The Citizen Kane book by Herman J. Kael, Pauline; We...

On the other hand, whether Welles read it before or after I met him is something I’ll never know. I was delighted to discover that the following review is included in the collection of Welles’ papers purchased from Oja Kodar that are now housed at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I also happen to think that this essay is superior, as prose and as argument, to anything else ever published under Peter’s name. Of course, Peter knows far better than I or Kellow do who wrote what, but one fact worthy of consideration in this matter is that he’s never reprinted “The Kane Mutiny” in any of his books (apart from the portions of his interview with Welles from that piece that I chose to recycle in This is Orson Welles). (See This is Orson Welles and Discovering Orson Welles for more about this extraordinary act of impersonation.) It appears that the main source of this doubtful assumption in Kellow’s book is Bogdanovich himself.

Recently I ‘ve been reading Brian Kellow’s biography of Pauline Kael, and I’m very pleased that he’s up front about the serious flaws of “Raising KANE,” factual and otherwise - but also disappointed that Kellow is unaware that “The Kane Mutiny” - signed by Peter Bogdanovich, and the best riposte to Kael’s essay ever published by anyone - was mainly written by Welles himself. My joint audio commentary with Jim Naremore on Criterion’s new KANE box set addresses some of Kael’s more dubious factual and critical assumptions. I’m not sure if this would qualify as a valid excuse, but this was the first lengthy essay about film that I ever published. Mankiewicz, seems well-supported and convincing” - a howler if there ever was one. I’m still hugely embarrassed by the assertion early in this piece that “ basic contention, that the script of KANE is almost solely the work of Herman J. From the Spring 1972 issue of Film Comment this is also reprinted, with a lot of contextual material, in my 2007 collection Discovering Orson Welles (where I’ve also retained my original title - not used by Film Comment, who ran it as an untitled review).

The Citizen Kane book by Herman J. Kael, Pauline; We...