Katherine McCue Film History

Monday, April 13, 2015

Citizen Kane

1) Relate what was discussed in class or the text to the screening.

In class, we learned that Citizen Kane was named by the American Film Institute as the best American film of all time. The 1941 film was written by Herman J Mankiewicz and Orson Welles who also directed and starred in the picture. Welles was an auteur and portrayed the main character, Charles Foster Kane as a young man all the way through to old age.

Citizen Kane was nominated for nine Academy Awards, ultimately only winning one of them for Best Original Screenplay. The film had been nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Black and White Cinematography, Best Black and White Interior Decoration, Best Sound Recording, Best Dramatic Picture Score and Best Film Editing. Welles himself was nominated as Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Director and for Best Picture. At the time of the ceremony, the film had gotten such a negative reputation in Hollywood that the audience actually booed when the categories were announced.

Citizen Kane was a commercial failure when it was first released in 1941. RKO was so sure it would be a flop, not only did they almost not release it but they were ready to burn the negative. After the Oscars, RKO put Citizen Kane in a vault. Welles was never again given that much creative control when making movies later in his career.

Before Citizen Kane, Welles had been mostly known for his radio work with Mercury Theater, including the infamous “War of the Worlds” broadcast that caused a panic as people really believed that Martians had landed in New Jersey. Orson Welles was 24-years- old when he started making Citizen Kane and had never made a movie before. RKO gave him “complete script control, director control, producer control, cast control—everything—and no questions asked” according to William Alland.

The main character, Charles Foster Kane was heavily influenced by the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was born wealthy and like Kane, thought that it would be “fun to run a newspaper.” Hearst’ mistress, Marion Davies, served as the inspiration for Susan Alexander Kane. Hearst also had a mansion in California called San Simeon that was the basis for Xanadu in the film. Hearst was extremely angered by the film portrayal he received. He ordered that none of his papers reviewed or advertised the film in any way.

Citizen Kane tells the story of a search for the meaning of a man’s life with themes of love, power, youth and decay. The film swiftly kills off Kane and all that is seen is a snow globe and his lips as he whispers “Rosebud” setting up the central mystery that drives the film. This abruptly segues “News on the March” segment that tells the entire story of Kane’s life from a distant journalistic point-of-view as well as setting up the reporter Thompson’s mission of discovering what “rosebud” alludes to. Thompson interviews or researches several people who knew Kane, at first getting rebuffed by Kane’s second wife Susan, and beginning again with the journal of Kane’s childhood guardian Walter P. Thatcher, before moving on to his business partner Bernstein and his best friend Jed Leland until eventually returning to Susan Alexander Kane. Each person tells Thompson their own recollections about Kane, becoming first-person narrators as the film moves to their points-of-view.

One memorable aspect of the film include the breakfast montage, which shows the breakdown of Kane’s first marriage over the course of a few minutes as the breakfast table between husband and wife is revealed to grow larger and larger. The snow globe is also unforgettable. It is seen at various important plot points in the story, first at the beginning when Kane is dying. Then, on the Susan Alexander’s dressing table the first night Kane meets her and again in Susan Alexander Kane’s room at Xanadu just after she leaves him and he is trashing the room.

In the beginning, money is what takes Kane away from his beloved mother. Thatcher is the one takes Kane away from his mother. Thatcher represents money, financial success, and the bottom line and is quickly hated by young Kane. The snow globe reminds Kane of his mother. Because Susan owns the snow globe, Kane associates her with his mother. Both Kane’s mother and Susan Alexander Kane love him for himself. Kane love for his mother is highlighted by his draw toward the feminine side including his attraction to Susan and his best friend, Jed Leland, who represents a more feminine type of masculinity.

Kane is internally conflicted and is never able to figure out what he should be. His meteoric rise in finances and power is parallel with his physical decay. As a young man, he is thin and has a heedful of hair. He wears light colored clothes and is able to move quickly. Cinematically speaking, the shots are shorter and the music is quicker and more upbeat. The lighting is mostly high key.

As he ages, Kane becomes fat and bald. His clothes are darker and he moves more slowly. The music is slow and somber and the shots are longer. Lighting is low key, allowing for darkness and sharper contrasts and Kane is shot from a low angle to make him appear more powerful. Shadows are significant in the film. Citizen Kane also utilized Deep Focus Photography, the use of a wide-angle lens to make everything in a frame be in focus at once and exaggerate the distance between characters.

