The Latest Hollywood Hatchet Job On Orson Welles

Orson Welles was the boy wonder. He achieved miracles. And then he made Citizen Kane, and then to achieve anything at all again became a miracle.

Famously, Welles had to contend with studios butchering his films. The Magnificent Ambersons was the first of them. Later he labored years on projects he couldn’t find proper funding or support for, including The Other Side of the Wind, finally completed and released via Netflix only a few years ago. And now Netflix touts Mank, in which the genius of Citizen Kane itself is ascribed to Herman Mankiewicz. 

Mankiewicz and his family (Tom, even TV host Ben) were a part of the Hollywood establishment. Quite obviously, Welles was not. The film Welles is sometimes best known for these days is The Third Man, which he starred in but did not direct. The insidious nature of the continuing campaign against Orson Welles is such that people don’t even watch Citizen Kane. It’s a critical darling, after the fact, that’s occasionally listed as the best film ever made, but still not a popular one. And anytime it slips from the critical radar, it becomes that much easier to ignore completely. Or rewrite, as it were.

And internet people with opinions (surely an epithet) will talk about Mank as if it actually achieves something. I’ve read from one such voice its Welles is a better one than the real Welles, which is exactly the level of absurdity it’s likely to provoke. Its director, David Fincher, and its star, Gary Oldman, certainly have distinguished pedigree. I just don’t understand why either would so eagerly hitch their wagons to such a project. And it might even shed light into how Citizen Kane was conceived. But not written. Not created. That was Orson Welles. Herman Mankiewicz never approached that level of achievement, before or after. Orson Welles did, with every project he ever pursued.

And we’re supposed to be happy denying that. We’re supposed to marvel at this other guy, this Hollywood hack, in a biopic that attempts to frame him as the real hero of the most sensational movie ever made, the pinnacle of a career that not only chased greatness but accomplished it repeatedly, despite every obstacle. And industry obstruction. Now including posthumous effort. Of which Mank, sadly, may be only the beginning.