The Trailer as Mini-Movie

The other day on Facebook I put up a self-made trailer for Citizen Kane with the idea of making it a spoiler trailer of the kind that does everything but show you the climax of the film, frame for frame. As such, Rosebud is quite obviously hinted at throughout, effectively spoiling the mystery for anyone who hasn't seen it. It seems like a modern dilemma but actually trailers have been doing it for decades. Neil Sarver mentioned the trailer for The Searchers as among the worst offenders and he's right, it does play like a mini-version of the film itself leaving little surprise for the viewer in the theatrical setting. Another mini-movie is the original trailer for Jaws.

But for me, it's not just the spoiler quality of modern trailers that makes them so awful but the by-rote editing style everyone is now familiar with as exemplified in this now famous and widely seen parody of modern day trailers, found here. But it's this trailer for Avatar that I had in mind more when making mine as it has the same old action/thriller trailer editing schtick down pat: Intro to characters, slow build to story followed by short montage with quick cuts and music building towards crescendo. Then title and sometimes, as in mine, a short post-title scene before credits. And this method of trailer making is, to me, an anti-sell of the movie. I was no big fan of Avatar (see my lukewarm review) but it was better than the trailer would lead one to believe. The trailer looks like a bad sell of one of the worst video games ever conceived.

I don't watch trailers much for this very reason. They never quite sell me on a movie and make movies I might otherwise find enjoyable seem really bad. And in some cases, as mentioned earlier, Pleasantville and What Lies Beneath being two notable examples, they practically show the viewer a condensed version of the entire narrative making seeing the actual film virtually pointless (which, in the case of What Lies Beneath was probably a good thing).

Because of this "tell all" nature of the theatrical trailer I much prefer the teaser trailer, the one that gives but a hint of the movie and actually makes you want to see it. My favorite of recent years is probably Inglourious Basterds. It's entertaining and fun and most of all, once you see the film, you realize it gave away virtually nothing. But teasers don't have much of that quality anymore and seem as bad as the full trailers that often follow. And somehow, in a kind of perverse celebration of this, I plan on making more trailers for classic movies, in part to keep my editing skills up to task and in part just to see how to best make a bad trailer for the purely creative aspect of it. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoy making them. Probably not but what the hell, I'm going to make them anyway.

Here's the Citizen Kane trailer for those who didn't see it on Facebook. The sound quality's not as good as I'd like (my narration is a little too echo-chamber sounding) but that should, hopefully, improve with time. Enjoy.

Is that any way to review a movie?

Jim Emerson of Scanners has devoted several video posts to scenes from The Dark Knight in which he hopes to understand better why he dislikes the film and better explain it to those who would disagree with him. One scene in particular, the school bus escape from the bank, has been analyzed, studied and dissected in an attempt to achieve these goals. Some readers like the exercise while others feel it is overkill. I have nothing against a blogger obsessing over details, it is, in fact, what usually draws me in. I like it when I start to notice the same things being focused on again and again, whether it's a genre, a director, an editing style or a time period, by a blogger. It signals to me that they have a passion for the movies, a love of cinema, that cannot be sated by a general overview but by a veritable feast of forensic analysis. The posts by Jim signal that to me as well. It's clear to any reader who happens upon Scanners that Jim has a passion for the movies. But...

The Dark Knight posts keep bothering me. Why? I've made it clear that I didn't like the movie very much so why should I care, especially since the posts are concerned with "exposing" the movie's flaws? And yet, the posts bother me. As a budding filmmaker myself, a photographer and the husband of a successful painter I have my own ideas of what makes art work and how one should judge it. And I can't get away from the nagging feeling that you don't judge a painting stroke by stroke but as a whole. If I focus on the over sized hands and arms of the reader in Edward Hopper's Chair Car, I lose not only the feel of the whole work, but the point of art as well.

It's not about getting that human figure to be perfect in shape and size, it's about the idea the artist is expressing and that is gathered by taking the painting in as a whole, not breaking it down into digitalized pixels. This led me to imagine how one might do the same thing for a fairly celebrated film in American cinematic history, Citizen Kane. I thought it might be a tad difficult, but in actuality, it was rather easy. Given access to a DVD ripper so that one may use whichever scene one desires, anyone reading this post could probably do the same with just about any movie in existence. Let's begin.