2) Find a related article and summarize the content. (on the film, director, studio, actor/actress, artistic content, etc.) You can use the library or the internet. Cite the article or copy the url to your journal entry. Summarize in your own words the related article but do not plagiarize any content.

http://nypost.com/2014/12/06/how-orson-welles-narcissism-sabotaged-his-career/

It is widely agreed that Orson Welles was a genius when it came to film. However, though his legacy is powerful and fondly remembered even today, his career was thought, by both himself and legions of his fans, to have been sabotaged by Hollywood studios that couldn’t or wouldn’t understand him. It has also been argued that Welles himself was known to antagonize even the powerful moguls of Hollywood that believed in his talent.

Welles first made a name for himself in theatre, including an African-American version of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” before moving onto radio with his infamous broadcast of “The War of the Worlds.” Due to his immense success despite his young age, RKO Studios gave him unprecedented power and freedom as a director for his premiere film, 1941’s Citizen Kane.

Unfortunately, the resemblance between Welles’ character Charles Foster Kane and newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst caused strife for both Welles and RKO, which was already financially struggling at the time. Hearst’s papers refused to carry any advertisements for the film, denying it a good deal of publicity.

Citizen Kane ran significantly over budget, and as a result, Welles was given far less control when directing his second film, The Magnificent Ambersons, released in 1942. Welles later claimed this film was “butchered” by RKO, which added scenes to the movie that had been filmed by another director.

In actuality, Welles had travelled to South America before editing on the film was complete so that he could shoot the semi-documentary It’s All True, which RKO shut down after that, too, ran over budget. Welles’ contract was also cancelled and the executive who hired him was let go.

According to the editor of both Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, Robert Wise, RKO had begged Welles to return and make changes after Ambersons had a “disastrous” test screening. As Chuck Workman, director of the documentary Magician: The Astonishing Work and Life of Orson Welles states, “Welles might have been spoiled by the total control he had in both radio and theatre. He went to Hollywood at a time where directors were not necessarily the final arbiter of their films, and what he wanted was not in sync with what the money men wanted.”

Welles was still in heavy demand as an actor, appearing in films such as Jane Eyre, but studios no longer had faith in him as a director until his 1946 film The Stranger, an independently produced thriller that was Welles’ sole box-office hit as director. The next year, Columbia Pictures’ executive Harry Cohn tapped Welles to direct The Lady From Shanghai, starring Welles’ real life wife, Rita Hayworth.

Though the film was beautifully shot, the narrative was unfathomable, and the noir was Rita Hayworth’s first ever flop as a leading lady. Not only that, but Welles had made the famously redheaded Hayworth go blonde for the role, which engaged Columbia’s executives. For the next decade, Welles didn’t work in Hollywood except for one “Poverty Row” version of “Macbeth” that had to be redubbed by Republic Pictures because Welles was adamant about using thick Scottish accents.

In 1957, legendary actor Charlton Heston convinced Universal Pictures to allow Welles to direct the thriller Touch of Evil, in which they both appeared as actors. Universal ended up taking the film away from him and recutting it after Welles delivered a version that far beyond what censors at the time would allow. Decades later, the version Welles imagined was reconstructed based on a memo from the auteur. Welles showed gratitude to Heston by besmirching his performance until the end of his life.

Welles was also adept at alienating the financial backers of the independent films he made while in Europe. By the time he died at the age of 70 in 1985, Welles left behind six unfinished films. He had been known during life to walk away from projects when he lost interest in them, leaving investors in the lurch. At least one of his unfinished films, The Other Side of the Wind, starring John Huston was being edited in 2014.

Though Welles career had many hits and misses, he is widely regarded as one of the most visionary auteur of the 20^th century and there are plans to celebrate his 100^th birthday at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, a showing of audiences and filmmakers continued adulation for him.

3) Apply the article to the film screened in class. How did the article support or change the way you thought about the film, director, content, etc.?

Like with the article about Vivien Leigh, this article draws parallels in my mind between the film’s star and the character they play. I knew that Charles Foster Kane’s early life of being sent away to be raised by a guardian was influenced by his own early life, and that, also like Kane, Welles had a privileged upbringing and was able to tour the world as a young man, broadening his horizons and inspiring him to become accomplished in his own right.

The adult Kane’s adventures borrowed heavily from the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, but it is clear after reading this article that Kane was infused with some aspects of Welles as well. Much like Kane, Welles had his own ways of doing things. He didn’t like being told “no” and he liked his work being questioned even less. Though Welles was inarguably a genius, he could oftentimes be insufferable or careless. He didn’t like to dwell on things that didn’t fit into his vision, and if he could, would cut them out of his life as if they didn’t exist.

