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I don’t know how many times I started and stopped typing this article. It wasn’t so much where to start it, but whether I should do it at all. Since Citizen Kane rocked the cinematic and publishing world, people have attacked and defended, praised and assassinated, the name of “the Boy Genius” Orson Welles, over exactly how much involvement he had in the writing of what some people rightly debate as “the Greatest Movie Ever Made.”
Peter Bogdanovich, Welles’ scorned lover, spurned friend, whose split with Welles was only recently painfully acknowledged on the Netflix Welles documentary They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, admitted what so many Welles fans already knew at the end of the commentary track on the Citizen Kane Blu Ray release in 2010: “There are better pictures than Citizen Kane,” he stated, “there are better Welles pictures.” and he’s right. As masterful as it is, and as often as I see it, I am more entranced by the shocking beauty of Othello, or the rapid tension thrill of The Stranger. The Chimes of Midnight, who Welles once said was the film he would want to submit in a bid to get into Heaven, is the most lyrical of his films. His best probably, and I’m being completely serious, is F for Fake, a film that in its totality looks at film and the absurdity of it at the same time. For a man who started so revolutionarily, it seemed like a good way to end his career - being that it was the last film he did before he died, and for forty years the last film any of us thought we would see of his...before The Other Side of the Wind.
But despite what we know, and what we love, we admit that Kane is so good, so damned GOOD, that we get upset, some of us downright angry, when we hear bullshit like anything Pauline Kael has to say on the subject, or, closely following her in the past few years, David Fincher. The character assassination has been so amazingly brazen by Fincher and Welles’ detractors, that it seems absolutely downright idiotic to rehash all this in another article, from yet another fan, on yet another nameless website by some douche who hosts a film podcast.
But I am confused. Utterly fucking confused… about the entire situation. I have no way to understand how Fincher, who is probably one of five of the greatest living auteurs working in cinema today, could possibly take Kael’s side against Welles and Andy Sarris - the very author of the auteur theory from which Fincher is so often praised.
“In an interview with French Premiere, as caught by The Playlist, Fincher advanced the theories of Mank that the authorship of Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane was more collaborative than some people realize. "[A]t 25, you don’t know what you don’t know," he said of the theater and radio wunderkind who stormed Hollywood. He paraphrased Welles saying "it only takes an afternoon to learn everything there is to know about cinematography" then called b.s. on that, saying "this is the remark of someone who has been lucky to have Gregg Toland around him to prepare the next shot."
This comes from Fincher’s interview published in Vanity Fair on the Mank press tour, and it’s fucking disgusting. First of all, we can blame Welles, for repeatedly telling this story for four decades. Welles had been working in the studio for almost a year, ditching two projects before centering on Kane with Herman Mankeweicz. Toland, known in the studio system as a master of his craft, came to Welles and offered his services. As he watched Welles work, Toland fixed what he thought needed fixing, but left the rest to see what would happen. “You don’t know what you don’t know,” as Fincher said in his interview. When Welles finally wised up to what was going on, Toland came clean and told Welles “there’s nothing I can’t teach you in four hours” regarding cinematography. This blithe statement did not mean the whole of cinematography as Welles accidentally portrayed it in interview after interview. Instead, what Toland meant was ‘any one thing.’ Focus Pulling? Four hours. F-Stops? Four hours. Etc. Considering what Welles was able to do with a plethora of lesser abled cinematographers after Toland, we should recognize that Welles learned well. Fincher, however, slams Welles as if he didn’t understand the entire concept of ‘any one thing’ about cinematography instead of the entire craft. Either Fincher is a fucking idiot (which I do not believe) or he is being disingenuous. My meaning is this: how is it that Fincher prepared for three years to shoot the definitive film about Mankiewicz and the entire controversy about who actually wrote Citizen Kane and not stumble across this simple fact which Welles aficionados had known and understood for decades? I think Fincher knew exactly what Welles was saying, and I think he either thought Welles was lying (it was not outside the realm of possibility for Welles to lie, he admitted lying to Bogdanovich) or he was telling the truth but, like Welles, didn’t so much care about the truth.
