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Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Winner: Citizen Kane (dir by Orson Welles)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For some reason, certain people seem to feel the need to try to reduce what Orson Welles accomplished with 1941’s Citizen Kane.

In 1971, the famous film critic Pauline Kael published an essay called Raising Kane, in which she argued that screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz deserved the majority of the credit for Citizen Kane.  This was Kael’s shot at rival Andrew Sarris and his embrace of the auteur theory.  (1971 was the same year that Kael described Dirty Harry as being  a “fascist work of art” so I guess even the best film critics can have a bad year.)  David Fincher’s father, after reading Kael’s essay, wrote the screenplay for Mank, which not only made the case that Mankiewicz deserved the credit but which portrayed Orson Welles in such a negative fashion that you really did have to wonder if maybe Orson had owed old Jack Fincher money or something.  Herman J.  Mankiewicz himself always claimed that he deserved the majority of the credit for Citizen Kane but then he would, wouldn’t he?

The truth of the matter is that Mankiewicz did write the screenplay for Citizen Kane and he did base the character of Charles Foster Kane on William Randolph Hearst and the character of Kane’s second wife on Hearst’s mistress, Marion Davies.  There’s some debate over how much of the film’s narrative structure belongs to Mankiewicz and how much of it was a result of Welles rewriting the script.  Mankiewicz played his part in the making of Citizen Kane but he played that part largely because Orson Welles allowed him to.  Like all great directors, Welles surrounded himself with people who could help to bring his vision to life.  (That’s something that would think David Fincher, of all people, would understand.  Aaron Sorkin may have written The Social Network but the reason why the film touched so many is because it was a David Fincher film.)

Make no mistake about it.  Citizen Kane is Orson Welles’s vision and Welles is the one who deserves the majority of the credit for the film.  The themes of Citizen Kane are ones to which Welles would frequently return and the cast, all of whom bring their characters to vivid life, is made up of largely of the members of Welles’s Mercury Theatre.  The tracking camera shots, the dark cinematography, and the satiric moments are all pure Welles.  As the Fincher film argues, Mankiewicz may have very well meant to use the film to attack Hearst for his personal hypocrisy and for opposing the political ambitions of Upton Sinclair.  If so, let us be thankful that Orson Welles, as a director, was smart enough to realize that such didacticism is often deadly dull.

And there’s nothing dull about Citizen Kane.  It’s a great film but it’s also an undeniably fun film, full of unforgettable imagery and scenes that play like their coming to us in a dream.  It’s a film that grabs your interest and proves itself to be worthy of every minute that it takes to watch it.  I was lucky enough to first see Citizen Kane at a repertory theater and on the big screen and really, that’s the best way to watch it.  It’s a big film that’s full of bigger-than-life characters who are ultimately revealed to be full of the same human longings and regrets as all of us.  As a young man, the fabulously wealthy Charles Foster Kane thinks that it would be “fun” to run a newspaper.  Later, he thinks that he’s found love by marrying the niece of the President.  He runs for governor of New York and, watching Welles in these scenes, you can see why FDR tried to recruit him to run for the Senate.  Welles has the charisma of a born politician.  When Welles first meets Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore) it’s easy to laugh.  The great man has just been splashed by a taxi.  Susan laughs but then winces in pain due to a tooth ache.  Later, Kane insists on trying to turn her into an opera star.  He runs a negative review written by his friend (Joseph Cotten) and then he promptly fires him.  As in all of Welles’s films, it’s all about personal loyalty.  Kane may betray his wife and the voters but he’s ultimately just as betrayed by those around him.  In the end, you get the feeling that Kane was desperately trying to not be alone and yet, that’s how he ended up.

There are so many stand-out moments in Citizen Kane that it’s hard to list them all.  The opening — MIGHTY XANADU! — comes to mind.  The satirically overdramatic newsreel is another.  (Citizen Kane can be a very funny film.)  Joseph Cotten’s performance continues to charm.  Orson Welles’s performance continues to amaze.  Who can forget Agnes Moorehead as Kane’s mother or Everett Sloane as Mr. Bernstein, haunted by that one woman he once saw on a street corner?  Myself, I’ve always liked the performances of Ray Collins (as the sleazy but strangely reasonable Boss Gettys), Paul Stewart (as the subtly menacing butler), and Ruth Warrick (as Kane’s first wife).  Mankiewicz may have put the characters on paper but Welles is the one who selected the amazing cast that brought them to life.

Citizen Kane was nominated for nine Oscars and it won one, for the screenplay written by Welles and Mankiewicz.  Best Picture went to How Green Was My Valley.  When was the last time anyone debated who should be given credit for that movie?