First let's take this simple shot. It begins as an exterior shot in which the viewer sees Charlie Kane writing and Jed Leland sitting and dissolves into an interior shot viewing the same two characters from behind. Here's the clip:

Anyone who knows the language of film knows that shot is all wrong. It uses a dissolve for its transition from exterior to interior. When does one use a dissolve? Most often to emphasize the passage of time. When going from exterior to interior without a passage of time one simply cuts to the opposite shot. Okay, but what if Welles actually is implying the passage of time? What if he wants us to understand that Kane has been writing up against the window for a while now? It's still all wrong. Any director worth his salt knows that if one wants to use a dissolve to illustrate the passage of time with the same characters in the same location, then the characters positions must be moved around, for the sake of both aesthetic consideration and to not confuse the viewer. For instance, in the first exterior shot we would see Jed pacing in the background and Charlie sitting at a desk writing. Dissolve to interior as we see Charlie writing against the window and Jed sitting next to him. The passage of time has been effectively communicated. Watch this shot from Casablanca, made in roughly the same time period (within a year) of Citizen Kane. It's a two for one clip in which we first see a dissolve to illustrate the passage of time and then see an exterior shot of Ingrid Bergman on a balcony then an interior shot from the opposite angle as Humphrey Bogart opens a bottle of champagne. Here is the clip:

And there you have it. The dissolve and the exterior/interior cut demonstrated properly by director Michael Curtiz. Am I to believe that Welles was not familiar with this most basic syntax of film language? That he and his editor Robert Wise didn't understand the fundamentals of dissolve transitions? It's difficult to believe and yet there it is. When they were in the editing room, and they had the two shots before them, and knew they had to put them together, they chose to use dissolve for reasons unknown. I could argue from this single scene that Welles and his editor, Wise, were incompetent, or at the very least, poor visual storytellers. It wouldn't be true, but if I choose to isolate my criticism of the film to a series of single scenes, I could do so.

Now let's examine a different part of the movie in which the criticism goes to another criticism of The Dark Knight, heavy handedness. This writer in particular leveled that criticism against it. But look at this scene from Kane. Kane is reading his Declaration of Principles and while doing so is shrouded in shadow. How far down the educational chain would one have to travel (third grade, second, kindergarten?) before finding someone who didn't get the visual metaphor there? I've heard it discussed many times and equally praised. I've rarely if ever heard it mentioned how screamingly obvious it is, how closely it falls in line with amateur writing reaching for obvious metaphor. Here's the clip:

Now let's take a different tack: Visual clutter. The Dark Knight has been accused of this and few movies clutter up the screen like Kane. Is it beautiful or is it a mess? Let's take this clip of what I'll call The Eye of Susan. It's a transition shot from Susan's face at the picnic to a hallway in Xanadu. As the shot dissolves we see Susan's eye replaced with the eye in the stained glass. Here's the clip:

Kane is full of visual treats like this but if it doesn't go towards a better understanding of the story or character, if it serves no purpose, it's just clutter confusing the viewer with too much information. Upon listening to the commentary track of both Roger Ebert and Peter Bogdanovich during this transition it was not surprising to find that neither mention it. Most people never do. Why? Because once mentioned, meaning must be discerned and what does it mean? That Susan who is now about to leave Charlie is all-seeing? That Susan is like artwork built into the house? Neither of those is very convincing and even if they were meant to show that, by this point in the film the relationship of Charles and Susan has been made clear to the viewer without the added clutter.

Finally, let's tackle the ending. Some, including this viewer, found the ending of The Dark Knight to be a bit ham-fisted. This same criticism could be levelled against Kane. Visually, it's beautiful, as the camera pulls back finally revealing thousands of crates awaiting disposal. But listen to the dialogue. It's a classic moment of "gee thanks for the sledgehammer over the head but I think we all got that without you saying it." Here's the clip:

Since this one is dialogue specific, and some viewers may not have sound available on their computer due to their work environment here is the transcript:

Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything... I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a... piece in a jigsaw puzzle... a missing piece.

Dialogue that, with some name changes, could have been lifted straight from a high school term paper on The Great Gatsby.

So there you have it. Citizen Kane is an incompetent mess of a movie. Hammy dialogue, visual clutter, obvious symbolism and baffling editing choices. It's a wonder this movie gets any play at all. Maybe if it weren't for all those Kane fanboys we'd never have even heard of it. What a disaster.

