RKO 281

Very interesting movie about the battle to get Citizen Kane made has carved out a tricky niche for itself; the movie is going to be most interesting to fans of Welles and Kane, and those people are going to have such specific expectations about what the movie should be that they can't be satisfied.

I see a number of reviews here complaining that this movie doesn't show why Kane was a great movie, but that's not the movie that was being made. It is a short movie about a specific struggle, with brief glimpses into the filming, and unless it had been titled, "RKO 281: The Making of Citizen Kane," you can't fault it for not spending an hour on Welles innovations.

The film is entertaining, Schreiber is a good Welles and Malkovitch is also quite good. I note people also complain that the movie isn't all that accurate. I do wish the film had done a better job with Marian Davies, as one hears her described as fantastically charming and loved by Hollywood (it has been said that Welles' flaying of Davies did more to bring out the knives of the Hollywood press than his portrayal of Hearst). But come on, how can one complain about liberties taking with reality in a movie made about Welles, who loved taking liberties with reality?

The key to enjoying this film is in being able to divorce yourself from the idea that this is an accurate representation of the making of Citizen Kane. RKO 281 as a stand-alone film is not bad, though the short running time left me feeling like I'd only seen the primary colors of what could've been a rich piece of fiction.

And it does feel more like fiction than truth.

Watching RKO 281 as a Welles enthusiast was a struggle. Welles himself was such a unique *presence*, a magician in more ways than one, and Liev Schreiber just doesn't evoke the god-like charisma and fury that were manifestations of Welles' particular genius. I would've preferred Vincent D'Onofrio (who pulled off an excellent Welles in Ed Wood after only two weeks of preparation) or even Oliver Platt. It is important to get the "character" of Welles RIGHT in a movie about his masterpiece. If RKO 281 failed egregiously on any level, it's this one.

Though this film is about the MAKING of Citizen Kane, it doesn't address why Citizen Kane had such an impact later in its life. We know that Welles had to fight very hard to save his picture against a variety of political agendas. However, a hard-won battle does not a classic film make...on its own. The only clues we get from RKO character Welles are his passionate and other-worldly exclamations along the lines of, "I just KNOW this is the MOMENT for this story!--Everything I AM is in this film!", etc. It's too mystical for me, and I think it does an injustice to the efforts of Welles and his collaborators to suggest that it was simply the luck (and maliciousness towards Hearst) of a spoiled boy wonder that made what is widely considered to be the best movie of all time.

Welles was in a unique position during that era. He had carte blanche in the movie studios--a status unprecedented before or since--and had the means to create his vision fully to his specifications. Getting the picture *released* was nothing short of a miracle, however, and I think it would've been interesting to dive into yet another layer of what Citizen Kane represents: Art for Art's sake. It's heartbreaking to note that Welles' subsequent film The Magnificent Ambersons was butchered beyond recognition by the studio--those who were fortunate enough to view Welles original (and now lost) cut thought that Ambersons was his true masterpiece, that Citizen Kane was merely a warm-up (!!!). Can you just imagine what this man could've accomplished if only...?

Which brings me to William Randolph Hearst. RKO 281 barely scratches the surface of how powerful Hearst was at the time. The residual effects of his attempt to stop Citizen Kane's release were felt by the film industry (and by Welles in particular) for many years after, and I would've liked to see the nature of this confrontation more clearly.

I've often said that Citizen Kane was Orson Welles' bane and salvation, for we see in hindsight that he sacrificed himself (and ultimately his future)

to earn a beautiful and tragic place in cinematic history. Overall, I wanted an edgier, darker, and more complex account of RKO 281. If I remove all pre-conceived notions and expectations, I find that this docudrama is interesting and fun to watch, but ultimately, I cannot help being drawn back to what made this 1999 film possible: the tumultuous triumph of a long-shot movie as envisioned by a temperamental, inexperienced genius. There are many shadowy folds to the real story of Citizen Kane, and RKO 281 feels like a bowl of plastic fruit in comparison.

You've probably read a lot of other comments, so I'll spare you the details of what "RKO 281" is about.. rather, my comments pertain to made-for-HBO films, particularly this one..

HBO's movies always strike me as a cut above the usual made for the small screen fare, but just a notch below being theatrical quality. There's a strange feeling of being manipulated, that I get from almost all their films, especially biopics like this one, "Truman", and their latest "Path To War" which they're running this month. HBO likes to take on monumental, historical characters, like Orson Welles, Harry S Truman, and LBJ, but seems to always surround them with characters who are portrayed as being slightly dumb, and made to look like fools, on purpose. It's as though HBO is telling us to look back into history and laugh at how naive and silly people were in decades past.. look at the dumb clothes they wore, the silly hairstyles, their mannerisms, while at the same time idealizing them..

In these kinds of films, cars are never dirty or dented. People never flub their words when speaking to each other. Homes and offices are always a paragon of cleanliness. Everything looks brand new. Staged. Too perfect.. Okay, perhaps realism is not what we want in our movies.. we live in homes that have dirty dishes in the sink and rumbled towels in the bathroom, and stacks of magazines on the tables.. but there ARE period films in which the "lived in" look IS quite well done.. witness Bob Raefelson's "The Postman Always Rings Twice."

