It’s No Mystery. Nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories, it won an Academy Award fo… We know, more or less, who wrote “Citizen Kane.” What we’ll never know is how the lightning got in the bottle. Get the best of Smithsonian magazine by email. Even at the time, some cinephiles perceived Kael’s essay as an effort to discredit the auteur theory, the then-ascendant notion that the best directors were responsible for the stylistic imprints of their films. Advertising Notice Who Wrote 'Citizen Kane'? Who wrote “Citizen Kane”? By Casey Cipriani. More from Variety. He previously worked at Foreign Policy, Mother Jones, and The New Republic. “Every script goes through revisions during production, but this one much more than most, and what Orson Welles did to it, probably literally at the last second during production — just as he did with his theater productions — that’s what made the movie the movie we remember today.”. Was Welles, who with “Citizen Kane” (1941) created what is often cited as the greatest movie ever made on his first try, actually standing on the shoulders of another genius? California Do Not Sell My Info But that has long been debunked by scholars. The notion that Herman’s Marx Brothers sensibility and newspaper background fed into Citizen Kane intrigued him, so when Jack retired around 1991 and wanted to write a screenplay, David suggested he consider Herman as a subject. “You could show that. The film focuses on Herman J. Mankiewicz, the screenwriter who wrote Citizen Kane, and whose battle with Welles for screenwriting credit is still contentiously debated to this day. Cookie Policy One of the greatest films ever made also generated a great controversy. Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Magazine Football news: Arsenal sign 19-year-old Hertha defender Omar Rekik. Vote Now! Was Welles, who with “Citizen Kane” (1941) created what is usually cited as the best film ever made on his first strive, really standing on the shoulders of one other genius? I mean, the time that Citizen Kane comes along, they are like nine or 10 years old, so there’s all that, yeah, all of that to play. When “Citizen Kane” won the Oscar for best original screenplay, neither Welles nor Mankiewicz attended the ceremony, but “Mank” concludes with its title character (Gary Oldman) telling reporters the acceptance speech he would have delivered: “I am very happy to accept this award in the manner in which the screenplay was written, which is to say, in the absence of Orson Welles.” (As recounted in Richard Meryman’s 1978 biography of Mankiewicz, he really did devise an after-the-fact acceptance speech close to those words, although he also enjoyed a teasing correspondence with Welles at that time. Brian Kellow’s biography of Kael suggests that the critic, who died in 2001, chose not to respond to Bogdanovich’s charges. Keep up-to-date on: © 2021 Smithsonian Magazine. For Welles scholars, the idea that Mankiewicz alone wrote Citizen Kane is an old falsehood, and its continued repetition may testify to the staying power of Citizen Kane. Loren Kantor. And what were the origins of that epic tale? How long have you got? But research presented in Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey contradicts Mankiewicz’s view. The first of six films Welles had contracted to produce for RKO with his Mercury Theater radio ensemble company, Citizen Kane made radically innovative use of sound and deep-focus photography… ADVERTISEMENT But Patrick McGilligan, in a book published last year, The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane, has the freshest answer yet. He said through a representative: “It was not my interest to make a movie about a posthumous credit arbitration. Mank, the new drama from David Fincher, revives an old charge against Orson Welles. Herman Jacob Mankiewicz (November 7, 1897 – March 5, 1953) was an American screenwriter who, with Orson Welles, wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941). Oscar buzz is already building around Mank, David Fincher’s sumptuously photographed period piece about the making of Citizen Kane. In 1971, The New Yorker published “ Raising Kane ,” a two-part investigation of the puzzle by Pauline Kael. Citizen Kane won the Oscar for Best Screenplay by Orson Welles and Mankiewicz, but the shadow of who should or shouldn’t get more credit did not float until three decades later, a debate that Mank now brings to the present and on one Brochure based that was written by Jack Fincher, the director’s father Netflix Could Break an 85-Year Record at the Oscars in 2021 How fitting that a film about the elusiveness of truth is the subject of endless argument. 0. 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