Raising Kane
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"Raising Kane" is a 1971 book-length essay by American
film critic Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: Academic criticism by film scholars, who study the composition of film theory and publish their findin ...
Pauline Kael Pauline Kael (; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for ''The New Yorker'' from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael often defied the conse ...
, in which she revived controversy over the authorship of the screenplay for the 1941 film ''
Citizen Kane ''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American Drama (film and television), drama film directed by, produced by and starring Orson Welles and co-written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz. It was Welles's List of directorial debuts, first feature film. ...
''. Kael celebrated screenwriter
Herman J. Mankiewicz Herman Jacob Mankiewicz ( ; November 7, 1897 – March 5, 1953) was an American screenwriter who, with Orson Welles, wrote the screenplay for ''Citizen Kane'' (1941). Both Mankiewicz and Welles went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Orig ...
, first-credited co-author of the screenplay, and questioned the contributions of
Orson Welles George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American director, actor, writer, producer, and magician who is remembered for his innovative work in film, radio, and theatre. He is among the greatest and most influential film ...
, who co-wrote, produced and directed the film, and performed the lead role. The 50,000-word essay was written for ''The Citizen Kane Book'' (1971), as an extended introduction to the shooting script by Mankiewicz and Welles. It first appeared in February 1971 in two consecutive issues of ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'' magazine. In the ensuing controversy, Welles was defended by colleagues, critics, biographers and scholars, but his reputation was damaged by its charges. The essay and Kael's assertions were later questioned after Welles's contributions to the screenplay were documented.


Background

One of the long-standing controversies about ''Citizen Kane'' has been the authorship of the
Academy Award The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...
-winning
screenplay A screenplay, or script, is a written work produced for a film, television show (also known as a '' teleplay''), or video game by screenwriters (cf. ''stage play''). Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of w ...
.Orson Welles conceived the project with screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who was writing radio plays for Welles's CBS Radio series, '' The Campbell Playhouse''. Mankiewicz based the original outline on the life of
William Randolph Hearst William Randolph Hearst (; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American newspaper publisher and politician who developed the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His extravagant methods of yellow jou ...
, whom he knew socially and came to hate after he was exiled from Hearst's circle. In February 1940 Welles supplied Mankiewicz with 300 pages of notes and put him under contract to write the first draft screenplay under the supervision of
John Houseman John Houseman (born Jacques Haussmann; September 22, 1902 – October 31, 1988) was a Romanians, Romanian-born British Americans, British-American theatre and film producer, actor, director, and teacher. He became known for his highly publ ...
, Welles's former partner in the
Mercury Theatre The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures. The Mercury also r ...
. Welles later explained, "I left him on his own finally, because we'd started to waste too much time haggling. So, after mutual agreements on storyline and character, Mank went off with Houseman and did his version, while I stayed in Hollywood and wrote mine." Taking these drafts, Welles drastically condensed and rearranged them, then added scenes of his own. The industry accused Welles of underplaying Mankiewicz's contribution to the script, but Welles countered the attacks by saying, "At the end, naturally, I was the one making the picture, after all—who had to make the decisions. I used what I wanted of Mank's and, rightly or wrongly, kept what I liked of my own." The terms of the contract stated that Mankiewicz was to receive no credit for his work, as he was hired as a
script doctor A script doctor is a writer or playwright hired by a film, television, or theatre production company to rewrite an existing script or improve specific aspects of it, including structure, characterization, dialogue, pacing, themes, and other elemen ...
. Before he signed the contract Mankiewicz was particularly advised by his agents that all credit for his work belonged to Welles and the Mercury Theatre, the "author and creator". As the film neared release, however, Mankiewicz began threatening Welles to get credit for the film—including threats to place full-page ads in trade papers and to get his friend
Ben Hecht Ben Hecht (; February 28, 1894 – April 18, 1964) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write 35 books and some of the most enjoyed screenplays and play ...
to write an exposé for ''
The Saturday Evening Post ''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine published six times a year. It was published weekly from 1897 until 1963, and then every other week until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely circulated and influ ...
''. Mankiewicz also threatened to go to the
Screen Writers Guild The Screen Writers Guild was an organization of Hollywood screenplay authors, formed as a union in 1933. A rival organisation, Screen Playwrights, Inc., was established by the AMPP, film studios and producers, but after an appeal to the National ...
and claim full credit for writing the entire script by himself. After lodging a protest with the Screen Writers Guild, Mankiewicz withdrew it, then vacillated. The question was resolved in January 1941 when the studio,
RKO Pictures RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, is an American film production and distribution company, historically one of the major film studios, "Big Five" film studios of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood's Clas ...
, awarded Mankiewicz credit. The guild credit form listed Welles first, Mankiewicz second. Welles's assistant Richard Wilson said that the person who circled Mankiewicz's name in pencil, then drew an arrow that put it in first place, was Welles. The official credit reads, "Screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles". Mankiewicz's rancor toward Welles grew over the remaining 12 years of his life.Whaley, Barton
''Orson Welles: The Man Who Was Magic''. Lybrary.com, 2005,