Just as it is important for the reader of A Christmas Carol to understand that Jacob Marley is as dead as a doornail, it is equally important for the reader here to understand that I love Citizen Kane and don't believe a word of what I wrote in the preceding paragraph. But if using individual elements to critique a movie is one's method, then one can elevate or destroy anything. It's too easy. I'd rather see a full review in which the entire movie is taken into account. If you're trying to convince me a movie is not worth my time based on individual scenes you have plucked from the whole then you're not going to convince me. Art is understood from a perspective of the whole. No one praises Van Gogh's Starry Night based on the church steeple alone. No one writes essays about the fourth star from the left. Those two things might get mentioned, especially the steeple as it occupies the center of the frame, but only in the context of the whole. Telling me the school bus escape doesn't make sense doesn't tell me The Dark Knight is a bad movie. It tells me that particular scene doesn't make sense. In the meantime, I've learned nothing about the rest of the film. I've learned nothing about the themes of the film. I've learned nothing about the story, the characters or the plot's development. In short, I've learned nothing except that the critic publishing the piece knows how to pick a scene out of a film to suit his or her purpose. That way lies sophistry. And that's no way to review a movie.

Favorite Moments: The Cat's Meow

We've all seen Citizen Kane, at least I'm assuming we have. This is a movie blog and if you're coming here I figure you've seen Kane. Having not seen it would be like an art enthusiast unaware of Picasso's work or an architectural student who had never studied the Parthenon or any of Frank Lloyd Wright's designs. Likewise I'm assuming you know that Charles Foster Kane is loosely based on William Randolph Hearst and Susan Alexander on Marion Davies. And I am further assuming you know the characterizations of Kane and Alexander did not actually resemble the Hearst and Davies of real life. For one thing, Davies had talent. For another, Hearst wasn't nearly as witty.

If you've seen The Battle Over Citizen Kane, an excellent documentary on Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst that comes with collector's editions of Citizen Kane on DVD, you know Hearst was rather humorless and stiff but not as much about himself as about Marion. In fact, one gets the general feeling that if Welles and Herman Mankiewicz had cast Susan Alexander in a better light, Hearst wouldn't have given a damn about Citizen Kane being released and the movie would have had no controversy surrounding it. Welles would have taken Best Director and the film Best Picture and who knows what the rest of Welles career would have been like.

But this short post isn't about Citizen Kane but about how sixty years later, Welles acolyte Peter Bogdanovich filmed the characters again, let them use their real names and produced a film no where near the level of genius as Citizen Kane but did manage to resurrect Marion Davies from the ashes and at the same time, somehow, make Hearst look even worse. Or did he?

I much prefer Kane to The Cat's Meow , Bogdanovich's "what-if" movie about Hearst, Davies, Charlie Chaplin and the death of Thomas Ince aboard Hearst's yacht, but within the context of engaging characterizations, I much prefer Edward Herrmann's Hearst to Orson Welles' Kane. Herrmann's Hearst is a madman, a violent man and a controlling bastard. Kane could be all those things too, but Welles played him with a sturdy confidence. When he takes on Thatcher as a 21 year old the audience has no doubt who's in charge. Herrmann on the other hand plays Hearst as a jerk, yes, but a pathetic, insecure, pitiful jerk. The kind that makes you angry, and then later, you feel sorry for him.

Which brings me to this week's Favorite Moment from The Cat's Meow. It's a scene that exemplifies all of the Hearst characteristics I described above and Herrmann plays them to the hilt. The insecurity, the controlling behavior, the self-pity and finally, the sad but comfortable relief that it's all over. It's cringe inducing and I would have loved to have seen just one scene like this in Kane. Welles would've chewed it up. Enjoy (if that's the right word).

On the Set with Orson

"This is how you split a board in half fellas."

Orson directing the Chronicle Staff for the upcoming photo shoot.

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"Okay boys we got a lot of papers to deliver. Remember, this paper route is paying for the movie."

The famous shot of Kane surrounded by a sea of papers is set up.

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"Wait a minute, where'd you get this? That's my bracelet."

Orson discusses costuming while a shorn Everett Sloane looks on.

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Thing from the Addams Family adjusts the light.

