subscribe to this page
Chris Morris writes this article in August 2001, just as the popularity of the relatively new home video format DVD was starting to gain popularity. Movie titles were released incrementally in this new all-digital format.
Morris writes that the popularity of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane has created a high demand for the film to be released to the new DVD video format. Warner Home had been working on a 60th anniversary release and it was planned for the 25 of September in that same year. This new release was widely expected to be visually and sonically ungraded from the previous releases to home video. Morris writes that Warner, in their attempts to rerelease Citizen Kane, had originally not been able to find a suitable quality source film. RKO’s original camera negatives had been burned in a 1980 vault fire and as a result had also hampered past efforts a restoration. The 1991 VHS release had featured the copy owned by New York’s Museum of Modern Art, however this print had dirt and scratches on it, among other defects. Morris reports, however, that after patient and careful searching, Warner had found a new nitrate fine-grain print in a European archive and that this copy has offered better picture quality and served as an improved audio source. The improved audio quality is very important because the original score had a very high dynamic range. He also reports that the new DVD release would include an interview with Roger Ebert, a 1941 newsreel about the film’s premiere, and the documentary film of the Hearst-Welles conflict, The Battle Over Citizen Kane.
One might think that just like a personal computer user, large Hollywood movie studios would have countless backup copies of their master reels. This seems not to be the case. A fire at a single film vault destroyed RKO’s only master copy. Orson Welles was the recipient of the actual production negatives and his copy was also lost in a fiery accident in the 1970s. By re-mastering and fully digitizing the remaining high quality prints, the data can be stored in numerous locations very inexpensively and very safely. As we learned in class, nitrate has a propensity to catch on fire and is very dangerous in that respect. We also learned in class that Hollywood is usually very slow to adopt new media formats. DVD hit store shelves in mid-1997 yet this movie was released in late 2001, almost 4 years later. The studios might have an excuse in this case – the long and lucky search for a suitable master copy.
Monahan, Mark. "Music that makes a man a killer Bernard Herrmann's film scores spoke as loudly as any dialogue, says Mark Monahan." The Daily Telegraph 1 July 2006. 8 April 2008.
Mark Monahan writes about Mr. Bernard Herrmann’s musical career spanning from Citizen Kane in 1941 through Taxi Driver in 1976. Monahan asserts that creating music for motion pictures is an incredibly arduous task and that the people responsible for it are extraordinarily talented. He feels that cinema would be unimaginable if not for the fantastic and wild feelings created by film scores. Monahan writes that he considers Bernard Herrmann to be one of the leading film composers of the last 100 years. Herrmann, a Russian born immigrant attended NYU to study music and made his Broadway debut at the young age of 20. He began composing for CBS radio shows and this put him into contact with Orson Welles. Welles took Herrmann on for the film Citizen Kane, and thereby launched the composer’s long and successful scoring career. After Kane, Herrmann teamed with Hitchcock and was responsible for the musical scores of all the great Hitchcock films through the end of the 1960s. Monahan has much respect for Herrmann’s talent. He writes that, “Rather than merely setting the scene or complementing the action (though they do both magnificently), [Herrmann’s scores] virtually are the action, brilliantly elucidating the characters' gnarled inner lives.” He says that the opening scene of Citizen Kane (the ascending of Xanadu’s fence) is given “a sense of dread, regret and death of the soul…” Herrmann’s most famous musical passage is the shrieking violins of the Psycho’s shower scene. In his later career he works for French and American New Wave filmmakers.
The musical score to any film is one of the most psychologically defining aspects of the experience. The music, much like lighting, sets a mood. Before the audience even knows what will happen on screen, they can get a sense of what might happen just based on the musical foreshadowing. Herrmann brilliantly uses his musical score to set the mood and tone in Citizen Kane. In happy scenes such as those with the young Kane attending parties in his honor, the music is light and we think nothing of it. In more dramatic scenes such as the initial scene of Xanadu, the newsreel scenes, and the final scene of the film with the revelation of Rosebud, the music obviously takes a more dramatic and serious tone.
Davies, Marion. "The Times We Had : Life with William Randolph Hearst." Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril, 1975.
In 1951 after W.R. Hearst’s death, his mistress, Marion Davies began to record her memoirs on magnetic tapes in the privacy of her Beverly Hills home. She was Hearst’s close companion for 32 years and some say she was the inspiration for the character Suzan Alexander Kane in Orson Welles’s 1941 classic, Citizen Kane. This article is the forward written by Orson Welles to a book of her recorded thoughts, published posthumously in 1975.
Orson Welles tries to clearly and efficiently explain all of his reasons why his character Charles Foster Kane and Susan Alexander Kane are not actual personas of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies. He does this by describing differences of Kane vs. Hearst and Davies vs. Susan Alexander. Welles writes that there are many parallels between his characters and the Hearst couple and that these parallels could have been confusing to the audience; however upon closer inspection, one sees that they are quite different. He begins by claiming that San Simeon – even if it hadn’t existed in real life – would have had to be invented for the purposes of the script. “Everything was invented.” He then writes that W.R. Hearst was born wealthy to pampering parents while Kane was born into poverty and raised by a bank. Marion Davies, a well known beautiful actress could have had anyone she wanted, whereas Susan Alexander felt that she belonged on the streets – and this is indeed where Kane found her. Also, Susan was a lonely wife trapped in an empty castle whereas Marion was a mistress and busy hostess of all the social events in Hearst’s estates. Lastly, he claims that Marion and Hearst is a love story while Citizen Kane is not. Welles concludes his passage by making one last reference to his film. Susan Alexander was a terrible singer and forced to perform by Kane. On the contrary, he claims that Marion was a very talented actress and would have been a star even without Hearst’s interference.