Three Faces West (1940, directed by Bernard Vorhaus)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When a small farming community in the Dakotas gets hit by an outbreak of the flu, farmer and community leader John Phillips (John Wayne) invites a Dr. Karl Braun (Charles Coburn) to come and be the town’s doctor.  A refugee from Austria, Dr. Braun arrives with his daughter, Leni (Sigrid Gurie).  At first, Leni is not happy living in the heart of the Dust Bowl but then she falls for John Phillips. However, Leni is still mourning his ex-fiancé (Roland Varno), who Leni and Braun believe sacrificed his life to help them reach America.

Eventually realizing that the town cannot prospers in the heart of the Dust Bowl, John suggests that everyone pack up and move to Oregon.  Almost everyone agrees and the one person who wants to go to California gets his van driven off the side of the road.  But Leni and Dr. Braun still take a detour to San Francisco because it turns out that Leni’s ex is not dead after all.  She and her father meet up with him and discover, to their horror, that he has become a fully committed Nazi.

This is an interesting change-of-pace for John Wayne.  Though the film is a western (and even features its own version of wagon train), it’s set in what was then contemporary times and it deals with issues like the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism in Germany.  The times may be hard but John Wayne isn’t going to let his community fall apart and, even more importantly, he’s not going to give up his beliefs or his ideals.  Even though the movie was made at a time when the United States was still officially neutral, the film is strongly anti-Nazi.  John Wayne, giving a strong performance, stands in for America while those who would collaborate with or make excuses for the Nazis represented by the weaselly Roland Varno.  Leni’s ex-fiancé had no problem selling out his beliefs and embracing Nazism.  Naturally, Leni and her father have no problem telling him off and then rejoining John Wayne in Oregon.  The United States may have officially been neutral but this movie had no problem letting everyone know where it stood.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Lost Horizon (dir by Frank Capra)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Long before there was Lost, there was Lost Horizon!

Much like the famous television show, the 1937 film Lost Horizon begins with a group of strangers on an airplane.  They’re people from all walks of life, all with their separate hopes and dreams.  When the plane crashes, they find themselves stranded in an uncharted land and, much like the Lost castaways, they are shocked to discover that they are not alone.  Instead, they’ve found a semi-legendary place that is ruled over by a man who has lived for centuries.  Much as in Lost, some want to return to civilization while others want to remain in their new home.  Both Lost and Lost Horizon even feature a terminally ill woman who starts to recover her health after becoming stranded.

Of course, in Lost, everyone was just flying from Australia to America.  In Lost Horizon, everyone is trying to escape the Chinese revolution.  Among the passengers on the plane: diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), his irresponsible brother, George (John Howard), a con artist named Henry (Thomas Mitchell), a paleontologist (Edward Everett Horton), and the very ill Gloria (Isabel Jewell).

While Lost featured a plane crash on a tropical island, Lost Horizon features a plane crash in the Himalayas.  In Lost, the sinister Others sent spies to infiltrate the survivors.  In Lost Horizon, the mysterious Chang (H.B. Warner) appears and leads the survivors to a place called Shangri-La.

Shangi-La is a lush and idyllic valley that has somehow flourished in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth.  The happy inhabitants inform the survivors that they never get sick and they never fight.  They’re led by the High Lama (Sam Jaffe), a philosopher who explains that he is several hundred years old.  The valley is full of magic and the Lama tells the survivors that Shangri-La is their new home.

Now, I’ve seen enough horror movies that I spent most of Lost Horizon waiting for the Lama to suddenly reveal that he was a vampire or an alien or something.  Whenever anyone in a movie seems to be too good to be true, that usually means that he’s going to end up killing someone about an hour into the story.  But that didn’t happen in Lost Horizon.  Instead, the Lama is just as wise and benevolent as he claims to be and Shangri-La is as much of a paradise as everyone assumes.  I guess we’re just naturally more cynical in 2018 than people were in 1937.

Of course, the Lama isn’t immortal.  Not even the magic of Shangri-La can prevent the inevitably of death.  The Lama is looking for a successor.  Could one of the survivors be that successor?  Perhaps.  For instance, Robert absolutely loves Shangri-La.  Of course, his brother George is determined to return to the real world.  He has fallen in love with one of the inhabitants of Shagri-La and plans to take her with him, despite the Lama’s warning about trying to leave…

Frank Capra was a huge fan of James Hilton’s book, Lost Horizon, and he spent three years trying to bring it to the big screen.  Based on Capra’s previous box office successes, Colombia’s Harry Cohn gave Capra a budget of $1.25 million to bring his vision of Shangri-La to life.  That may not sound like much today but, at the time, that made Lost Horizon the most expensive movie ever made.  The production was a notoriously difficult one.  (The original actor cast as the elderly Lama was so excited to learn he had been selected that he dropped dead of a heart attack.)  As a result of both its ornate sets and Capra’s perfectionism, the film soon went overbudget.  When Capra finally delivered a first cut, it was over 6 hours long.  Capra eventually managed to edit it down to 210 minutes, just to then have Harry Cohn order another hour taken out of the film.  When Lost Horizon was finally released, it had a running time of 132 minutes.

