Citizen Kane, then...

'f for fake' is great, but getting criterion treatment kinda overexposed it for a while. i enjoy it most because it really lets welles play the showman, which none of his other movies really did. it's a wonderfully unique film -- i can't think of anything else remotely like it. i'd happily shell out for a criterion that consisted of nothing but welles interviews, come to think of it.

the most remarkable thing about welles, for me, is that all of his movies are so different in style, tone, everything. it's almost impossible to believe the same guy made 'ambersons' AND 'f for fake' AND 'the trial.'

"you see, my mother died a long time ago, and her things were put in storage out west--there wasn't any other place to put them--i thought i'd send for them now, and tonight i was going to take a look at them. you know, a sort of sentimental journey. i run a couple of newspapers; what do you do?"

ever notice the dude on the Smart Puffs bag looks exactly like Peter Bogdanovich?
http://www.myfoodthoughts.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/smart-puffs.png

missing the cravat, though

lol!

on the new release:

For the new Blu-ray, Ned Price and his team at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imagery scanned three different copies (or "film elements"): the MoMA print; a 35 mm fine-grain master that was found several years ago at a film lab in Brussels; and another 35 mm fine-grain master, discovered much more recently at a European film archive. (For a purely technical caveat, click here.)

"The three film elements had different strengths and weaknesses," Price explained. "For instance, one of them had less flicker in one reel but coarser grain in another reel. So we put together the best bits and pieces of all three." (Even so, Price and his team had to clean up, frame by frame, a lot of dirt and misalignments, especially in all those opticals and dissolves. The restoration project took over a year to complete.)

http://www.slate.com/id/2303638/pagenum/all/

Had never seen this. Now I have. Wow!

:D

It's great no matter how much people want to rearrange the canonical furniture.

Citizen Kane = Magnificent Ambersons = Chimes at Midnight = F for Fake = Touch of Evil

You'd need a big room for all that furniture.

esp if Orson is living there

Saw this at MoMA tonight, forgot how funny Susan's vocal coach is.

also you *do* see William Alland (the reporter)'s face out of silhouette on a big screen.

Oh, this isn't original point, but the movie announces its theme:

"It's the greatest curse that's ever been inflicted on the human race: memory."

The Film Doctor records the reactions of his students to CK:

E: "It had really nice cinematography, but I felt that the plot was not there. They built up this whole two hour thing about 'rosebud.' You want to find out the meaning of 'rosebud' is, and then they drop it in five seconds, like, oh, we didn't find it. Whatever. Not a big deal."

FDr: "And you didn't find it was enough of a payoff at the end."

E: "Yeah."

D: "That's like part of the beauty of the movie, that you can make it the focus of a two hour movie. 'Rosebud' is not really the focus of the movie. It pulls all of the characters together. It's really amazing that you can make an entire film about one word, which ends up being not that important at the end."

FDr: "According to Pauline Kael, 'rosebud' was basically a gimmick. It still unifies the movie. Other people's thoughts?"

K: "I think Kane wasn't very popular in this class because it dealt a lot with newspapers, and that's not very big in our generation."

B: "Most movies now are just made for teenagers, and this was made before that."

FDr: "Yes, it was made more for adults. Since it doesn't cater to your age group enough, you don't like it as much?"

E: "We're so used to big action films."

FDr: "Yes, one could say that all started with Star Wars in which you've got to have a climax every ten minutes."

E: "Yes, when you come to Citizen Kane, it's just the story of a man's life, but there's no big explosions, which we've gotten so used to."

http://filmdr.blogspot.de/2015/04/the-jigsaw-puzzle-vs-explosion-student.html

FDr: "That would be my fault. Guilty as charged. Of the various films we've studied so far, what has been your favorite? What would you say is better than Citizen Kane?"

L: "Moonrise Kingdom."

FDR's golden touch extended to children, I see.

at least no one complained that it was in black and white

lol, but actually not so bad a class discussion

teacher’s condescension maybe worst look of all:

Does messing with a figure of power not matter to you all? If there's no magical hammer for a character to throw around, or a comic book shield, then you don't get involved? Superheroes on motorcycles jumping out of jets as things explode--that's all you respond to?

yeah that didn't seem warranted

FDr: "Yes, it was made more for adults. Since it doesn't cater to your age group enough, you don't like it as much?"

leading question

tbh the general public's attitude toward kane in 1941 doesn't seem to have been terribly different from these students' responses. the preview-audience responses to ambersons (before it was hacked up) are really depressing to read.