Research and writing

Questions over the authorship of the ''Citizen Kane'' screenplay were revived in 1971 by influential film critic
Pauline Kael Pauline Kael (; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for ''The New Yorker'' from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael often defied the conse ...
, whose controversial 50,000-word essay "Raising Kane" was commissioned as an introduction to the shooting script in ''The Citizen Kane Book'', published in October 1971. The book-length essay first appeared in February 1971, in two consecutive issues of ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'' magazine. Kael initially declined an offer from
Bantam Books Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by parent company Random House, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin Jr., Sidney B. K ...
to write an introductory essay for a paperback edition of the ''Citizen Kane'' script, but later accepted. She received $375, half of the advance payment, in September 1968, and worked on the essay for more than a year. One of the contract provisions permitted separate publication of the essay in a magazine; earlier in 1968 Kael had been named one of two regular film critics for ''The New Yorker''. Kael approached the project as an opportunity to defend screenwriters, a long-abused class in the studio system. She had informally come to the opinion that Mankiewicz, a gifted screenwriter neglected for many years, had been the actual guiding force behind ''Citizen Kane''. The essay became an extension of her dispute with critic
Andrew Sarris Andrew Sarris (October 31, 1928 – June 20, 2012) was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism. Early life Sarris was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Greek immigrant parents, Themis (née Kat ...
, leading proponent of the
auteur theory An (; , ) is an artist with a distinctive approach, usually a film director whose filmmaking control is so unbounded and personal that the director is likened to the "author" of the film, thus manifesting the director's unique style or thematic ...
. Kael's unacknowledged primary source was Houseman, with whom she began meeting in May 1969. Houseman had helped Mankiewicz write drafts of the script and later went so far as to say that Welles "never wrote a word". Kael did considerable research on related topics in film history. "Unfortunately," wrote Brian Kellow in his 2011 biography of Kael, "she didn't do a great deal of research on the movie itself—partly because she learned that it had already been done." Kael was then a guest lecturer at
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
, where faculty member Howard Suber had done extensive research on ''Citizen Kane''. He had also conducted personal interviews of Mankiewicz's secretary, Rita Alexander; his widow, Sara Mankiewicz; editor
Robert Wise Robert Earl Wise (September 10, 1914 – September 14, 2005) was an American filmmaker. He won the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for his musical films ''West Side Story'' (1961) and ''The Sound of Music'' (1965). He was als ...
; Welles's assistant, Richard Wilson; and cast member Dorothy Comingore. Kael approached Suber in mid-1969 and offered him the chance to write a separate essay that would appear with hers in ''The Citizen Kane Book'', and split the money. Suber extricated himself from an agreement to co-author an almost identical book with two fellow academics, and gave Kael his research. She sent him a check for $375, half of the total advance she was to be paid by Bantam Books, and he sent his essay to her. Kael dismissed Suber's repeated requests that she formalize their agreement and in time she stopped communicating with him. Suber was astonished to discover "Raising Kane" in the pages of ''The New Yorker'' in 1971; he received no credit or further payment. "Significantly, no transcripts of Pauline's purported conversations … have survived—perhaps because she took no notes," wrote Kellow. "The only research materials in her personal archive, housed at Indiana University's
Lilly Library The Lilly Library, located on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, is an important rare book and manuscript library in the United States. At its dedication on October 3, 1960, the library contained a collection of 20,000 bo ...
, are copies of Howard Suber's interviews." Suber's interview with Mankiewicz's widow particularly confirmed Kael's thesis. Kael specifically did not interview Welles: "I already know what happened," she told Suber, "I don't have to talk to him." During his 47-year tenure at UCLA, Suber chaired the Critical Studies program and the
UCLA Film and Television Archive The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a visual arts organization focused on the film preservation, preservation, film studies, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As a nonpro ...
, was associate dean of the
UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television The UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (UCLA TFT), is one of the 12 schools within the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) located in Los Angeles, California. Its creation was groundbreaking in that it was the first time a leadi ...
, and received the Distinguished Teaching Award. He became a consultant and expert witness on copyright issues. "If I’d only known what I know about copyright now, I would have sued her...but I didn't," Suber said in a 2011 interview about Kael appropriating his research for her essay.


