The Big Picture · Discussion
December 1, 2020/ 90 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins · Chris Ryan · Adam Nayman
Ahead of Fincher's ‘Mank,' a roundtable on ‘Citizen Kane,' Orson Welles, and Pauline Kael's ‘Raising Kane,' then Adam Nayman on the movie itself.
12 films across 2 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
Citizen Kane, Welles, and ‘Raising Kane'Sean and Amanda with Chris Ryan and Adam Nayman
The subject. Welles was 24, with an RKO deal granting him total control; Greg Toland shot the low angles and deep focus, Bernard Herrmann scored his first film, Robert Wise cut it. Nine nominations, one win (screenplay, shared with Mankiewicz). Topped the Sight & Sound poll for decades until Vertigo passed it in 2012.
The follow-up, taken out of Welles's hands and re-cut by RKO after Kane underperformed. He spent the rest of his career trying to get back to that first level of control.
Chris cites it fondly as evidence Welles's body of work is more uneven than Ford's or Hitchcock's.
Raised as a Mank-style credit dispute over how much of it was really Welles.
Adam: Hank Quinlan is diminished, and the film works because of it. Welles turned his own decline into the material.
His Falstaff: loyal and unrewarded. Adam reads the later films as Welles living the regret Kane only imagined.
The reliably-unreliable trickster in his 60s. Adam watched it twice during the pandemic.
The unfinished late film. Adam argues it's proof that Welles deepened rather than squandered his gift.
Named as a more conventionally accomplished Welles film that still doesn't carry Kane's weight.
Adam Nayman on ‘Mank'after Chris leaves
Fincher directing his late father Jack's script, itself indebted to Kael's ‘Raising Kane.' Adam reads it less as a who-wrote-Kane argument than a movie about loneliness and a 2020 political parable, with Charles Dance's Hearst and a Welles scene (Tom Burke) Adam finds the weakest part.
Adam: more Fincher's ‘Citizen Kane' than ‘Mank' is, a story of ambition that isolates and a 21-year-old smarter than the adults in the room.
The primal wound Adam says Fincher never got over: the studio overruled him on it, and he's had a chip on his shoulder about it ever since.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Comparisons and homages StagecoachRepulsionThe MasterHail, Caesar!Phantom ThreadPanic RoomButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The 1941 field How Green Was My ValleySergeant YorkThe Maltese FalconBall of FireThe Little FoxesNight Train to MunichThe Lady EveSuspicion
In passing Singin' in the RainCasablancaJaws2001: A Space OdysseyLa La LandDen of ThievesTriple FrontierUnder Fire
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV Tiny Toon AdventuresThe SimpsonsThe Dick Cavett Show
Radio / unmade The War of the WorldsHeart of Darkness
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