The truth is, Citizen Kane IS a masterpiece. The truth is, whoever wrote it was a masterful storyteller. The truth is, Welles represented the Sarris auteur theory which Kael hated. The truth is, if you could take Kane away from Welles, you would take away the one unarguable film from his cannon that he had received an Academy Award for (with Mankiewicz). Fincher, in trying to call into question Welles’ screenwriting credit, is trying to do the exact same thing Kael was trying to do: assassinate Orson. As the story goes, Fincher gave his father Jack the essay Kael wrote for the thirtieth anniversary ‘Citizen Kane Book’ which included the award winning shooting script (the shooting script is the final ‘Fifth Draft’ which is compiled by what you actually see on screen, NOT what was written when the shooting started). Kael had paid a few hundred dollars to a researcher at UCLA and used his notes to make a startling assertion: that Welles didn’t write one word of the Kane script, and his credit was a fraud.
Pauline Kael’s Wikipedia entry is hard to refute or better summarize. She wrote for the New Yorker 1968-1991, “known for her “witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused” reviews, Kael’s opinions often ran contrary to those of her contemporaries. One of the most influential film critics of her era, she left a lasting impression of the art form. Roger Ebert argued in an obituary that Kael “had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades.” Kael, he said, “had no theory, no rules, no guidelines, no objective standards. You couldn’t apply her ‘approach’ to a film. With her it was all personal.” In the documentary on Roger Ebert, “Life or Something Like It,” Ebert gushes over Kael and the imprint she had on his career and the career of thousands of professional critics and jacklegs on the internet like me.
The only problem was, Kael was a fucking liar. Historian Robert Carringer has made a career explaining Kael’s unbelievable lack of standard research skills, using only what she purchased (and never cited) to explain her point. In fact, she never interviewed Welles, who shared the credit, was the producer, or John Houseman, who kept Mankiewicz sober in Victorville writing the script, or Welles’ secretary, who wrote an entirely different screenplay. She seems to be oblivious that there were four drafts (One all Mankiewicz, one all Welles, one hybrid, a second hybrid edited WAY down, and the final shooting script made after editing). Carringer identified five major scenes that Welles re-wrote during filming. All of this escaped Kael, because despite her films, she's just a critic and not a historian. She likes pissing on art, not finding out how the art came to be. Ebert was the opposite.
In a famous reply, Bogdanovich published “The Kane Mutiny” in which he called out Kael’s B.S. It stunned those who read it. It even stunned Kael. In her biography, a very strange scene played out as Woody Allen brought her the article to read. She was flabbergasted at Bogdanovich’s research. His citations were unassailable. He also has hours of tape in which Orson called out “That was my idea,” or “that was pure Mank.” Kael admitted to Allen (who’s sheer presence was confusing, wasn’t HE an AUTEUR?), “I don’t know how to reply to this.” To which Allen replied, “don’t reply to it.” And she never did. Her lack of silence was worse than an open apology. Millions bought the book, read the essay. Who read Bogdanovich’s article? The first stone hurts the most. Whatever you think he might have deserved, Welles lived with the accusation the rest of his life.
On the second supplemental disc of the Criterion Collection’s Blu Ray celebrating the 80th anniversary, Criterion included a twenty year old documentary using a collection of old interviews regarding the controversy (the film Mank is not referenced anywhere in this edition). Included is a 1990 interview with Kael herself, unfortunately visibility suffering from Parkinsons, and greatly walking back what she had accused Welles of doing.
“I didn’t want to set up a battery of anxiety about who contributed what to this scene or that. I mean I think that’s fruitless. Welles’ reputation as an artist certainly doesn’t depend on whether he wrote Citizen Kane, it depends on the majestic quality of his movies. I think that some of what he shot on Chimes of Midnight is greater than anything he did in Citizen Kane. I think that battlefield sequence ranks with the best work that has been done in the medium. And I think The Magnificent Ambersons has a depth beyond the spirited craziness we love in Citizen Kane. I think the man’s reputation is so secure that we shouldn’t worry about the trivia of whether someone thought of this or somebody else thought it up. Because you can never find out who contributed what on the set… The essay [Raising Kane] was the introduction to the publication of the script, so naturally I wanted to know who had written this script, because Citizen Kane is unlike everything else of Welles’s, he never made another political film, and going back over it, it became clear that Mankiewicz was the important force behind the writing of the script. And then I discovered what a character he was. A marvelous character, really. People really loved him, partly because he was an immensely naughty person, he was a bad boy like Welles, a gambler, a drinker, a man who blew his talent away, even though he wrote or had a share in writing a couple of hundred movies. I didn’t know at the time that he had a hand in writing the Wizard of Oz. It’s amazing how many movies he had an effect on. He produced the Marx Brothers comedies and a lot of terrific films. And it was the fun of restoring this character into his proper place.”