Reception

The mainstream press accepted Kael's essay based on her credibility as one of the country's top film critics. ''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' reviewer
Mordecai Richler Mordecai Richler (January 27, 1931 – July 3, 2001) was a Canadian writer. His best known works are ''The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (novel), The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz'' (1959) and ''Barney's Version (novel), Barney's Versi ...
praised Kael for "cutting Orson Welles down to size, denying his needlessly grandiose claim to having been solely responsible for everything that went into ''Kane'', including the script and photography." "Orson was vigorously defended," wrote biographer Barton Whaley, "but in less prominently placed articles; so, again, the damage was immense and permanent."


Response

"Raising Kane" angered many critics, most notably
Peter Bogdanovich Peter Bogdanovich (July 30, 1939 – January 6, 2022) was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian. He started out his career as a young actor studying under Stella Adler before working as a film critic for ''Fi ...
, a close friend of Welles, who rebutted Kael's claims in "The Kane Mutiny", an October 1972 article for ''
Esquire Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title. In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentleman ...
''. Bogdanovich later acknowledged that Welles made significant contributions to the article, while Jonathan Rosenbaum has claimed that Welles ghost-wrote the entire piece. "The Kane Mutiny" included the revelation that Kael had used Suber's work and did not credit him. Bogdanovich reported Suber's response to "Raising Kane", that he considered the authorship of ''Kane'' as an open question but that Kael's failure to consult Welles "violates all the principles of historical research". Other rebuttals included articles by Sarris, Joseph McBride and
Jonathan Rosenbaum Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943) is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for '' The Chicago Reader'' from 1987 to 2008. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has contributed to ...
, interviews with
George Coulouris George Alexander Coulouris (1 October 1903 – 25 April 1989) was an English film and stage actor. He was perhaps best known for his collaborations with Orson Welles, most notably ''Citizen Kane''. Early life Of Anglo-Greek origin, Coulouris ...
and
Bernard Herrmann Bernard Herrmann (born Maximillian Herman; June 29, 1911December 24, 1975) was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in film scoring. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely regarde ...
that appeared in ''
Sight & Sound ''Sight and Sound'' (formerly written ''Sight & Sound'') is a monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). Since 1952, it has conducted the well-known decennial ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time. ...
'', a definitive study of the scripts by Robert L. Carringer and remarks in Welles biographies by Barbara Leaming and Frank Brady. Rosenbaum also reviewed the controversy in his editor's notes to '' This is Orson Welles'' (1992). "The major focus of Kael's essay is its defense and celebration of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as the principal, neglected creative force behind ''Kane''," Rosenbaum wrote. "According to Kael, the script was written almost entirely by Mankiewicz, and Welles had actively plotted to deprive him of any screen credit." Kael reported what she was told by Mankiewicz's secretary: "Mrs. itaAlexander, who took the dictation from Mankiewicz, from the first paragraph to the last, and then, when the first draft was completed and they all went back to Los Angeles, did the secretarial work at Mankiewicz’s house on the rewriting and the cuts, and who then handled the script at the studio until after the film was shot, says that Welles didn’t write (or dictate) one line of the shooting script of ''Citizen Kane''." In "The Kane Mutiny", Bogdanovich/Welles discloses that Kael did not interview Katherine Trosper, who worked as Welles's secretary from the script's rough draft through the completion of the film. When Bogdanovich repeated Kael's assertion that Mankiewicz was the sole author of the script, Trosper replied, "Then I'd like to know, what was all that stuff I was always typing for Mr. Welles?" Kael likewise did not interview associate producer
Richard Baer Richard Baer (9 September 1911 – 17 June 1963) was a German SS officer who, among other assignments, was the final commandant of Auschwitz I concentration camp from May 1944 to January 1945, and right after, from February to April 1945, co ...
, who stated that he himself was "in the room and saw" Welles writing important parts of the script. Kael wrote that the idea to use Hearst as the basis for Kane was Mankiewicz's idea, a claim supported by Houseman. She reported that a former babysitter for the Mankiewicz family said that in 1925 she had typed portions of a screenplay Mankiewicz dictated to her that involved Hearst, organized in flashbacks. Welles claimed it was his idea, which was supported by Baer in sworn testimony taken at the time ''Citizen Kane'' was released. Kael wrote that Mankiewicz "had ample proof of his authorship, and he took his evidence to the Screen Writers Guild and raised so much hell that Welles was forced to split the credit and take second place in the listing."
