The Making of "Citizen Kane" [Hardcover]

Robert L. Carringer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 12, 1985

Citizen Kane, widely considered the greatest film ever made, continues to fascinate critics and historians as well as filmgoers. While credit for its genius has traditionally been attributed solely to its director, Orson Welles, Carringer's pioneering study documents the shared creative achievements of Welles and his principal collaborators. The Making of Citizen Kane, copiously illustrated with rare photographs and production documents, also provides an in-depth view of the operations of the Hollywood studio system.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ever since Pauline Kael wrote her controversial essay "Raising Kane" (available in print in her omnibus collection For Keeps), film fans and scholars have debated the "authorship" of Citizen Kane. Most audiences and critics agree that it is one of the greatest American movies, but Kael claimed that the genius behind Kane was not writer-director-producer-actor Orson Welles, but coscenarist Herman Mankiewicz. Others attribute the film's power to the influence and contributions of John Houseman or the incredible innovations of cinematographer Gregg Toland. In this superbly researched book, Robert Carringer proves conclusively that Kane is not the product of any individual artist, but the collective work of a brilliant team working under Welles's supervision. Without Mankiewicz, Toland, and the talented designers and technicians who worked on the film, Kane could never have become what it is. As Carringer covers each step of the film's production, from conception to final release, he leads readers through the enormously complex process of making a great movie. He also provides an introductory chapter about an unfilmed project Welles worked on before Kane, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In his concluding chapter on The Magnificent Ambersons, Welles's follow-up to Kane, Carringer argues that the latter film suffered precisely because its collaborators failed to achieve the artistic harmony that had made Kane so successful. --Raphael Shargel --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

It seems that the moviegoing public just can't get enough of Orson Welles and Charlie Kane (see Video Reviews, this issue, p. 98). Carringer's 1985 volume offers and a nuts-and-bolts description of Kane's production. This revised and updated edition has been enlarged to include a new preface, new photos, and a discussion of Welles's second feature, The Magnificent Ambersons. Though volumes on Orson and Kane abound, this "is well researched and generally well written" (LJ 7/85). Considering Kane's importance to American film, this is essential for all movie collections. If you're talking movies, you're talking Kane.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 180 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (June 12, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520053672
• ISBN-13: 978-0520053670
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #877,463 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars who could resist this, April 1, 2000

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[e-mail] - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Making of Citizen Kane, Revised edition (Paperback)

Who could resist the behind the scenes making of the greatest movie of all time. This book is excellent it covers every thing you need or would want to know about the film. It is very well told and crafted. If you loved the movie you'll be fascinated by this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars easily the best book about Citizen Kane!, June 24, 2003

By 

Cubist (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Making of Citizen Kane, Revised edition (Paperback)

Carringer's exhaustive tome on the making of Orson Welles' signature film covers all the bases: from its rocky road to inception (covering Welles' fascinating attempt to adapt Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS into a movie) to every conceivable aspect of the production and post-production. This is required reading for any Welles fan and an invaluable tool for anybody who has to write an essay on CITIZEN KANE.

Carringer's writing style is engaging and eloquent without being too academic. He doesn't bombard the reader with a million esoteric film terms but instead instills his prose with an infectious passion for his subject. Reading this book will make you want to re-discover KANE all over again -- which is what a good film book should do!

This is a great companion book with the awesome two-DVD set of KANE that was release a little while ago.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Must-read for fans of the film and Welles, though Carringer's thesis is debatable, September 13, 2009

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Muzzlehatch (the walls of Gormenghast) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Making of Citizen Kane, Revised edition (Paperback)

This is certainly a must-read for anybody interested in the film; rather than a day-by-day, action-by-action accounting of the filming process (which would make for a vastly longer book, and a very tedious one for all but the most die-hard), Carringer has produced a very readable yet reasonably technical overview of how Orson Welles came to the project in the first place and how the collaborations between the then 25-year-old cinema neophyte and several much more experienced collaborators (chiefly composer Bernard Herrmann, cinematographer Gregg Toland, screenwriter Herman J Manckiewicz and art director Perry Ferguson) helped to result in one of the greatest of all Hollywood films.

This is no simple accounting of what these talents contributed, though; Carringer has a thesis, that Welles produced his greatest work while in collaboration with a cadre of equals -- that in fact, far from the product of an all-seeing auteur, CK is a summation of the Hollywood studio system, and the most completely successful of the director's films as a result. His short discussion of the problems with the director's second film, "The Magnificent Ambersons" shows his opinion even more blatantly; it's one I happen to disagree with, as I value Welles' later independent productions just as highly as Kane, but he does make his points with some conviction, and in any case given that his focus is here is otherwise almost entirely on "Kane" and the discarded projects that came before it, not worth getting into. At any rate, worth the read for anyone interested in the director or in how big studio productions developed in the "Golden Age."