Despite this, Welles shared many good qualities with his character as well. Like Kane, who showed unselfish devotion to his son, Welles deeply cared for his own daughters. Also, though Welles remained unrepentant at using Hearst as inspiration for Kane, he did later regret dragging Hearst’ mistress Marion Davies through the mud by basing the annoying and childish Susan Alexander Kane on her, as Davies was actually a talented comedic actress and a warm person. This is especially significant, as Welles had gone so far as to name Kane’s sled and one of the most famous plot devices in movie history “rosebud” as a dig at Hearst, “rosebud” being the name Hearst had for a certain part of Davies’ anatomy.

While this showed that Welles could change as he aged, it also signifies a key difference between himself and Kane, who held steadfastly onto his own stubborn ideals and died absolutely alone, a far cry from Welles’ own face, dying in old age surrounded by friends and family with countless fans to remember him fondly and a tremendous career to look back on.

Just as Leigh’s personal experiences helped give life to Scarlet O’Hara, Welles’ own life uninhibited him into giving the rich, candid and forever renowned performance as Charles Foster Kane.

4) Write a critical analysis of the film, including your personal opinion, formed as a result of the screening, class discussions, text material and the article. I am less interested in whether you liked or disliked a film, (although that can be part of this) than I am in your understanding of its place in film history or the contributions of the director.

Citizen Kane is often cited as one of, if not the, greatest films ever made. Having seen many films, both old and new, Citizen Kane, without a doubt, has the most beautiful cinematography. The visuals are stunningly striking and are even more impressive considering the film was made over seventy years ago. While the film is entirely in black and white, the imagery draws the viewer in as if inviting them to be Kane’s guest at Xanadu or trek into the enormous warehouse to marvel at the man’s treasures.

The way the story is framed through the recollections of Kane’s acquaintances keep the viewer intrigued as the remembrances become more and more intimate. The side players are just as interesting as the main character, if not more so. I personally believe that an entire movie could have been made just about Jedidiah Leland and his descent into alcoholism as he watches his once best friend slowly lose all sense of his morals and let pride overtake his life.

Susan Alexander Kane is also a fascinating character. She starts off as a sweet and naïve young girl who Kane befriends. Over time, just as Kane changes for the worse as he ages, so does Susan after the pair marry. She becomes emotionally strained and shrill as her husband forced an opera career upon her, even building an opera house for her and hiring a singing teacher, making a fool of them both in these efforts.

Kane himself is enigmatic and larger than life. He desires greatness, but in the process of achieving it, he uses and abuses those he cares for, ultimately losing every one of them. Despite his shortcomings, he is not someone the audience wants to root against. Likewise, he is not someone to cheer for either. The beginning newsreel makes it clear how Kane’s life ends. There is no saving him from himself.

All in all, Citizen Kane isn’t about the titular character losing or triumphing in the end, but his journey to that point in the eyes of those closest to him. I believe that is what keeps viewers so enthralled and inclined to watch and re-watch this film time after time.

(Note: My great-great-grandpa William Goldman was involved in the court case against Paramount and block booking so it was cool to hear a little about that in class. J )

CHECKLIST FOR PLAGIARISM

1) (x) I have not handed in this assignment for any other class.

2) (x) If I have reused any information from other papers I have written for other classes, I clearly explain that in the paper.

3) (x) If I used any passages word for word, I put quotations around those words, or used indentation and citation within the text.

4) (x) I have not padded the bibliography. I have used all sources cited in the bibliography in the text of the paper.

5) (x) I have cited in the bibliography only the pages I personally read.

6) (x) I have used direct quotations only in cases where it could not be stated in another way. I cited the sources within the paper and in the bibliography.

7) (x) I did not so over-use direct quotations that the paper lacks interpretation or originality.

8) (x) I checked yes on steps 1-7 and therefore have been fully transparent about the research and ideas used in my paper.

Monday, April 6, 2015

Gone with the Wind

1) Relate what was discussed in class or the text to the screening.

In class, we learned that during the early days of Hollywood, black actors and actresses were used mostly marginally in menial, domestic roles or as tertiary characters with no problems or development of their own. Oftentimes, black characters were portrayed by white actors in blackface. Black actors had to rely on parts in musicals and comedies rather than serious, dramatic roles, an example being Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who frequently danced with Shirley Temple. Between 1915 and 1950, around 500 “race” films were produced for black audiences and starring all-black casts. Most of these films were produced and funded by black filmmakers, but some had white financial backers as well.