Orson watches the rushes (or dailies) with an absolutely exhausted looking Joseph Cotten.

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"You can see the ladies shower across the soundstage."

Using the viewfinder to set up the shot. Orson worked hand in hand with his cinematographers to achieve the visuals he wanted.

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"I can't believe you just called FDR and asked to speak to I.P. Freely."

Not sure what Erskine Sanford finds so funny but Orson seems amused.

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Thing to the rescue again, this time with the camera.

Orson with cinematographer Gregg Toland behind the camera.

Under False Pretenses

(Spoilers Throughout)
Friday night I watched a great double feature on TCM of Gaslight followed by Bunny Lake is Missing. The two work surprisingly well together as dual studies of faux and real insanity, the first being faux the second being real. While I enjoyed watching both again immensely what got me to thinking was a scene near the end of Bunny Lake. Carol Lynley quietly makes her way from the "crazy off his rocker" Keir Dullea at the end, walking and walking and walking while we see Keir confused and peeved near the slide at the playground. She gets to a greenhouse and hides Bunny inside, then leaves and locks the door. Seconds later we see Keir was inside the greenhouse the whole time. Which means he somehow got ahead of her while we saw her within distance of the greenhouse and he on the playground, then he correctly guessed that she would hide Bunny in the greenhouse, hid himself in the greenhouse (while we still see him on the playground) and... well, you get the point. It's impossible. It's based on a premise of him out-thinking and evading her that doesn't work.

And it was okay. It was okay because the movie is interesting, involving, even captivating at times. So we forgive it. I have an old film textbook, Analyzing Films, that covers this very phenomenon, explaining that if a film is directed and edited well enough it can get away with all manner of false premise. As an example it uses Rocky. From Analyzing Films, edited by William H. Phillips:

Consider Rocky's big fight with Apollo Creed at the conclusion of the film. At age 30, with no previous major fights and after only five weeks of training, Rocky becomes the first man to knock down Creed; Rocky becomes the first man to go the distance with Creed (last all 15 rounds). In the 14th round, Rocky in fact seriously injures Creed, who begins to hemorrhage. Rocky very nearly wins the fight, losing only by a split decision (two judges voted for Creed; one for Rocky). Rocky achieves all this though his nose was broken in the first round!

The editing of the fight is handled well enough and is engaging enough that we either don't notice or don't care. In a bad movie this kind of thing drives the viewer crazy and will often be included in a critique of why the movie is so bad. Yet in a good movie it doesn't seem to matter. Which leads us to the question, "If the movie's good enough will we forgive it's plot holes?"

I would say the answer is a resounding "Yes." If a film is well enough made I don't care how many plot holes exist, or improbabilities.

One of my favorite improbabilities is from North by Northwest. The bad guys (James Mason, Martin Landau) want our man Thornhill (Cary Grant) dead and proceed in the most complicated way imaginable. In particular, he is sent to meet someone at a desolate and secluded bus stop in the middle of a vast open plain.

So what's the best way to kill someone you have purposely fooled into going to the middle of nowhere?

Simply have someone wait at the bus stop and shoot him once the bus leaves? - No.

Have a gunman drive by, slow down, shoot him and drive off? - No.

The best way of course is to hire out a crop dusting plane (easily traceable), have the plane actually release pesticide over an area with no crops so that an innocent bystander can remark how odd that is to our hero, then fly around waiting for everyone to leave until finally it can begin to chase and fire at our hero from the air, where, being in a plane and all, it's a lot tougher to hit your target.

Ah yes, that's the solution! Brilliant! To cap it all off, let's have our hero coax the plane to ground level at just the moment a truck is pulling up so the plane can crash into it. Happens all the time. And to get our hero out of here let's make sure this previously abandoned outpost is suddenly flooded with gawkers so that he can drive off in one of their vehicles.

All in all, it's patently ridiculous. And all in all, I don't care. Ever. I love the movie and love the scene too much to let such things stand in the way of a good chase. Had North by Northwest been one of Hitchcock's failures, this scene probably would have been critiqued and examined more closely but as such it stands as one of the great attempted murder/pursuits in the history of film. A false premise vanishes in the face of an expertly shot and edited movie.

Which brings us to the big one. The granddaddy of false premises. The king of impossibilities. The champion, if only because it is so highly regarded. That movie is, of course, Citizen Kane.