This is a remarkable mix of disingenuousness, flattery, very weird assessments, and a revealing moment in which she explains why she did what she did two decades before. For if Kael did not want to start “anxiety'' over who wrote Kane, she would not have written that Welles did “not write one word” of Kane in the first place. [As an aside, she uses the excuse that Mankiewicz was in Victorville the whole time, so Welles could not have possibly contributed to it, apparently forgetting the thirty year old technology of the telephone or the fifty year old automobile, much less that there is a picture of Welles and Mankiewicz working on the Kane script in Victorville). If she indeed thought it was ‘fruitless’ then why did she write such a contemptible sentence? She throws plaudits to him regarding Chimes and Ambersons as if that excuses her crime of libel. She is also ignoring Bogdanovich’s accusation of motive: “if ever anyone got into an argument about him people would respond, ‘well, he did direct Citizen Kane,” Bogdanovich told the BBC in 1983, “and she wanted to say ‘well, no, he didn’t even do that.’” Then Kael says something so misinformed as to shake the imagination - her contention that one ‘would never know’ who wrote what and who contributed to what “on a set.” Breaking this down is crucial. First, we do know who contributed to what as Carringer and other students of history have broken it down. Welles himself was never shy about saying what was Mankiewicz and what was not. Girl on the ferry? “Pure Mank.” Rosebud? Not only was it Mank, but Welles did himself an obvious disservice by saying how much he actually didn’t like the Rosebud motif. He wanted something stronger. The fact that Kael even uses the words “on the set,” tells us she is aware that Welles changed the script during production, which she never acknowledged in her essay calling him a liar. Then she says something very, very strange when she asserts the reason Kane is so strange is because Welles never made a political film. This…is astounding. Perhaps you could see Kane as a political film. He did run for governor and failed due to party politics. That is the only politics in the film, though. Kane’s description on IMDB reads “Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance: 'Rosebud.'” Curious description for a political film. Kane is far more social and cultural. Kael also seemed to not recognize The Trial as a political film, though it very seriously discussed totalitarianism. Near the end of this ‘confession,’ she then starts praising Mankiewicz , whom she says was the true ‘force’ behind Kane and marvels at his credits. To anyone in the industry, nothing about Mankiewicz would have been a surprise, even 20 years after his death, but it was to her because she wasn’t, like Bogdanovich, in the industry or interested in academia. Her lack of knowledge about his impact is even more astounding when you consider she didn’t even do her own research, but paid someone else to do it. Maybe, if like Bogdanovich she had cared to ask those involved in the production what happened, she would not have made such an academic blunder.
Fincher knows all of this. The man is not an idiot. So why is he attacking Welles and why is he attacking the auteur theory that he greatly benefits from? Not only that, he’s being ghastly when Vanity Fair says he’s being “diplomatic,”
“As to what he feels about the Mankiewicz vs. Welles argument that consumed Kael and Bogdanovich and is now affecting responses to “Mank,” Fincher was diplomatic. “There’s absolutely no argument — Welles was a f—ing genius,” he said. “The fact that this is his first movie is beyond shocking. Anybody standing on his shoulders is in awe of him, but having said that, I’ve seen movies he’s made from scripts that he’s written. They’re not in the same league.”
This from the man who directed both Alien 3 and Fight Club. A man who has shared, but not had sole credit on any film he’s ever shot. This contradiction, coupled with the sheer audacity of this statement, is fucking shocking for anyone to read who has a cursory knowledge of Welles’s projects.
