While most artistes continually strive to reach their creative pinnacle, Orson Welles’ career was an uphill task to decelerate his downfall. In the year of his 100th birth anniversary, Welles continues to remain a giant who was at the helm of several first of firsts including his calling card — starting at the very top only to come down a step with everything his cinematic debut followed, writes GAUTAM CHINTAMANI
It’s not uncommon for certain creations to destroy their creators. Amongst such are works of arts that have gone on to inspire generations of people stand tall. One such creator who left behind an array of great films, and possibly even the greatest ever, was at the receiving end of a double edged sword. Not only did every subsequent piece of work demolish him a bit more than the previous but also having started at the very top, Orson Welles had nowhere else to go but fall down with everything that followed his cinematic debut.
In the year of his birth centenary, Welles continues to remain the colossus that he was ever since he burst upon the landscape with Citizen Kane (1941) and even though his aura has diminished, largely due to a generation of filmgoers who have no idea about him, his significance hasn’t reduced. The first time the world heard of Orson Welles was literally when he narrated HG Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds on radio. Welles’ narration reportedly caused widespread panic when listeners believed his account of an extraterrestrial invasion to be real. Although many such reports were false, they nonetheless established Welles as a great raconteur, a gift that would help him keep his myth alive.
The radio broadcast of The War of the World happened in 1938 but by then Welles’ theatre company, Mercury Theatre, had already had a hit in the groundbreaking Broadway production of Julius Caesar a year early and as expected Hollywood came calling. Such was Welles’ renown even before he set foot in Hollywood that RKO Radio Pictures offered him complete artistic control on his first film. Once he signed the ‘greatest ever contract’ Welles tried to develop Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as a possible first of the two-picture deal that he had but the exorbitant production costs killed the project. Welles finally got down to partnering with writer Herman J Mankiewicz on what would end up becoming his first feature film, his most well-known character and eventually considered by many to the greatest film ever made.
Citizen Kane began as an outline called The American that Mankiewicz had pitched to Welles. It was Mankiewicz’s interpretation of the life of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper baron, and while he developed a draft, Welles and his partner from Mercury, John Houseman, too, came up with a version of the script. Welles took both versions along with 300 pages of his notes and distilled them into the final script. Welles’ carte blanche also attracted some of the best names in the trade. The opportunity to work without studio interference was too good to be passed and perhaps that is why well-established technicians including cinematographer Gregg Toland made a beeline to work with Welles. Filmed over 10-weeks at a time when the studio system was at its peak, Welles swam against the tide and created a new vocabulary for cinema with Citizen Kane.
One of the first things that were different in Citizen Kane was that Welles decided to rehearse with actors. Till that time rehearsals were restricted to stage and while Welles’ decision to rehearse could reflect his background it also had to do with the fact that most of the actors, including Welles, weren’t used to acting for the camera and through this Welles could be training himself. Even while shooting Welles’ ignorance about filmmaking technique served him well as he amateurishly demanded things and Tolland simply delivered. Tolland’s decision to work with Welles ended up creating a different visual language and his use of Deep Focus, a technique where everything in a frame across the foreground, background and in between is in focus, chiaroscuro lighting, jump-cuts, low-angle camera placement that forced the sets in the film to have ceilings and long takes that featured movements such as pan focus which allowed the camera to mimic the human eye went down in cinematic lore.
William Randolph Hearst tried everything in his power to kill the film. He threatened theatre chains and coerced production houses with publishing scandals that were doused till many producers jointly decided to buy the film from RKO. But it went ahead and had a limited release. Citizen Kane opened to generally favorable reviews but an uneven release harmed the film and it wasn’t until a re-release in the mid-1950s when its brilliance was truly discovered. Had Citizen Kane’s initial run enjoyed the same success that two of it’s contemporaries John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) Welles’ stature would have mirrored that of Hitchcock and Ford as opposed to the enfant terrible that he came to be known as. The impact of his debut’s struggle reflected upon the future of Welles’ contract and as a result RKO recut, reshot his second feature, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Although Welles continued to make well-received films (The lady from Shanghai (1947), A Touch of Evil (1958), The Trial (1962) but the build-up to Citizen Kane put him at such a pinnacle that the only possible way out was down.
Many of techniques in Citizen Kane were inspired by Stagecoach that Welles saw over and over to teach himself filmmaking and at the time of its release some had even accused Welles of plagiarism. As film commentator David Bordwell notes Citizen Kane shouldn’t be worshipped as a triumph of technique but as something that perfected various stylistics being used over the years and put them in a single film. Nothing that Welles did later matched up to Citizen Kane but the passage of time has been kind to him with his aura swelling thanks to the constant rediscovery of Citizen Kane. It’s ironic that someone who understood what the medium of cinema could achieve and filtered inspirations from all round remained misunderstood for a long time. But surely there’s some justice for whatever he took from the world is now known as signature Orson Welles.