Any movie lover worth his or her salt has seen it, probably multiple times. And every movie lover who has seen it, and pored over it's camera work, editing and acting has noticed the same thing: No one, but no one, could have heard Kane say "Rosebud." He is very clearly alone in the room as he whispers (Whispers!) "Rosebud" on his deathbed and drops the snow globe. Then the nurse walks in. And yet the entire movie is based on the premise that everyone wants to know what his last word "Rosebud" meant. It sets the entire story in motion. Even though no one could have heard it. Later, when the butler, Raymond, says he heard it he is talking about a different occasion as Kane destroys Susan's room, and even then it's hard to believe as Kane once again whispers it and Raymond is down the hall! According to Tim Dirks at Filmsite.org some people have even gone so far as to explain this by assuming the entire film to be Kane's "life flashing before his eyes" final moments before he dies but I'm not buying it. I think that Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz simply didn't care. Or even did it on purpose to amuse themselves. After all, it would have been very easy to show a nurse sitting at the foot of the bed and when the snow globe dropped you still could have shown a second nurse entering the room. It wouldn't have affected the film in any way and would have solved the "who in the hell heard him say 'Rosebud'" mystery.

There are probably many other examples of false premises or plot holes in movies so good, or enjoyable, that the viewer forgives them every time. For me Bunny Lake, Roger Thornhill and Charles Foster Kane can engage in all manner of unbelievable set-ups and I'll forgive them every time because they charm me in so many other ways. But when hundreds of beach goers in Speed 2: Cruise Control don't notice a very slow moving cruise ship approaching the shore until the last minute and then said cruise ship plows for hundreds of yards inland, when in reality a simple sandbar or dock will stop a ship dead in its tracks, man that shit just pisses me off.

Oscar Snubs: Joseph Cotten

Okay, think of these three films: Citizen Kane, Shadow of a Doubt, The Third Man. Now try to imagine them without Joseph Cotten.

Even in Citizen Kane where his is a supporting role the two cannot be separated. Think of him in the audience during the opera. Think of him tearing away at that program and then getting drunk afterwards because he can't bear to do what he knows he has to do if he wants to live with himself: Be honest about his reaction to Susan Alexander's "talent." Think of his numb stare when Charles Foster Kane says to him, "Sure, we're speaking, Jedediah: you're fired."

Now think of Shadow of a Doubt. Think of that warm, kind and gentle uncle who seems just a bit on edge. Think of that dinner when he has this exchange with his niece:

Uncle Charlie: Women keep busy in towns like this. In the cities it's different. The cities are full of women, middle-aged widows, husbands dead, husbands who've spent their lives making fortunes, working and working. And then they die and leave their money to their wives, their silly wives. And what do the wives do, these useless women? You see them in the hotels, the best hotels, every day by the thousands, drinking the money, eating the money, losing the money at bridge, playing all day and all night, smelling of money, proud of their jewelry but of nothing else, horrible, faded, fat, greedy women.

Niece Charlie: But they're alive! They're human beings!

Uncle Charlie: Are they? Are they, Charlie? Are they human or are they fat, wheezing animals, hmm? And what happens to animals when they get too fat and too old?

Now think of The Third Man. Think of Holly Martins journeying across the landscapes of the confused, naive and bewildered to the bitter, knowing and finally resigned. Resigned to indifference. Try to imagine another actor able to navigate that terrain as well as Joseph Cotten does in that remarkable film. Think of that conversation he has with Harry Lime on the Ferris Wheel. Think of how he seems at once angry, disappointed and confused with what has become of this man who was once his friend.

Now think of this: Joseph Cotten was not nominated for one of these performances. Now take it a step further: Joseph Cotten was not nominated once for anything, ever, over his entire career. He has not a single nomination. Joseph Cotten was an actor of formidable skill and talent. He elevated the mundane and enriched the great. He was at once rural (The Third Man) and urbane (Gaslight). He was selflessly calculating (Under Capricorn) and selfishly political (The Farmer's Daughter). He was rational (The Magnificent Ambersons) and obsessive (Portrait of Jennie). He was all these things and more but he wasn't an Oscar winner.

Now think about the Oscars and how they award an honorary Oscar to those artists that they ignored during the course of their active careers. Think to yourself that surely they gave one of those to Cotten to make up for the oversights of the past.

Think again.