Kane was a final cut with everything Welles wanted at his disposal: we move on. The Magnificent Ambersons (1943) had 40 minutes cut from the end, a new ending shot and tacked on, and the major set piece cut down. The editor, Robert Wise (who directed West Side Story, Star Trek the Motion Picture, The Day the Earth Stood Still, so you know, he knows what he’s talking about) said Orson’s ‘Final Cut’ of Ambersons was “better than Kane.” The Stranger (1946), a thriller made on time and under budget due to great constraints. The Lady from Shanghai (1947), in which there is not a single scene that is not tampered with after the film was seized, and has at least 20 minutes missing. Othello (1954) is a strange case for Fincher, as this won the first ever Palm D’Or at Cannes. Even Kane lost to John Ford’s How Green was My Valley for Best Picture at the Oscars.Touch of Evil (1959), a film that was cut to such shit that Welles protested in a famous 20 something page memo where he called out over fifty change requests. When these requests were followed and the film re-released, it was voted “Best Picture” by the AFI in 1997… for that year. The Trial (1962) which had such limitations on it, Welles focused on one-shots to save celluloid. Its budget was a fraction of Kane. There are arguably stinkers. I like Arkadin, Chimes, Wind. But as films a lot of people can leave them or take them. The fact remains, Welles never had the ability to repeat what he did with Kane, and Fincher knows that. Listen to any commentary Fincher has done on any film to hear him bitch about how stupid studios and thier producers are. Listen to him rail at Fox executives explaining why he needed more money to finish the end of Se7en. Welles was never able to repeat the vision of what he wrote after Kane because when he turned in his project, others in the system massacred it. Nothing Fincher has ever touched after Alien 3 was ever fucked with to the degree that it completely destroyed his vision of his art. To Welles, this was par for the course. The idea that Fincher is unaware of this history is absurd. It’s like blaming a guy who gets hit by a car for not planning his route better. “How come you couldn’t cross the street?” That type of gaslight bullshit.
Joseph McBride, another film scholar and friend of Welles, chips away at why Fincher follows legions of Hollywoodites that attack Welles and his waste of a career:.
“After the collapse of his Hollywood directing career and his escape to Europe when the blacklist began in 1947, Welles made films mostly with the money he earned from his work as an actor, so he enjoyed the independence that meant so much to him as a director. As he said later, “I chose freedom.” That causes the resentment of wage-slaves in Hollywood who don’t have the courage to go that route. He paid a price by having difficulty getting his films seen in this country and being unable to finish many of his projects, leading to gloating by smug professional filmmakers and commercially minded reviewers even today.”
Maybe, McBride is saying, if Fincher had spent his own money on his dreams, he’d have a different fucking opinion of the work of Orson Welles. You try making Fight Club on a shoestring and see if people think it’s the masterpiece it is now. Fincher has never, ever been in Welles’ shoes, and it must take balls of steel to shake his finger at Arkadin and say ‘look at what shit that is, it doesn’t come close to Kane.’ Is Fincher wagging his finger at John Sayles, or Richard Linklater? Is he watching Kundun and saying “Scorsese is overrated?” I’m exaggerating, but you can see the hypocrisy in what Fincher is saying. Now let’s look at the absurdity of what he is directing.
