Quentin Tarantino on Citizen Kane

Quentin Tarantino weighs in on the Kael-Bogdanovich debate surrounding Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane.

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[joestimemachine]

Citizen Kane revolutionized filmmaking. From 1941 to the present, the influence and artistry of Kane is still felt in cinema. You can teach an entire film course just on Kane alone.

Edit: I should add it's also an entertaining and thought provoking movie as well, with some of my favorite scenes in film history.

[matthewdoyle]

He’s so wrong. Kael’s essay was an attempt to diminish Welles’ accomplishment.

[azohundred]

Pauline Kael cites The Power and the Glory (1933), a film starring Spencer Tracy and written by Preston Sturges as an influence on Citizen Kane. I have seen it, and it does also begin with the death of a tycoon and looking back on his life through different character perspectives in flashbacks(the film is decent, by the way). To me, I do also believe that film may have been an influence, though it was never cited by Orson or Herman as one. With that being said, Citizen Kane differentiated itself more than enough and, in all honesty, surpassed it, and not just in cinematic moviemaking techniques, but the plot too. I do like the chiaroscuro lighting of Kane, but I always found myself compelled by the story of the man who has it all that then realizes that it won't ever give him the happiness he craved or immortalize him. There's something poetic about the rise-and-fall story, it's why we've seen it so many iterations of it from the Gangster films of the 1930's to The Godfather to Barry Lyndon and so on. This is just my two cents. At the end of the day, I still think Orson was an innovative genius, and Herman was an incredible screenwriter.

[donlitos]

Citizen Kane is universally hailed as a pinnacle of cinematic achievement, yet the conventional narrative too often credits this acclaim to the contributions of Orson Welles or Mankiewicz. In my view, the film’s transcendence lies primarily in the visionary cinematography of Gregg Toland. It is a profound oversight—even among critics and filmmakers like Tarantino—that Toland’s genius is rarely recognized today. Indeed, his impact was so critical that he was credited on-screen title card alongside director Welles, underscoring his seminal role in redefining the art of filmmaking

[buzzawuzza]

Welles made great movies for decades. If someone writes a hatchet job article on him as a person, specifically a person who actually knew him, that's one thing. But to write that he took credit for other people's work based on speculation is a shitty thing to do. The people who create controversy based on the idea of selling more papers, or these days, getting more clicks, are a drag.

[writeralbertlanier]

I read Pauline Kael's essay in a book about Kane that included the script many times more than 20 years ago.

Kael was spotlighting the major contribution of writer Herman Mankiewicz to the script of Kane.
After all, he had written the early drafts and was aware of William Randolph Hearst and His mistress Marion Davies some of the inspiration for Kane and his mistress.

I think Tarantino is being diplomatic by saying he is on Kael's side here.

[loganperry]

A very satisfying two minutes
Thanks QT & JWBS!

[importon]

I did not understand a word of what was said here

[Klarkash-Ton]

Quentin is just off base here. Kael's piece was full of proven factual inaccuracies about Mank and the writing of the script. The script drafts prove much of it wrong. And on the production side claims, I'm not sure how anyone could watch Orson's filmography, watch other films that Gregg Toland shot, and conclude that Toland was the real cinematographic voice behind the movie. Toland's contributions were massive -- which Welles repeatedly emphasized over the years -- but Kane clearly looks like an Orson Welles movie. He had a very consistent style throughout his career that shined strongly through no matter who was running the camera. Toland mentored him, helped him, and contributed massively to the movie, but he was not its visual author by any stretch.

[andrewjackdaw]

I think this movie is perfect. One of my favourite. Probably the oldest movie in my favourite group.

[StickFigureStudios]

I like Tarantino, but he is so ridiculously wrong sometimes that it is maddening.

[ogeorge]

Kael largely based her essay on, uncredited, research by an academic named Howard Suber.

[sagarbhat]

What's much more ironic is that Pauline Kael literally plagiarized Howard Suber's essay on Citizen Kane and his interviews with people associated with the film.
Orson was against the Hollywood studio system. A lone warrior funding his own films. Kicked out of Hollywood for a decade for not mentioning names of his comrades to Mccarthy.
And then we have Kael, Hollywood studio darling - funny, charming but a vicious woman.

[kokomanation]

I will always have the opinion that Citizen Kane was a visual masterpiece with great performances but the screenplay was really bad

[fireinthesky]

Kael is one of the most overrated film critics. She was a slob, often sloppy, led around by her emotions like a dog by his nose, unnecessarily acidic. Her grotesque assault on Welles is unforgivable.

[shaunrobson]

No idea what the fuck that was about. It sure as hell wasn't about CITIZEN KANE ...

[BronnyVanExcellent]

q t's film "analysis" are just re-treads of Pauline Kael, no matter how bad he blindly agrees with everything she wrote.

[lahninanwar]

Wasn’t ‘Citizen Kane’ re-released in the late 1950’s? Did French critics at that time have an influence to make it more well known?

[jk-xq]

Has anyone ever asked him about his time with Kiarostami?

[johngraves]

This really was a shallow piece, and didn't add much to my knowledge.