Early black filmmakers include George and Perry Johnson, who founded the Lincoln Motion Picture Company in 1916 and in 1918, made Birth of a Race in response to D.W. Griffith’s earlier film Birth of a Nation. The movie focused on black soldiers, families and heroes. Oscar Micheaux was the most prolific black filmmaker, of his time, having directed over 40 films over the course of his career. He founded the Micheaux Film Corporation in Chicago which stayed in business from 1918 until 1940. Micheaux’s films were scripted and produced exclusively by African-Americans though he eventually joined forces with white investors. He also frequently collaborated with Paul Robeson.

Gone with the Wind was based on a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell, who took over ten years to write it. David O. Selznick purchased the film rights for $50,000. Mitchell never published another book in her lifetime and refused to comment or advise on the film once the rights were sold. She was killed after being hit by a car while crossing the street in 1949, only ten years after the film was released. The film starred Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable as the lead characters Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, while the supporting cast included Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen.

Gone with the Wind was a huge success and swept the Academy Awards, earning Best Picture for David O. Selznick, Best Director for Victor Fleming, Best Actress for Vivien Leigh, Best Supporting Actress for Hattie McDaniel, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing and Best Art Direction. Clark Gable was nominated for Best Actor but in a shocking twist, lost to Robert Donet for Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

McDaniel’s win was also historic as she was the first African-American to ever win an Academy Award and the first to be invited to the ceremony as a guest. The American Film Institute ranked Gone with the Wind 4^th in their list of the Top 100 Best American Films of All Time. The film was also selected for preservation by the National Film Registry and was the highest grossing film of all time until 1966, though when adjusted for inflation, it still has the highest box office earnings. It was the longest film ever made at the time, running 3 hours and 44 minutes. It was also one of the first films shot in Technicolor.

In addition, the film provided the famous line “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” ranked by AFI as the #1 movie line quote. In order for the phrase to be said exactly as it was in the book, Selznick had to get special permission from the Motion Picture Association, who passed an amendment to the Production Code to ensure that the film would be in agreement with the code. As a result,, the words “hell” and “damn” could only be spoken when their usage was “essential and required for portrayal, in proper historical context, of any scene or dialogue based upon historical fact or folklore ... or a quotation from a literary work, provided that no such use shall be permitted which is intrinsically objectionable or offends good taste."

Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta in an elaborate 3-day celebration beginning Dec. 15, 1939. Due to Georgia’s Jim Crow laws, Hattie McDaniel and the other black actors were prohibited from attend the premiere. Clark Gable was so angered that he threatened to boycott the premiere himself, but McDaniel persuaded him to attend. The production budget of the film was $3.9 million. The domestic gross brought in $198,676,459, with an additional $400,176,459 coming in from foreign markets. Overall, the legacy of Gone with the Wind endures, as the all-time (when adjusted for inflation) highest-grossing box office earner.

http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/blogs/547698/vivien-leigh-1.html

Vivien Leigh was first introduced to producer David O Selznick by his brother Myron during the burning of Atlanta scene in early production of Gone with the Wind. Over two and a half years had been spent auditioning over 1,400 actors, costing more than $50,000, yet the Selznicks agreed that Leigh was “Scarlett O’Hara.”

The romance between Scarlett O’Hara and Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler, is now movie legend. Gone with the Wind received ten Academy Awards, including one for Leigh, making her the first British woman to win Best Actress. It is also the most watched film in UK film history, with over 35 million theater attendances since 1939.

Like Scarlet, Leigh was beautiful, passionate, charming, and ambitious. They both had obsessive love affairs and both ultimately lost the man they loved. They lived through tragedies and illness. Leigh, whose birth name was Vivian Hartley, was born in India, where her English parents lived while her father worked for a brokerage company. Before reaching the age of seven, Leigh was sent back to England to attend boarding school. Between the ages of 13 and 17, Leigh traveled with her parents, who had by then left India, across Europe, finally settling again in London in 1931.

After dancing together at a ball, Leigh fell in love with Herbert Leigh Holman, who was 13 years older than her. Leigh was already set on becoming an actress and attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the time but Holman assumed she would settle down once she became a mother. They had a daughter named Suzanne in 1933 but Leigh continued to act and received her first taste of stardom in 1935, when she received rave reviews for her role in the play Mask of Virtue. Leigh was able to secure a $50,000 contract with director Alexander Korda and was ready to continue on to superstardom, saying “‘I loved my baby as every mother does but, with the clear-cut sincerity of youth, I realized I could not abandon all thought of a career. Some force within myself would not be denied expression.”

