Netflix film reignites row over true writer of Citizen Kane
‘‘Every script goes through revisions but this one much more than most. What Orson Welles did to it . . . that’s what made the movie the movie we remember today.’’
Harlan Lebo
Film-lovers have long discussed whether Citizen Kane is the greatest movie ever. Hard-core cinephiles will argue over whether Orson Welles stole credit as its writer.
That topic has been thrust to the heart of the Oscar race with the arrival of the latest awards contender from Netflix.
Mank, directed by David Fincher from a script by his late father Jack, stars Gary Oldman as Herman Mankiewicz, the alcoholic journalist turned screenwriter. He was credited as the co-writer of Citizen Kane but later fumed over how the glory went to Welles, the 26-year-old star, producer and director who shared the writing credit.
Mank began streaming on Netflix last week and Welles’ fans have accused it of peddling an outdated, debunked theory about how the 1941 masterpiece emerged from the collaboration between the pair.
‘‘ Mank is just one in a string of films portraying Welles as a megalomaniacal bogeyman,’’ Joseph Mcbride, a film historian, wrote on the Wellesnet website. He objected to ‘‘myriad lies’’ in the film, ‘‘designed to tear down a great film-maker’’.
Robert Carringer, a professor of film who studied all seven drafts of the Citizen Kane script in the 1970s and 1980s, concluded that Welles took Mankiewicz’s original work and transformed it ‘‘from a solid basis for a story into an authentic plan for a masterpiece’’.
Harlan Lebo, the author of Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey, told The New York Times that even the final draft of the script differed from the film. ‘‘Every script goes through revisions but this one much more thanmost,’’ he said. ‘‘What Orson Welles did to it . . . that’s what made the movie the movie we remember today.’’
The Finchers’ story focuses on the period when Mankiewicz, recovering from a car accident, wrote a first draft screenplay for what would become Citizen Kane. He drew on his experiences as a guest of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper tycoon who was the basis for the character of Charles Foster Kane.
The anti-welles’ viewpoint sprang from an essay by Pauline Kael, the film critic for The New Yorker magazine, published in 1971. She argued that the screenplay was what made Citizen Kane a work of genius and that Welles had taken too much credit for Mankiewicz’s work.
The backlash included a rebuttal the following year in Esquire magazine by Peter Bogdanovich, the director.
Fincher has told New York Magazine there was ‘‘no argument’’ that Welles was a ‘‘genius’’. But he said: ‘‘I’ve seen movies he’s made from scripts that he’s written. They’re not in the same league.’’