Brody Distorts Kael

Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz

I see Richard Brody is at it again – distorting Pauline Kael’s great “Raising Kane” (The New Yorker, February 13 & 20, 1971). In his “Herman Mankiewicz, Pauline Kael, and the Battle Over Citizen Kane” (newyorker.com, November 14, 2020), he says that Kael “argued that much of what’s great about Citizen Kane in fact arose not from Welles but from the contributions of Mankiewicz and the rest of the cast and crew.” Wrong! Kael never said that. What she said is this: “Though Mankiewicz provided the basic apparatus for it, that magical exuberance which fused the whole scandalous enterprise was Welles’.” That’s the exact opposite of what Brody says she said. In case there’s any doubt about Kael’s position, she went on to say, “Citizen Kane is a film made by a very young man of enormous spirit; he [Welles] took the Mankiewicz material and he played with it, he turned it into a magic show.” Where are The New Yorker’s vaunted fact-checkers? Anytime Brody refers to Kael, he should be checked. He seems incapable of accurately stating her views.