You and I both admire Pauline Kael. As a teen and later as a college student, we ran to the newsstand for the latest New Yorker to read her film reviews. As a writer, I'm certain she felt more akin to Mank than she did to Welles, whom she considered to be pompous and bombastic. However, egotistical, Welles did help craft "Citizen Kane" into the film it became because of the innovations he helped to craft using his background of magic. He wanted to use camera tricks wherever possible and Greg Tolland helped him, which is why he shared end of screen credit with Tolland.
Kael did give Welles a great deal of credit in her book. However, most of her critics who read it focused on the part about the script. In doing more research this week, I've found that the two most contrasting opinions - Pauline Kael in her critique and Peter Bogdanovich in his critique of her - are at extreme ends of the spectrum. Bogdanovich was not only an admirer of Orson Welles, he helped promote "Kane" as the greatest film of all time. Toward the end of his life, he and Welles bonded. Buddies. Ok. But Welles had his detractors and many found his ego often too self inflated. This put many people off to him personally. I'm certain there was a run-in between Welles and Kael at some point that started her digging into his past. And it was another author, I can't recall his name, who lived in LA and had been part of the film industry who was also writing a book about Kane that Kael may have, and mind you this can't be proved, may have stolen his ideas and parts of his manuscript. During a phone meeting that she took, he expressed his ideas about research he'd performed into the film, speaking with Mank's secretary and so on. He sent her his manuscript and then never heard from her again. He later found passages of his book in her book. He tried to sue, unsuccessfully.
Bogdanovich interviewed Welles secretary who said a total of seven drafts were made of the shooting script with Welles sometimes making changes on the same day as shooting. We've seen this happen in many films, such as Casablanca. However, the core ideas for the film were Mank's and the general storyline for the film were Mank's. This is what I feel Fincher tried to show in making this film, that it wasn't Orson's ideas, Mank wrote the film's main premise based on his relationship with Hearst. These are the conclusions I've come to over the past few days of hearing point and counterpoint. Let me know what you think. Love to hear from you and Happy holidays to you Chris and anyone else reading.
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