I have talked about Citizen Kane with 12-year-olds, and shown clips from it. Many of them were very interested. One year, I remember two or three of them pleading to tell me what Rosebud was (which I of course wouldn't--"One day you'll watch it"). I don't know the Film Doctor, but if he can't get students interested in Citizen Kane, maybe that says more about him than the students.

Should read "to tell them," as I'm sure you figured out.

i first saw CK when i was about 10 and loved it (despite not understanding much of it), but i always assumed i was just a weird kid.

@NickPinkerton
Citizen Kane spinoffs I would watch include 'Boss' Jim Geddes, Girl on the Jersey Ferry in 1896, and Two Techs in the Rafters During Salomé.

that guy has the best twitter.

so long as he keeps the quotation marks around Boss

KANE FOUND IN LOVE NEST WITH 'SINGER'

"He wanted to take the quotes out!"

SIIIING SIIIING

Kathryn Trosper Popper, Welles' personal assistant and last living cast member of CK (two lines), died Sunday at 100.

Several versions of the script vary, but in the version of the film that was released, Mrs. Popper is uncredited, but she can be seen taking a flash photograph directly into the movie camera, then from afar, climbing off a ladder. According to Mr. Lebo, she says, “Yeah, all in crates,” referring to curios that Kane shipped to Xanadu and never unpacked.

“You put all this together, the palaces and the paintings and the toys and everything, what would it spell?” a newspaperman asks.

“Charles Foster Kane,” Jerry Thompson, another reporter, replies.

“Or Rosebud?” the first reporter says. “How about it, Jerry?”

“What’s Rosebud?” Ms. Popper’s character asks.

“That’s what he said when he died.”

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kathryn-trosper-popper-dead-last-873587

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/09/movies/kathryn-popper-who-had-tiny-role-in-citizen-kane-dies-at-100.html?_r=0

Her first visit to New York was with Welles to promote “Citizen Kane.” She moved to the city a year later, befriended many celebrities, wrote a hibachi cookbook and never left.

a bunch of Kane 75th anniversary stuff here

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-citizen-kane-75-and-bordwells-rhapsodes

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/04/29/celebrate_citizen_kane_s_75th_anniversary_with_this_supercut_of_homages.html

I got the new Callow bio on hold.

on YT, for now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDgSgCo6z3Q&feature=youtu.be

that doc has a lot of bullshit about kane being based on welles

Mank?

This is a thread

My long-awaited (by two people) CITIZEN KANE story:

After NYU, I was working in a film restoration lab in NYC. It had two employees. Me. And a crazy, secretive Yugoslavian chemist that had devised a treatment that could remove most scratches from film.

THREAD pic.twitter.com/WmNpJNygOi

— Nicolas Falacci (@NickFalacci) February 26, 2021

my students are writing about it this weekend!

"OR ELSE!" "Yes Mr. Soto. *whimper*"

Mr. Soto’s last warning.

I've seen every episode. Power to the people!

Okay so

https://www.criterion.com/films/32250-citizen-kane

New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and three Blu-rays with the film and special features
Three audio commentaries: from 2021 featuring Orson Welles scholars James Naremore and Jonathan Rosenbaum; from 2002 featuring filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich; and from 2002 featuring film critic Roger Ebert
The Complete “Citizen Kane,” (1991), a rarely seen feature-length BBC documentary
New interviews with critic Farran Smith Nehme and film scholar Racquel J. Gates
New video essay by Orson Welles scholar Robert Carringer
New program on the film’s special effects by film scholars and effects experts Craig Barron and Ben Burtt
Interviews from 1990 with editor Robert Wise; actor Ruth Warrick; optical-effects designer Linwood Dunn; Bogdanovich; filmmakers Martin Scorsese, Henry Jaglom, Martin Ritt, and Frank Marshall; and cinematographers Allen Daviau, Gary Graver, and Vilmos Zsigmond
New documentary featuring archival interviews with Welles
Interviews with actor Joseph Cotten from 1966 and 1975
The Hearts of Age, a brief silent film made by Welles as a student in 1934
Television programs from 1979 and 1988 featuring appearances by Welles and Mercury Theatre producer John Houseman
Program featuring a 1996 interview with actor William Alland on his collaborations with Welles
Selection of The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio plays featuring many of the actors from Citizen Kane
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: Deluxe packaging, including a book with an essay by film critic Bilge Ebiri

And yet still we wait for the colourized version!

WHEN WILL TED TURNER'S DREAM BE REAL

From beyond the grave: "What is it you WANT? In the depths of your ignorance?"

will we see a colorized version at last

I think the dream is now a 3D version.