originally published in The New Yorker in 1971, made a rare fatal blunder by fudging facts and systematically overstating Mankiewicz’s contribution to the movie.But not really. Because even once you accept that Orson Wellesdeserve the co-screenplay credit for “Citizen Kane,” there’s a question that lingers, and it’s the mystery that I think Kael tried to poke at. Kael’s essay, among other things, was a kind of backhanded meditation on the inner meaning of what a screenplay.
But what sometimes gets lost in film history, especially for those of us born decades after “Kane’s” premiere, is that the consummate audacity of the movie, the thing that continues to make it such a singular and bracing experience, is that in its inky-shadowed, looming-ceilinged, boundlessly inventive and imaginative baroque showman’s way, “Kane” was a Hollywood movie that subverted the cosmos of Hollywood.
A good dollop of that came from Mankiewicz, and that’s the subject of “Mank”: how in addition to drinking and gambling, he spent the ’30s hobnobbing with Hollywood power brokers, soaking up the tricks of their trade — the way they charmed and manipulated and terrorized, bending the world to their whims and wills. And, of course, Mank got to know Hearst and his silver-screen inamorata, Marion Davies.
But what would “American” have looked like without Orson Welles? Early on, “Mank” shows us Mankiewicz writing one of the narrator’s lines from the News on the March faux newsreel sequence that kick-starts “Citizen Kane.” Did he actually write that line? Maybe so. But the News on the March sequence is one of the most astonishing nine minutes in American film history.
So the Welles hate train continues?
No it doesn't. Look at Mankiewicz's work before and after Kane. No comparison.
Not really. They established 40 years ago that Welles wrote most of it, although Mank initially sketched out the plot and characters.
I thought it was Orson Welles?
donwinslow Well Orson Welles principle but co-wrote screenplay. Won't give away his last word.
donwinslow Did you ever see The Story of a Cheat (1936) by Sasha Guitry? Wells said it was his inspiration.
donwinslow I did, still waiting on my royalties.
donwinslow Rose Budd.
donwinslow Obviously it was Cieran Hines.
donwinslow What point are you trying to make, please.
donwinslow Ask the typist/secretary
Kane wrote it.
Taylor Swift wrote it
I bet it was rosebud
No mystery.
Something that it is obvious and rarely mentioned or given enough credit in film criticism, is Orson Wells theatre background. Citizen Kane was his first movie. Wells knowledge and mastery of dramaturgy is due to his years working in theatre. Dramaturgy is often ignored in cinema
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