Central to general discourse of Citizen Kane, is the similarity of the movie characters to that of Hearst and his mistress. It might seem amusing that Welles, writing this forward 34 years after the movie’s release, claims that the characters in the film are absolutely not based on Mr. Hearst. So many allusions are made in the film to the Hearst Empire – the fact that Kane runs a newspaper, Xanadu, financially sponsoring and forcing Susan Alexander to perform – that it seems preposterous to claim otherwise. Welles ends the forward by writing, “As one who shares much of the blame for casting another shadow – the shadow of Susan Alexander Kane – I rejoice in the opportunity to record something which today is all but forgotten expect for those lucky enough to have seen some of her pictures… She would have been a star if Hearst had never happened.” It seems that in his older age, Welles regrets his cheeky comparison of this woman and wants her to be remembered for her own contributions to cinematic history.
Carringer, Robert L. "Citizen Kane." Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 9, No. 2, Special Issue: Film IV: Eight Study Guides (Apr., 1975), pp. 32-49
This article explores the technical cinematic innovations that affect the composition of Welles's scenes.
In his essay on Citizen Kane, Robert Carringer describes this history of what many critics consider Orson Welles’s (and perhaps all of history’s) greatest film. Mr. Carringer begins by revealing some biographical information of Welles and the technical innovations that he pioneered in the film (all serving to draw closer attention to the acting). Most notably he comments on Welles’s use of unexpected ultra-low angles, his preference of using single long takes without intercutting, and the extreme depth of field that is used to bring every part of the scenes into focus. Carringer moves on to write about the validity of comparisons that critics have made of the similarity of the character of Kane to notorious personalities of the day, including most notably newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Mr. Carringer also covers Orson Welles’s career transformation from radio to cinema, and he ends the essay describing the plot and character of the film.
This article fantastically reveals some of Welles’s technical cinematic techniques, specifically the use of large depth of field. The director chose to break normal filmmaking conventions in order to achieve certain new dramatic effects. The use of extraordinary depth of field shots was quite unorthodox considering the technology available at the time. The camera aperture has to be very small to achieve this effect and therefore Welles had to use extremely fast film stock as well as special lights and lenses in order to let in as much light as possible. A larger depth of field eliminates the need for editing to break the dramatic space into multiple centers and it also allows for long, drawn out single-take shots. As items from infinity to within a few inches of the lens were all in focus, this enticed Welles to compose his scenes such that the audience’s attention would be drawn to characters entering from far away and off screen. An example is the flashback scene taken from the diary of Kane’s childhood. The shot frames 4 characters: Mary Kane signing away her son, Thatcher busily pushing the papers to her, Jim Kane pacing in the middle ground, and Charles, obliviously playing outdoors in the snow, seen through the window. This unusual effect helped to revolutionize film cinema and is taken for granted by future generations.
tagged aperture citizen depth_of_field hearst kane lighting low_angles orson welles by andersjc ...and 1 other person ...on 10-APR-08
This article by a LA Times correspondent, written on May 9, 1941, documents the west coast premiere of Orson Welles’s famous film Citizen Kane. Kendall reports that the premiere of Citizen Kane is held at the famous El Capitan Theater, a Hollywood landmark stage theater. The author describes a nostalgic feeling of “the old days” of Hollywood amid spot lights which pierced the sky in front of thousands of fans gathered – much in today’s fashion – to see their favorite stars. The glitz and glamour seems to add to Welles’s ego as he walks down the red carpet, his entrance timed. The crowds make even more noise for Barrymore as he walks into the theater. When stopped for questioning on the red carpet, Welles makes only one remark – about his gratefulness to George Schaefer, the president of RIO-Radio Pictures. “If it had not been for George J. Schaefer there would not be a Citizen Kane.” Outside the theater, the star-struck crowd for the premiere is so large that RKO had to erect temporary bleachers. The article then extensively lists the famous attendees, including Mickey Rooney, Ronald Reagan and Bob Hope. Kendall also includes a photograph of the “stellar foursome” including John Barrymore, Dolores Del Rio, Orson Welles, and Dorothy Comingore.
This article is a fantastic first hand account of the media and popular frenzy surrounding the grand release of RKO’s Citizen Kane. The movie premiered at the famous El Capitan Theater and was the first movie to be shown at that location. The theater remains a landmark to this day on the Hollywood strip. This article clearly shows that despite Hearst’s best efforts to suppress the film’s release, these attempts only furthered to publicize the movie and create even more attention for the premiere. Hearst did succeed in limiting the films success and it wasn’t for many years that interest in the film was revived. This article also, interestingly enough, reveals that as early as 1941, Hollywood felt a sense of nostalgia for the good-old-days of past. It is interesting to see these feelings manifest at such an early date, especially because today we consider Hollywood’s Golden Age to encompass the 1920s through the late 1950s.