Seen today, Lost Horizon is definitely an uneven work.  With all the cutting and editing that went on, it’s hard to guess what Capra’s original vision may have been but, in the final version, much more time is devoted to the characters discussing the philosophy of Shangri-La than to the characters themselves.  (It’s always good to see Thomas Mitchell but he really doesn’t get much to do.)  Since you never really feel like you know what any of these characters were like outside of Shangi-La, it’s hard to see how being in Shagri-La has changed them.  You just have to take their word for it.  That said, it’s a visually stunning film.  Capra may have gone over budget creating the look of Shangri-La but it was money well-spent.  If I ever find myself in a magic village, I hope it looks half as nice as the one in Lost Horizon.

Despite all of the drama that went on behind the scenes and a rather anemic box office reception, Lost Horizon was nominated for best picture.  However, it lost to The Life of Emile Zola.

Film Review: The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe (dir by Harry Lachman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have to admit that the 1942 film, The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe, turned out to be far different from what I was expecting.

Just based on the title, I was expecting it would be a highly fictionalized, borderline silly film about Edgar Allan Poe defeating his romantic rivals and winning the hand of the woman he loved while still finding time to write The Raven.  I figured that there would be at least a few gentlemanly fisticuffs, with Poe portrayed as a combination of Rhett Butler and Cary Grant.  Looking at the title, it was easy for me to imagine the film closing with Poe kissing his future wife and then looking straight at the camera.  “Quoth the Raven!” he would say and wink while romantic music swelled in the background…

But no.  The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe is actually a very conventional biopic.  With a running time of only 67 minutes, the movie often feels rather rushed but it still manages to include most of the better known details of Edgar Allan Poe’s short but eventful life.  (An ever-present narrator is always ready to fill us in on every thing that happens off-screen.)  The film doesn’t spend much time on what initially inspired Poe’s macabre imagination.  There’s a scene of Poe, as a child, standing on a desolate hill and looking at a raven perched in a dead tree.  With the exception of an extended section that deals with Annabel Lee, that’s about as deep as the movie is willing to get as far as Poe’s art is concerned.

When Poe grows up, he’s played by actor Sheppard Strudwick, who has a good mustache but never exactly comes across as being the type of tortured genius who would eventually end up both revolutionizing literature and drinking himself to death.  The majority of the film deals with Poe’s advocacy for copyright reform, which is an important issue but not exactly the most cinematic of concerns.  Poe survives college.  Poe tries to sell The Raven for $25.  Eventually, Poe marries Virginia Clemm (Linda Darnell) and her subsequent sickness and death leads to not only Poe’s greatest work but also his own tragic end.

Along the way, Poe meets both Thomas Jefferson and Charles Dickens.  Jefferson shows up long enough to tell a young Poe that he’s a good writer and that he needs to stop gambling.  Dickens meets Poe and encourages him to continue to advocate for better copyright laws.

It is known that Poe and Dickens actually did meet but did Poe also meet Thomas Jefferson?  Legend says that he did but no one knows for sure.   Here’s what we do know:

Poe attended the University of Virginia in 1826.  The University’s founder, former President Thomas Jefferson, was still alive in 1826 and would often invite promising students to Monticello.  Whether Jefferson was still doing that when Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia is questionable.  Jefferson died five months after Poe started his studies.

As for Dickens, Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe admired each other’s writing and they met in Philadelphia during Dickens’s 1842 tour of North America.  No record has been kept of what they discussed, though some think that Dickens told Poe about his pet raven and perhaps inspired Poe’s best-remembered poem.  In the movie, they discuss copyright laws, which is nowhere near as much fun.

(When it comes to Poe’s meetings with both Jefferson and Dickens, it is perhaps best to remember the lesson of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and print the legend.)

The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe is a very short film and an obviously low-budget one as well.  When the presence of that somewhat pedantic narrator, The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe feels more like an educational special than a real movie.  It’s an okay introduction to Poe’s life but, ultimately, the best way to get to know Edgar Allan Poe is to sit down and start reading.