All Time Best Pictures--#4

As we continue our look at the top 10 screenplays of all time, we come to #4, written by Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles, Citizen Kane [1941].

Herman Mankiewicz was the older brother of Joseph Mankiewicz, the writer of the film we talked about last week, All About Eve. And Citizen Kane has something in common with that film—great dialogue. It, too, was inspired by real people.

The biggest inspiration for the main character of the film, Charles Foster Kane, is thought to have been newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. But Welles said that Hearst was not the only inspiration. He was also inspired by the founder of General Electric, Samuel Insull, Chicago financier Harold Fowler McCormick, financier Howard Hughes, and publisher Henry Luce. All of these men shared various character traits with Kane—and all of them promoted a young woman/mistress to try and gain her fame. Ah… what we do for love… or what money can do for those we love!

Chances are, if you’re a film buff, you’ve seen this film—but still, take a look at the original trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=YXIr1P9Fm5A.

Welles refers to the Mercury Theatre more than once in the course of the trailer. That’s because Welles had just come to Hollywood fresh from the success of the Mercury Radio Theatre’s production of his War of the Worlds. That production caused an absolute uproar. The radio play broadcast that aliens had landed in New Jersey and proceeded to detail the horror that was coming in their wake … and many people believed it… it caused an amazing panic—and brought fame to Welles.

Citizen Kane uses an interesting format to tell its story. The main character, Kane, has died—his last word was “rosebud” and reporters talk to people in his life to try and figure out what the great man meant. [The inside joke was that “rosebud” was apparently Hearst’s name for his lover’s vagina, though Hearst did not confirm or deny that assertion.]

The film, though an absolute critical success, was not a box office success—largely because no one went to see it. Why? Hearst banned any reviews of it or any advertising for it from his newspapers—and Hearst controlled almost all the newspapers in the country.

Hearst’s legacy lives on in his castle that still exists on the coast of California—when visiting it you get that eerie feeling that it’s exactly the kind of place Charles Foster Kane would have lived in. And Kane’s legacy certainly lives on—he’s considered to be one of the most interesting characters in film.

The film uses its construct to take us through the life of this great man from boyhood to old age. When a biopic tries to do that—cover the entire life of a person—it rarely succeeds. Why? Because that’s just too much to try and fit in a two-hour film. Successful biopics take a portion of a life and focus on that, generally speaking. Citizen Kane overcomes that by using its reportorial construct to let us see into all facets of Kane’s life.

Sometimes the innovative use of structure is what a film needs to succeed. Imagine Kane’s story being told as a traditional biopic… would it have worked? Think about it.

Copyright © Diane Lake

12Apr20

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