Charles Lederer Charles Davies Lederer (December 31, 1910 – March 5, 1976) was an American screenwriter and film director. He was born into a theatrical family in New York, and after his parents divorced, was raised in California by his aunt, Marion Davies, ...
, a source for Kael's essay, insisted that the credit never came to the Writers Guild for arbitration. Kael reported that before the film was finished, without Welles's knowledge, Mankiewicz gave the script to Lederer, who was
Marion Davies Marion Davies (born Marion Cecilia Douras; January 3, 1897 – September 22, 1961) was an American actress, producer, screenwriter, and philanthropist. Educated in a religious convent, Davies left the school to pursue a career as a chorus girl ...
's nephew. "But Lederer, apparently, was deeply upset and took the script to his aunt and Hearst. It went from them to Hearst's lawyers … It was probably as a result of Mankiewicz's idiotic indiscretion that the various forces were set in motion that resulted in the cancellation of the premiere at the Radio City Music Hall ndthe commercial failure of ''Citizen Kane''." Lederer told Bogdanovich that Kael never bothered to check with him about the facts, that he did not give Davies the script Mankiewicz loaned him: "I gave it ''back'' to him. He asked me if I thought Marion would be offended and I said I didn't think so." Kael reported that Mankiewicz "probably didn’t get more than eight or nine thousand dollars for the whole job; according to the cost sheets for the movie, the screenplay cost was $34,195.24, which wasn’t much, even for that day, and the figure probably includes the salary and expenses of John Houseman and the others at Victorville." Mankiewicz was paid $22,833.35 for his work. Kael wrote that the production could not afford the fee to perform the opera called for in the script,
Jules Massenet Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are ''Manon'' (1884 ...
's ''
Thaïs Thaïs (; ; ) was a Greek who accompanied Alexander the Great on his military campaigns. Likely from Athens, she is most famous for having instigated the burning of Persepolis, the capital city of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, after it was con ...
''—a work written for
Sibyl Sanderson Sibyl Sanderson (December 7, 1864May 16, 1903) was a famous American operatic dramatic coloratura soprano during the Parisian Belle Époque. Biography She was born in Sacramento, California, in the United States. Sibyl's father Silas Sanderson ...
, one of Hearst's mistresses—so composer
Bernard Herrmann Bernard Herrmann (born Maximillian Herman; June 29, 1911December 24, 1975) was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in film scoring. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely regarde ...
had to write something instead. "But Miss Kael never wrote or approached me to ask about the music," Herrmann said. "We could easily have afforded the fee. The point is that its lovely little strings would not have served the emotional purpose of the film." Herrmann disagreed with Kael's entire premise: "She tries to pretend that Welles is nothing and that a mediocre writer by the name of Mankiewicz was a hidden Voltaire. I'm not saying that Mankiewicz made no contribution … but he could not have created ''Citizen Kane''." Kael also related an anecdote from
Nunnally Johnson Nunnally Hunter Johnson (December 5, 1897 – March 25, 1977) was an American screenwriter, film director, producer and playwright. As a filmmaker, he wrote the screenplays to more than fifty films in a career that spanned from 1927 to 1967. He a ...
, who said that during the filming of ''Citizen Kane'' Mankiewicz told him that Welles offered him, through a third party, a $10,000 bribe to relinquish screen credit. Mankiewicz, ever in need of money, was tempted by the offer. Mankiewicz reportedly said that
Ben Hecht Ben Hecht (; February 28, 1894 – April 18, 1964) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write 35 books and some of the most enjoyed screenplays and play ...
advised him to take the money and double-cross Welles. "I like to believe he did," Johnson replied when Kael asked if he believed the story. Kael left it at that: "It's not unlikely", she wrote. The unsubstantiated claim became part of the record, repeated as fact in a book by film historian
Otto Friedrich Otto Alva Friedrich (1929 in Boston, Massachusetts – April 26, 1995 in Manhasset, New York), was an American author, and historian. The son of the political theorist, and Harvard professor Carl Joachim Friedrich, Otto Friedrich graduated fr ...
and a documentary by
Barry Norman Barry Leslie Norman (21 August 1933 – 30 June 2017) was a British film critic, television presenter and journalist. He presented the BBC's cinema review programme, '' Film...'', from 1972 to 1998. Early life Born at St Thomas' Hospital, Lo ...
. Attorney Arnold Weissberger advised Welles not to file suit for
libel Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...
. Proving malice would be difficult; Welles was a public figure, and Kael's ideas were theories and matters of opinion. A complicating factor was that Welles was receiving a portion of the royalties of ''The Citizen Kane Book'', which contained the script as well as Kael's essay. "As it turned out, much to his sorrow, the book sold extremely well and has been reprinted many times", wrote Brady. "'The Kane Mutiny' … did surprisingly little damage to Pauline's reputation", wrote Kellow. "It did, however, represent a serious breakdown of ''The New Yorkers fact-checking process."


