CITIZEN KANE is back on the campaign trail, seeking victory
CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles, 1941
Film Forum
209 West Houston St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
September 5-11
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www.filmforum.com
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Citizen Kane is the best-made film we have ever had the pleasure to watch — again and again and again — and it is even more brilliant on the big screen. A young, brash, determined Orson Welles created a masterpiece unlike anything seen before or since — a beautifully woven complex narrative with a stunning visual style (compliments of director of photography Gregg Toland) and a fabulous cast of veterans from his Mercury radio days, including Everett Sloane, Joseph Cotten, Ray Collins, Paul Stewart, and Agnes Moorehead. Each moment in the film is unforgettable, not a word or shot out of place as Welles details the rise and fall of a self-obsessed media mogul. The film is prophetic in many ways; at one point Kane utters, “The news goes on for twenty-four hours a day,” foreseeing today’s 24/7 news overload. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen it and you know what Rosebud refers to; the film is about a whole lot more than just that minor mystery. Like every film Welles made, Citizen Kane was fraught with controversy, not the least of which was a very unhappy William Randolph Hearst seeking to destroy the negative of a film he thought ridiculed him. Kane won only one Oscar, for writing — which also resulted in controversy when Herman J. Mankiewicz claimed that he was the primary scribe, not Welles. The film lost the Oscar for Best Picture to John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley, but it has topped nearly every greatest-films-of-all-time list ever since. However, after being number one on Sight & Sound’s poll that comes out every ten years (in 1962, 1972, 1982, 1992, and 2002), Citizen Kane has shockingly been beaten out this year by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 thriller Vertigo, which has been climbing the Sight & Sound spiral staircase from number 7 in 1982 to number 4 in 1992 and number 2 in 2002 after not having even made the top ten in 1962 and 1972. Film Forum is setting the two films against each other this month, with Citizen Kane screening September 5-11, followed by Vertigo, which isn’t even the best Hitchcock film, being shown September 12-18, giving everyone a chance to see just how wrong Sight & Sound, the magazine of the British Film Institute, is.
Referring to the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, Samsara is a visually stunning journey around the world, but one that will leave viewers wanting more. Director Ron Fricke and producer Mark Magidson, who previously teamed up on 1985’s Chronos and 1992’s Baraka, traveled to twenty-five countries on five continents over the course of four years, photographing famous landmarks, ancient and modern landscapes, old and new architecture, mountains, parks, oceans, cities, and many of the myriad peoples who populate the planet. Featuring an at-times overbearing score by Michael Stearns, Lisa Gerrard, and Marcello de Francisci and no narration or titles whatsoever to show what’s on the screen, Samsara can be breathtaking as well as confusing as the images roll by, shot in 70mm and projected digitally at 4K. Threads of narrative weave their way into the film, including sections on religion, war, poverty, and food production, exploring the Buddhist ideas of interconnection and impermanence, although the unfolding “story” appears most often to be somewhat random. And oddly, individuals regularly stare directly into the camera for uncomfortable periods of time, as if accusing the viewer of something that is not necessarily clear. Fricke and Magidson, who both edited the film, take the audience to such locations as Epupa Falls in Angola, Paraisopolis Favela in São Paulo, Mariesminde Poultry Farm in Denmark, Château de Versailles in France, Kanikwei Coffin Shop in Ghana, Thiksey Monastery in India, Kawah Ijen Sulfur Mine in Indonesia, Teatro Alla Scala in Italy, the Tsuchiya Shokai Doll Factory in Japan, Petra in Jordan, cliff dwellings in Mali, Mingun Temple in Myanmar, Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Cebu Provincial Detention Center in the Philippines, the demilitarized zone in South Korea, Cascade Go-Go Bar in Thailand, Cappadocia in Turkey, Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai, the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, and Aadlen Bros. Auto Wrecking in Sun Valley, among so many other fascinating sites that reveal a wide expanse of what is going on in the world. Prisoners dance, cars whirr down elevated highways, chickens get slaughtered, tribes from Ethiopia and Namibia live off the land, poor children pick through garbage, a man stands next to his robot double, and a group of Buddhist monks make an exquisite sand painting. Yet as fascinating as Samsara can be, it still feels somewhat lacking, as if it could have been better in IMAX 3D (even if that wasn’t a logistical possibility), and the scarcity of detail supplied about the places visited is frustrating in today’s info-rich society.
In September 1983, innovative saxophonist and Fort Worth, Texas, native Ornette Coleman received a key to the city of his hometown and then helped open the new Caravan of Dreams arts center by performing the world premiere of “Skies of America,” a specially commissioned work that teamed Coleman and his band, Prime Time, with the Forth Worth Symphony. Director Shirley Clarke uses this celebratory event as the central focus of her 1985 documentary, Ornette: Made in America, which is being rereleased in a beautiful new 35mm restoration overseen by Milestone Films as part of its continuing Project Shirley, which began earlier this year with a dazzling new print of Clarke’s 1962 film about jazz and drugs,