Welles out of the blue and offered him his services. This was Gregg Toland, fresh from
The Grapes of Wrath, The Long Voyage Home
and
Wuthering Heights
, for his work on which he had just won an Oscar, and he was the last of the instruments of Welles’s destiny.

‘I know nothing about film-making,’ said Welles when they met. ‘That’s why I want to work with you,’ said Toland. ‘That’s the only way to learn anything – from somebody who doesn’t know anything.’ The first thought that struck anyone who met Toland, according to his friend George Turner, was that he appeared frail, even ill. ‘He had a sallow complexion, was under-weight and walked with a stoop that
made him appear older than he was. He seemed to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. When he spoke of the thing that dominated his life – cinematography – the melancholy look vanished. No one could speak more eloquently or knowledgeably or with greater enthusiasm. When he was at work, an even greater change took place: he was a dynamo of energy to whom long hours and difficult
working conditions meant nothing.’
¹⁶
Temperamentally opposite, Welles and he were perfectly matched in their passion for work, and each realised that the other would be
an ideal collaborator. In fact, Toland knew Welles’s theatre work, having been especially struck by
Julius Caesar
, with its boldly sculpted light and swift transitions. He knew that Welles was no slavish adherent of naturalism
and had a hunch that Welles would allow him to pursue certain developments further than any of the distinguished directors for whom he had most recently been working – Wyler, Ratoff and Ford – even though Ford had allowed him an extraordinary degree of freedom in the highly composed
Long Voyage Home
. Toland was a man with a mission; in his own sphere, he was as determined a self-publicist as Welles,
writing passionately polemical articles in the specialist press. He had already created something of a division in the ranks of cinematography.

After early experience with the ceaselessly experimental Arthur Edeson, he had frequently worked with the highly original director/designer of
The Shape of Things to Come
, William Cameron Menzies. Famous for his speed and adaptability, Toland quickly
worked his way through the system, avoiding being attached to a studio, which would have curbed his independence and required him to do routine work. Eventually he signed a contract with Goldwyn which provided him with two unique opportunities: the virtually unheard-of right to work with the director and designer six weeks before the start of shooting and free access to Goldwyn’s experimental laboratory.
He made tough demands of himself. ‘Not only should the cameraman know all about the science and mechanics of photography but he should be a student of the drama,’
¹⁷
he wrote. ‘I found it to my advantage to take a course in playwriting. Also a course in hair-dressing and another in screen make-up. I continually observe and study new styles in women’s clothes, from the viewpoint of their values
in enhancing certain dramatic methods.’ Along with this thorough practical preparation, he had a slightly mystical, slightly subversive view of his profession. ‘Of all the people who make up a movie production unit, the cameraman is the only one who can call himself a free soul’ – because, he says, you don’t see the results of the cameraman’s work till the rushes are viewed, twenty-four hours later.
‘No, the cameraman is perfectly at liberty to carry out his own ideas, even to introduce an occasional revolutionary departure – within the bounds of reason, of course.’ These were the bounds he sought to test with Welles.

‘A great deal has been written and said about the new technical and artistic possibilities offered by such developments as coated lenses, super-fast films and the use of
lower-proportioned and partially ceilinged sets,’
¹⁸
he wrote. ‘We (cinematographers who
have experimented with them) wished that instead of using them conservatively for a scene here or a sequence there, they could experiment free-handedly with them throughout an entire production.’ Because of the special character of
Citizen Kane
’s screenplay, ‘as both Welles and I saw it, we were forced to make
radical departures from conventional practice.’ Of course Welles was delighted to facilitate Toland’s experiment. It was in his nature to innovate; besides, it was what was required of him.

Toland swiftly converted him to the principle tenets of his celluloid faith, all of which were designed to honour its greatest gospel: Realism. As in every age, in every art, the innovators claim that their
development breaks the mould of convention to restore the fresh impact of truth. ‘Both Welles and I felt that if it was possible, the picture should be brought to the screen in such a way that the audience would feel it was looking at reality, rather than merely at a movie.’ For Toland, and therefore for Welles, that meant, self-evidently, sharp-focus, great depth-of-field and ceilings on rooms.
The finished result seems to us, now, the opposite of real. It seems stylised in the extreme. Paradoxically, though, it meant that Welles could stage the film almost as if it were a play. He had to make no concession to the camera; it would follow him wherever he wanted it to go. Another crucial principle that Toland gave to Welles was that of continuous action. ‘I was constantly encouraged by
Toland, who said, under the influence of Ford, “carry everything in one shot – don’t do anything else.” In other words, play scenes through without cutting, and don’t do alternate versions. That was Toland in my ear,’
¹⁹
Welles told Peter Bogdanovich. ‘And secondly, I didn’t know to have all kinds of choices. All I could think of to do was what was going to be on the screen in the final version.’
The single biggest difficulty for someone directing a film for the first time is that (with rare exceptions) he or she will never have edited one. It is extraordinarily difficult to judge what shots will be needed when the picture is edited, to imagine in advance the sequence of shots within a single scene, or the breakdown of the scene into different cuts (close-up, two-shot, three-shot and so
on). This problem of ‘coverage’ is one Welles never had to face. According to Toland ‘we tried to plan the action so that the camera could pan or dolly from one angle to another whenever this type of treatment was desirable.’
²⁰