User Reviews

... which is on the old Warner Brothers DVD of Citizen Kane and is to be ported to the planned Criterion release. Ebert talks almost exclusively about the technical achievements, where here there is a mix of personal accounts from survivors (there were plenty in 1987) and a discussion of technical issues.

RKO president studio George J. Schaefer, handpicked by the Rockefellers and backed by Sarnoff, started his tenure in 1939 after Pandro S. Berman departed. Schaefer decided that Orson Welles and his Mercury players would make a good production unit at RKO, and then began to immediately have second thoughts. Welles had several ideas before he settled on Citizen Kane. At this point Schaefer was having so many second thoughts that he told Welles to only do some tests. Welles turned out making his tests be the film itself, not wanting to be cut off at the pass. Welles knew nothing about the art of filmmaking when he arrived, and so he relied on those at RKO who did and was a quick study. How Welles took a small budget and made a big film is related by the interviewees, and some of the obstacles faced are well known (Hearst's opposition) and some are not. But the story in its entirety is fascinating.

Thirty minutes is taken up by Citizen Kane's creation, but only ten are allotted for Magnificent Ambersons, Welles' next film at RKO. This time Welles didn't have ace cinematographer Greg Toland and furthermore he had to shoot indoor shots at the old Pathe studio. There were many technical issues caused by this including the need to redub the voices in quite a few scenes, with some hilarious examples of the audio problems.

The rest of this episode is about the downfall of Welles at RKO when he is asked, as part of the war effort, to go to Brazil and make an uplifting film stressing the unification of South and North America as allies in WWII. Instead it becomes an almost documentary on Carnaval and then segues into the plight of the poor people of the country, which was a turn that neither Brazil nor RKO liked at all and Welles was shut down and booted from RKO, but so was Shaefer for that matter. To add insult to injury, it was while Welles was in South America that Ambersons was so radically cut by RKO.

Oddly enough, Welles' third film at RKO, "Journey Into Fear", is not mentioned at all. It too was cut by somebody who was not Welles and lost money. Welles was so upset by his experience at RKO it would be 1946 before he was involved in another film project in a role other than actor, the classic "The Stranger", which he directed.

Despite completing very few films for RKO, the fourth episode of "Hollywood the Golden Years: The RKO Story" is devoted to Orson Welles' contributions to the studio. His first, and most famous film was "Citizen Kane" and its success is discussed at length. I laughed when one of the interviewees called the production "innovation and inspired amateurism" and the documentary explains how his naivete actually HELPED make a unique piece of art.

Following this, the film quickly discussed "The Magnificent Ambersons" and its many problems with production...such as Welles quickly rushing off to South America before the film was 100% complete. This naturally enraged studio execs...but his complete waste of time and money in Brazil was the last straw and RKO was done with the young film genius. In essence, he was a self-sabotaging man who had a long habit of never completing film projects...though this show only focuses on his RKO films...and he had quite a few incomplete films after this as well.

I liked the episode as it did a decent job of explaining Welles without being too critical (I would have been more critical), but you also have to ask just how important all this is to RKO. I would say apart from "Citizen Kane", he actually meant very little to the history of the studio and wonder if perhaps the documentary might have been better focusing on the rest of the studio's products of the same era.