While the set and art direction of "RKO 281" is stunning, everything is beautiful to look at: all the vast, wood-panelled offices of the Hollywood moguls, somehow, everything has an artificial look to it.

And then, there's Liev Schreiber's portrayal of a young Orson Wells.. Again, sometimes HBO can create a convincing lookalike - Gary Sinese as Harry S Truman was right on the money, Michael Gambon as LBJ comes sort of close, but doesn't quite ring true, but Schreiber simply doesn't look or sound anything like Orson Welles did. Welles had a booming baritone voice, an in-your-face style of projecting his words, and a simply riveting screen presence. Schreiber's lack of a jaw, and his delivery simply never convinced me that this man was Orson Welles.. This is not to take away from Schreiber's acting abilities at all.. he was simply the wrong actor for the part. And since he is the centerpiece of the film, the entire film suffers because of his weak Welles clone..

However, "RKO 281" _is_ worth watching, if just for the lush sets and atmospherics, and the far too few glimpses we get of the making of "Citizen Kane." But again, HBO made this film as a drama, not a documentary, and a drama relies on conflict.. and thus the film concentrates on the clash of personalities, not the creation of the best film ever made..

Intended as a feature film with an entirely different cast, RKO 281 is an HBo movie purporting to telling the story of Orson Welles making Citizen Kane.

Obviously because it's a film in a limited time frame, many events had to be simplified and scenes made up. I won't go through everything that is incorrect. Suffice to say the film depended on a lot of urban legend and rumors rather than real facts.

Citizen Kane was supposedly the story of the newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. Welles (Liev Schreiber) vehemently denied this at the time. No one knows what was in his mind because he had absolutely no choice but to deny it, whether or not it was true. Hearst, here played by James Cromwell, wants the film suppressed. By having Louella Parsons make inflammatory comments about the moguls in his paper, they were soon ready to buy the film from RKO and destroy it. Free speech won, but Hearst refused to have any of his papers publicize Kane, advertise it, or review it.

What hurt Hearst most of all was that the role of Susan Alexander, supposedly based on Marion Davies (Melanie Griffith), was an alcoholic. He told someone (this wasn't in this movie) that what crushed him was "the drinking." The film did hurt the image of Marion Davies - for years many believed she was a no-talent drunk whose career was totally because she was the mistress of a powerful man.

In truth, something else not mentioned in this movie, is that there were two moguls who had done something similar as Kane did in the film. Samuel Insull built the Chicago Opera House, and a tycoon named Harold Fowler McCormick promoted the opera career of his second wife. This suggests that Kane was, in fact, a combination of men. Marion Davies was a talented comedienne. She truly loved Hearst and when he hit bottom, she was there with financial and emotional support. And rather than help her career, he hurt it due to the types of roles he wanted her to play, and she retired from films in 1937.

As far as the background squabbles, these were complicated. The actors, Richard Dreyfuss as George Schaefer, John Malkovich as Herman Mankiewicz, David Suchet as Louis B. Mayer, Liam Cunningham as Gregg Toland, were all marvelous.

Melanie Griffith I feel was miscast, coming off like a bimbo, which I don't think Davies was; and how anyone could cast Anastasia Hille as Carole Lombard is beyond me. Wrong.

And Rosebud? It seems odd, but not impossible, I suppose, that someone knew Hearst's pet name for part of Davies' anatomy. But since the early story of Kane is actually closer to the story of Herman Mankiewicz's childhood, and since Welles denied that the film was about Kane, why put something so obvious in the film? No one will ever know, but needless to say, that story spread like wildfire.

Liev Schreiber is excellent as Welles - no one was cast to look like the characters they played -- but I question the characterization of Welles in the script as a man afraid of being exposed as a fraud and not a boy wonder. He was coming off of huge success in New York and great notoriety with War of the Worlds. He was 25 years old. Twenty-five year-olds are invincible, immortal - the world hasn't had its way with them yet. Welles was a supremely confident young man and probably arrogant to boot, sleeping with the gorgeous Delores del Rio and having carte blanche at RKO. I don't buy any insecurity.

Nevertheless, I found this movie very entertaining and extremely well acted, and it gives some insight about how the powerful Hearst attempted to manipulate his world via the press.

Another reviewer already stated it very nicely. To enjoy this, you have to detach from thinking this is close to the truth. This is a dramatization and it is meant to tickle you, to tell a story. Sort of something Orson Welles liked to do. It is still based on certain things that happened while he tried making this major movie - for some even the best movie ever made. Whatever you think of Citizen Kane, you can't deny it's technical progress and thinking - how Welles used so many things to make a drama that touches on so many things.

Liev Schreiber is doing a fine job overall, though some might feel he could have been ... I guess crazier in his depiction. But we are supposed to root for our main character, so there goes that. Overall the acting is more than decent - especially for TV movies of that era. So if you are looking for light entertainment and are not up for the "real" documentary (which is Battle for Citizen Kane, which was an episode of a show), this will be more than fine enough a watch. If you are already aware of certain things it might help enjoy the movie - but as I initially said, you may also be annoyed by what the movie chooeses to show. Drama will be drama .. you need a bit of suspense sometimes