Raising Kane again
My video store is pretty lame when it comes to stocking the classics so I was a bit taken-a-back to see a DVD of Citizen Kane on the shelf, a pretty good print too. At least as good a print as the last time I saw it projected and as good as I think you could get with out digitally restoring it.
The guy who owns the video store commented that he’d never seen it and had been meaning to watch the DVD. It’s a shame he’ll most likely never see it projected—this is one of those movies that you just haven’t seen until you’ve seen it projected onto a 30 foot high screen in a big dark room.
I first saw Citizen Kane in the—now long gone—Manly Silver Screen one Friday night at a Midnight to Dawn session. I guess I was about 15 or 16 years old and had never heard of the film but was totally in awe of it—especially Gregg Toland’s stunning cinematography.
I used to own a great book which contained the screenplay, the shooting script and the controversial essay Raising Kane by Pauline Kael… so I went looking for Raising Kane and Peter Bogdanovich’s rebutal The Kane Mutiny on the web.
I found someone who had transcribed Raising Kane but had a hard time trying to read the Frontpage formatting so I’ve re-coded it and mirrored it here. It’s now got actual headings and other goodies but most importantly it’s formatted so I can read it.
It’s a shame that I couldn’t find Peter Bogdanovich’s piece too as Kael makes a number of assertions that Bogdanovich and Welles disagreed with. What I found more fascinating in her aticle however was all the stuff about Herman Mankiewicz—what an amazing guy.