I don’t want the reader to think that I don’t like Mank, because I do, but like all films whether bad or good, indie or studio, I put it into context. The Graduate is a masterpiece work, full stop. It is also full of shit. Listen to my podcast for further explanation. Mank is beset by many of these issues, but I will point out the largest one to drive home Fincher’s mind blowing sanctimoniousness and false virtue. Mank actually has a scene in which Marion Davies (wonderfully portrayed by Amanda Seyfried in what may be a career defining role) actually drives out to Victorville to see Mankiewicz, and the two have a nice little picnic, just like Charles Foster Kane would have on the beaches near Xanadu with Susan Alexander. And there, in this absurd setting, Marion not only forgives Mankiewicz for writing a screenplay that calls her a money digging no-talent whore alcoholic, she then proceeds to reaffirm their friendship. Friendship! Let that sink in! The pivotal piece of Kane is the famous sled, lovingly referred to by the young Kane as Rosebud, affirmed by Welles to Bogdanovich that yes, indeed, inside San Simeon circles everyone knew that this was Heart’s nickname for Davies’s pussy (Welles actually said “cunt! It was her cunt!’ somewhat indelicately). No one knows if Hearst or Davies ever saw Kane, but Frank Mankewiecz (Herman’s son) confirmed other well reputable reports that Mankiewicz had indeed given his full first finished draft to Charles Ledherer, a screenwriter Mankiewicz used to work with, whom Welles was neighbors with in San Pedro, and whom happened to fucking be the nephew of Davies. Ledherer duly handed over the screenplay to Heart’s lawyers, who eviscerated it with legal opinions and threats. When it was returned to Mankiewicz (via Lederer), it was heavily annotated with red ink from the Hearst legal team. The point of this diatribe: don’t think for a second Hearst and Davies didn’t know Rosebud was in the film. They knew, because they paid people to find out. Ask yourself if having been the subject of such a character assassination (not nearly as bad as the one on Welles, I would add) if you would drive out and have a picnic with the person whose intention was to tell the entire world what your married boyfriend called your vulva. The idea that Marion and Mankiewicz were friends is absurd. Fantasy. Storytelling, ha! Storylieing is more like it. The idea they met in this context is grandiose bullshit. The idea that Fincher directed this fabrication is absurd. Thus, the film is absurd.
They are storytellers. The idea that Welles can make Kane and Fincher can make Mank is protected by law and should be protected by the sheer virtue of art. Censorship is one of the most vile forms of oppression, and I am certainly not advocating anything of the sort. Anyone has the right to make the art they want to make and to dress it up how they like. The one huge difference I have about the difference between Welles assassinating Hearst’s character and Fincher’s assassinating of Welles’s, is at least Welles changed the names when he lied to tell a story. Fincher doesn’t even bother. And while he uses the opportunity to point to Kane’s script and call foul, he also admits that he himself edited his father’s script. So, if I am not to believe Welles when he said he helped write Kane, why should I believe Jack Fincher because his son gave him credit?
The final insult is right before the credits, but again we must put it into context. During the scuffle, so Kael rightly documents and has been confirmed by historians, Welles offered Mankiewicz $10,000 in hush money to drop his screenwriting credit. Apparently, Welles’ behavior was his typical boarish over the top ape act, well documented by John Houseman, Robert Wise, and others. Mankiewicz turned it down. Kael presents this as the smoking gun. Why would he have tried to bribe Mankiewicz if not for his own self-aggrandizement? Ego, one can infer. Welles was always over the top, always out of control, always after blood. Or, if one cared to interview Mankiewicz’s son Frank (PBS did), you understand that Welles’ contract with RKO pictures was to “write, direct, and produce '' a film by himself, thereby saving what little money they could on the boy wonder. If he did not fulfill this term in his contract, Welles had justifiable fear (Frank Mankiewicz conveys his father’s opinion) that RKO would not pay him, or use the opportunity to not pay him as much. I’m willing to bet the losses would exceed $10,000.
Welles didn’t just give Mankiewicz shared credit for the screenplay (which according to Carringer was entirely appropriate given Welles’ direction of the narrative with edits and rewrites), but put Mankiewicz’s name first. Welles later told Bogdanvich this was fitting in the order of effort. But right before the end of the film, Gary Oldman’s Mankiewicz accepts his (shared) Oscar for writing Kane, repeating Mankiewicz’s real refrain that he accepted the award in the spirit in which Citizen Kane was written, that is, “without Orson Welles.” Mankiewicz did indeed say this, and this newsreel was indeed replayed. But what Mank never did was contest this screenwriting credit. And why Mankiewicz , who had fought giants like Mayer, Thalberg, and Selznick, would lay down in a fight over a credit over the greatest film of all time, is puzzling. There are only two possibilities; either the film didn’t mean that much to him, or he was lying. Read a biography of Mankiewicz and tell me if this alcoholic gambler who hated slumming for Hollywood riches and turned his nose up at hard work was capable of lying. Including this scene was rubbing the salt into the knife wound.
