"The American Experience" The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Directors:

Michael Epstein
Thomas Lennon

Writers:

Richard Ben Cramer (writer) and
Thomas Lennon (writer)

TV Series:

"The American Experience" (1988)

Original Air Date:

29 January 1996 (Season 8, Episode 7)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography | Crime | History | War

Plot:

Documentary about the battle between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst over Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Features interviews with Welles' and Hearst's co-workers also as a relative complete bio of Hearst.

Plot Keywords:

Director | Voice Over Narration | Mistress | Publisher | Behind The Scenes

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 4 nominations

Cast

William Alland	...	Himself
Thomas Anderson	...	Himself
Richard Ben Cramer	...	Narrator (voice)
Peter Bogdanovich	...	Himself
Jimmy Breslin	...	Himself
Marion Davies	...	Herself (archive footage)
Leonard De Bur	...	Himself
Douglas Fairbanks Jr.	...	Himself
Richard France	...	Himself
William Randolph Hearst	...	Himself (archive footage)
William Herz	...	Himself
Sam Leve	...	Himself
Norman Lloyd	...	Himself
Nancy Loe	...	Herself
Frank Mankiewicz	...	Himself
David Nasaw	...	Himself
Lon Etta Santucci	...	Himself
John Tebbel	...	Himself
Ruth Warrick	...	Herself
Orson Welles	...	Himself (archive footage)
Vern Whaley	...	Himself
Gloria Widelock	...	Herself
Robert Wise	...	Himself

Runtime:

108 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Lennon Documentary Group

Movie Connections:

Edited from We Work Again (1937)

No substitute for watching the movie.

The conflict between William Randolph Hearst, the press magnate, and Orson Welles, the greatest filmmaker of all time, over the latter's supposedly Hearst-bashing Citizen Kane is a relatively fascinating story (in the sense that real life is rarely as interesting as art), but there is very little new about it in this documentary.

American arts documentaries are generally inferior to British ones, favouring simplistic generalisations over thoughtful analysis. This film consists of footage and interviews that have mostly been seen before, and offers trite comparisons between Hearst's and Welles' life stories to give their clash a false sense of inevitablity and fatedness, when, as with everything, Welles used the bare bones of Hearst's life (it was Herman Mankiewicz's idea to satirise it in the first place) to film his own tragedy.

If you don't know the story, then this is, I suppose, as good a place as any to start. We get biographical sketches of Hearst and Welles, paralells between their notorious careers, and then the facts of the film's creation and reception. Although you can get all this in any popular encyclopaedia, there is much cherishable footage - e.g. Welles' voodoo Macbeth, the celebrity home movies of San Simeon, Welles' silly beard on arriving in Hollywood - and some splendid eye-witness accounts from William Alland (Thompson in Kane), Ruth Warwick (Mrs. Kane) and Norman Lloyd (a Mercury actor).

The range of interviewees in general, though, is very weak, generally plumping for the obvious (Wise, Bogdanovitch), neglecting contributions from Welles scholars, who might have added some complexity or artistic context to the story. There is little analysis of Kane itself within this biographical context - for this you must turn to David Thomson's exemplary, personality-charged biography, Rosebud.

The film also neglects to ask why, if Kane is such a hack-job on Hearst, why is Charles Foster Kane, monstrous flaws and all, such a rich, sympathetic, frequently awe-inspiring, tragic character, while his model was a despicable, mean-minded fascist? The film's only real insight - that Hearst's sole claim to posterity is his connection with Kane - has been proffered before.

Anyone still intrigued by this story after the film, but looking for something meatier, should check out both the Thomson book, and Welles' extraordinary 1982 BBC interview, several moving chunks of which are interspersed here.