Leigh developed adoration for actor Laurence Olivier after seeing him perform on stage and engineered an introduction, telling a friend that one day she would marry him, despite the fact that both she and Olivier were already married to other people. They began a passionate affair, ultimately leaving their respective spouses and children and marrying each other, becoming the olden couple of acting in the process. Katharine Hepburn drove them to their wedding ceremony. Together, the Oliviers’ had a lavish life filled with theatre tours, haute couture and luxurious parties. They entertained celebrity friends such as Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Orson Welles, Bette Davis and Judy Garland.

Though she was an Oscar winner, Leigh often doubted her own talent in comparison to Olivier. She put herself under tremendous stress trying to match him on stage. She suffered two miscarriages. Meanwhile, Suzanne was raised by her father and grandmother and only saw her mother occasionally growing up. During the 1940’s, Leigh suffered from tuberculosis and mood swings brought on by bipolar disorder.

By 1951, when she portrayed her Oscar-winning role of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, her real-life persona matched her onscreen antics of madness, mania and depressing vulnerability. Leigh was terrified people would learn the truth about her illness. Eventually, however, the secret got out.

She suffered a mental breakdown in 1953 during the filming of the film Elephant Walk in Sri Lanka. She suffered from insomnia and hallucinations which made her try to jump out of a plane while travelling back to Los Angeles. Leigh had to be sedated and flown back to Britain where she was sent to a psychiatric hospital. At the time, there were not many treatments for mental disorders, and Leigh was subjected to electric shock therapy.

While he still loved her, Olivier couldn’t take anymore and the couple divorced in 1960, when Olivier finally left her for actress Joan Plowright. Leigh had been having an affair with actor Jack Merivale at the time. She later told her stepson Tarquin, “Herbert taught me how to live, your father how to love, and John how to be alone.” In her 40s, Leigh developed a closer relationship with her daughter and grandsons before dying in 1967 at the age of 53 from tuberculosis. Though her life was relatively short, the legacy of Vivien Leigh lives on as one of Great Britain’s most legendary actresses.

3) Apply the article to the film screened in class. How did the article support or change the way you thought about the film, director, content, etc.?

Though I had known about the personal troubles of Vivien Leigh before now, reading about her life more in-depth so soon after seeing the film again impresses upon e the truly intense way Leigh encapsulated the role of Scarlett O’Hara. Leigh was beautiful and charming, but she had to fight for everything. While she had a very privileged life, she also endured much suffering that others would not have been able to bear, making her much closer to the character of Scarlett than I had previously thought.

Watching the film growing up, I had always admired Scarlett’s resolve to never give up and keep fighting for what she felt was important, even as her priorities changed by the film’s end, I now also have a deep appreciation for Leigh’s similar devotion to the things she loved, even when her life was being torn apart by things outside of her control. Also like Scarlett, Leigh could have been judged harshly for her sometimes unscrupulous behavior, but at the end of the day, Vivien Leigh was a good person and has earned the right to be remembered as one of Britain’s greatest actresses.

Gone with the Wind is one of the best-loved films in cinema history, and with good reason. The historical aspects of the plot were implemented masterfully; all the while combining the perspectives of a southern belle during the Civil War and Reconstruction era with a modern (at the time of the film’s release) take on the time period with a nostalgic outlook thrown in. As someone who had family in Georgia at the time who lost 3000 acres to the burning of Atlanta by General Sherman’s troops, the setting fascinated me greatly.

The casting of the film was spot-on and the actors all played their parts to perfection. Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Olivia de Havilland in particular brought life to their characters in ways that made them jump from the screen. Even the smaller roles, such as Thomas Mitchell as Gerald O’Hara and Hattie McDaniel as Mammy, provided memorable and enchanting characters that I wished had had happy endings.

In the countless times I’ve viewed the film, never once did it feel like I was watching a dated period piece. Though some of the characters displayed questionable behavior at times, they remained sympathetic to me. The film was also able to show the transitioning of time very well, without awkward scene shifts, something that even modern films can have trouble with. The special effects that went into creating the illusion of grand Southern plantations and the exquisite costuming both help entwine the viewers in the lives of the gentry of the Old South.

From casting to costuming, Gone with the Wind remains vibrant and entertaining over seventy-five years after its premiere. The film has not only left an enduring legacy, but has become an icon of the South, American history and Hollywood itself, and there is no doubt it will continue to be remembered and enjoyed for many more years as other films aim to emulate its renowned and celebrated status.