Reevaluation

Decades after the controversy over the essay,
Woody Allen Heywood Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American filmmaker, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. Allen has received many List of awards and nominations received by Woody Allen, accolade ...
told Bogdanovich that he had been with Kael immediately after she finished reading "The Kane Mutiny" in ''Esquire''. Kael was shocked at the case made against her—including the revelation that she had taken credit for the work of Suber, something Bogdanovich learned through his own connections at UCLA. Kael asked Allen, "How am I going to answer this?" "She never responded," Bogdanovich wrote. He noted that Kael had included "Raising Kane" in a recent collection of her essays—"untouched, as though these other people's testimony didn't count or exist, as though Welles's feelings or reputation didn't matter." By the time of Kael's death 30 years after its publication, "Raising Kane" was highly contested. Film historian Richard B. Jewell, chronicler of RKO Pictures, concluded that Welles deserved his credit as the screenplay's co-author and that Kael's arguments were "one-sided and unsupported by the facts." Largely forgotten since it was revealed in 1972, the story of Kael's appropriation of the research for "Raising Kane" became news again after it was included in a 2011 biography. Reviewing Kellow's biography for ''The New York Times'', critic
Frank Rich Frank Hart Rich Jr. (born June 2, 1949) is an American essayist and liberal op-ed columnist, who held various positions within ''The New York Times'' from 1980 to 2011. He has also produced television series and documentaries for HBO. Rich is ...
remarked on Kael's "sloppy professional ethics" and the fortuitous omission of the essay from the 2011 anthology ''The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael''. "'Raising Kane' was omitted from the
Library of America The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published more than 300 volumes by authors ...
volume for reasons of space … but Kellow's account suggests it should have been eliminated in any event for its improprieties."


Publication history

* Kael, Pauline. "Raising Kane—I". ''The New Yorker'', February 20, 1971. * Kael, Pauline. "Raising Kane—II". ''The New Yorker'', February 27, 1971. * Kael, Pauline, Mankiewicz, Herman J. and Welles, Orson. ''The Citizen Kane Book''. Boston:
Little, Brown and Company Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries, it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emil ...
, October 28, 1971. * Kael, Pauline. ''For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies''. New York: Dutton, 1994. * Kael, Pauline, and French, Philip (intro.). ''Raising Kane and Other Essays''. London and New York:
Marion Boyars Publishers Marion Boyars Publishers is an independent publishing company located in Great Britain, publishing books that focus on the humanities and social sciences Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the b ...
, 1996. * Kael, Pauline. ''Raising Kane: Pauline Kael on the Best Film Ever Made''. London:
Methuen Publishing Methuen Publishing Ltd (; also known as Methuen Books) is an English publishing house. It was founded in 1889 by Sir Algernon Methuen (1856–1924) and began publishing in London in 1892. Initially, Methuen mainly published non-fiction acade ...
, as a supplement to ''
Sight & Sound ''Sight and Sound'' (formerly written ''Sight & Sound'') is a monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). Since 1952, it has conducted the well-known decennial ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time. ...
'' magazine, 2002.


Notes


References


See also

*
Auteur theory An (; , ) is an artist with a distinctive approach, usually a film director whose filmmaking control is so unbounded and personal that the director is likened to the "author" of the film, thus manifesting the director's unique style or thematic ...
*
Film theory Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for und ...
*'' What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael'' *''
Mank ''Mank'' is a 2020 American biographical drama film about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and his development of the screenplay for the 1941 film ''Citizen Kane''. It was directed by David Fincher based on a screenplay written by his lat ...
'' * Revisionism


External links


Original essaysat the ''New Yorker''
{{Citizen Kane 1971 essays American essays Citizen Kane Essays about film Mass media-related controversies in the United States The New Yorker articles Works about Orson Welles Conspiracist books Books about individual films Non-fiction books about film directors and producers