Fincher could have done many things with Mankiewicz’s story. Perhaps with so many interpretations of stories already out in the ether (RKO 281, The Battle over Citizen Kane, just to name two), Fincher was perhaps looking for something with more meat on it, more controversial - as if the real history wasn’t enough. Welles’ innovation with Toland over lighting, montage, in-camera effects, optical printing, and back and forth editing would have been a marvel to convey. I remember seeing Jim Carrey, channeling Andy Kauffman, trying to get CBS executives to approve the use of horizontal hold lines on one of his comedy specials. Occasionally, TV sets receiving weak signals would lose their horizontal hold, sending the square rolling upwards, sometimes at a dizzying pace. Kauffman wanted to do this on command to make viewers get up out of their seats and fiddle with their TVs. I saw this in Milos Formann’s film Man on the Moon, and laughed my ass off. That must have been what it was like for Orson to run around RKO. You want to do what? Back project and forward project at the same time as a live shot? Are you out of your mind? That would play much better than Liev Schriber throwing food at Chas’ Restaurant screaming “Everything I am is in that picture, and everything I’m going to be!” But really, we know why Fincher made the decisions he did, don’t we? We could chalk it up to ego, or id, or curiosity, but we all know what it truly is.
David Fincher is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most subversive film maker barring hard core pornography working in the film medium today. In the span of his storied career he remade Madonna’s entire career in three and a half minutes (Vogue), told us a crazy story about Incest (Aerosmith’s Janie’s Got a Gun), confronted society with it’s very real out out of control morality (Se7en), told us everything that was corrupt with social media (The Social Network), and then pointed out that, let’s face it, some women are just fucking evil (Gone Girl). From one project to another, if Fincher isn’t leading you into what is wrong with our society, then it’s not a Fincher film. In Se7en, John Doe forces a man to put on a phallus with four blades and fuck a woman until she bled to death. In Gone Girl, Amy Dunne fucks Desi Collins until he is literally about to ejaculate, locks her ankles to trap his semen, and cuts open his jugular, his blood coating her entire nude body. This is, after all, the moment when all men are most vulnerable. In The Social Network an entire person is fictionalized to convey to the audience just how much Mark Zuckerburg (the character) can’t emote emotions on any level other than success because he is a 21st century nerd competing against 20th century jocks. He’ll show them, right? Machismo has been replaced by feminized nerdity. Fincher famously said “You know I don't try to piss people off, right? It's just always been the right thing to do.” And from his first movie to his last, he has definitely kept to his words.
I want to make it clear, like Kael did to Chimes, that I absolutely love Fincher’s films. Even Mank, which is breathlessly filled with bullshit, I cannot turn away from. From the production quality, to the small homages he made to Kane (the bottle dropping by the bedside, a direct lift from the snow globe), to the astounding walk-and-talk steadicam shot of Arliss Howard walking through the MGM studio shouting at people and holding his balls as Louis B. Mayer. Mank is masterfully made, shot, and though I abhor the invented suicide and the sudden importance of the California Governor’s election of 1936 in Mankiewicz’s life (as his grandson TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz described to Frank Santopadre on Gilbert Gotfried’s Amazing Collossal Podcast), one cannot turn away from the extraordinary job Fincher is doing in destroying Welles’s career. Because, unlike Kael’s essay ‘Raising Kane,’ Mank is a film. And though throughout time the essay has diminished as Welles’ impact and influence has grown stronger, we all know that film is forever. The libel that Mank is, however disprovable, will always be pointed to as truth, because that’s what audiences think of film. It doesn’t matter that there wasn’t a bayonet charge at the end of The Battle of Ia Drang Valley depicted in We Were Soldiers. It doesn’t matter that slavery was a horrible existence if you’ve seen the clean white version of it in Gone With The Wind. It doesn’t matter that no one has ever proved an ounce of evidence indicating that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. What matters is JFK. What matters is film. Film is fact, even if it isn’t. And out of everything subversive about society he is saying in his films, it does seem like this is a strange one to pick out. But the fact is there are perverts among us. Serial killers. Split personalities. Billionaires without emotive morals. These things are true. And the film, Mank, is not.
Citations:
https://www.thewrap.com/mank-feud-pauline-kael-peter-bodganovich/ https://www.indiewire.com/2020/12/mank-what-happened-after-ending-ben-mankiewicz-interview-1234602709
https://www.wellesnet.com/mank-welles-mcbride
Bogdanovich, Peter. This Is Orson Welles (1987)