Screenpicks

by Sam Adams

Citizen Kane

($29.99 DVD)

The Magnificent Ambersons

(Tue., Oct. 9, 7:30 p.m., Chestnut Hill Free Library, 8711 Germantown Ave., www.armcinema25.com/tuesdaynights.html)

Orson Welles’ incendiary mock-biopic has been voted the Greatest Film Ever Made so many times that most people’s eyes glaze over as soon as you mention it. It’s like lecturing them on the health benefits of wheat germ: nice, and can you pass the salt? Though Peter Bogdanovich’s commentary is mind-bogglingly dull, often doing no more than describing the onscreen actions or repeating a memorable bit of dialogue, he does perform one great service: explaining that Kane is not his favorite Orson Welles movie. It’s a point worth arguing — sure, Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight have their proponents, but do they really measure up? — but the point is, there’s an argument to be had. Leaving Kane untouchably up on the world’s largest pedestal does no one any favors, Welles least of all.

Even 60 years after its original release, Kane is still dazzlingly inventive, playing games with the structure of the medium few have had the courage or bravado to replicate. For all its over-the-top drama and twisted psychology (which Welles himself dismissed as "dollar-book Freud"), Kane is fundamentally a young man’s movie, full of the giddy exhilaration of a brash, supremely confident artist crossing into a brand-new medium. A sensation of the New York theater (most notably for his celebrated "voodoo Macbeth "), Welles was given an extraordinarily generous contract with RKO; he called the studio "the biggest electric-train set a boy ever had." In other words, as much as he cared for self-expression, Welles was in it to amuse himself.

In commentary far more useful than Bogdanovich’s, Roger Ebert outlines the essential contributions made to Kane’s success: Gregg Toland’s deep-focus cinematography, Herman Mankiewicz’s script, Bernard Hermann’s score, the acting of Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Dorothy Comingore, Everett Sloane and others. Given the frequency with which he mentions that he’s seen Kane "dozens" of times, it’s a little irksome that Ebert can’t seem to get the name of Cotten’s character right — it’s Jedidiah Leland, not Jebidiah — but his balance of production anecdotes, history and analysis is just right, even if he does run on long enough that his comments have to be completed over the still photograph gallery. Befitting the film’s stature, Citizen Kane’s double-disc set has been tricked out with a bulging handful of other extras, including storyboards, call sheets, a guest list for the 1941 New York premiere and the dull but informative PBS documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane.

Of course, Welles’ fall is as legendary as his rise; after antagonizing press mogul William Randolph Hearst with Kane’s thinly veiled portrait of a megalomaniacal newspaper baron, Welles was blacklisted from the nation’s largest newspaper chain, and he never again had complete control and adequate financing for any of his subsequent pictures. Ambersons, Kane’s immediate successor, is still the most notorious example. RKO, which had had enough of Welles’ uncommercial instincts, waited until he decamped to Mexico (trying to make the abortive It’s All True ), then removed nearly an hour and added their own happy ending. Though the footage was never recovered, the film’s still considered a damaged masterpiece, and the Chestnut Hill Film Group’s screening offers an ideal chance to broaden your Welles knowledge.

Delving Into Hitchcock

(Oct. 10-24, County Theater, 20 E. State St., Doylestown, 215-345-6789, www.countytheater.org )

Alfred Hitchcock’s never had any trouble with his reputation, unless you count charges that he habitually mistreated his actors. ("I didn’t say actors were like cattle," he famously quipped. "I said they should be treated like cattle.") Still, for all his unassailable reputation, Hitch still provokes virulent disagreement even among his adherents, so the County’s lecture and screening series should be a lively one. Hitchcock scholar Warren Day will deliver a pair of lectures — "Everything You Need to Know About Cinema You Can Learn From Alfred Hitchcock" (Wed., Oct 10, 7 p.m.) and "Inside the Mind of Alfred Hitchcock" (Mon., Oct. 22, 7 p.m.) — and introduce screenings of two of his greatest films: Strangers on a Train (Mon., Oct. 15, 7 p.m.) and Rear Window (Wed., Oct. 24, 7 p.m.). (Strangers also screens Sun., Oct. 14 at 4:15 p.m. and Wed., Oct. 17 at 7 p.m.; Window will repeat Thu., Oct. 25 and Sun., Oct. 28 at 4:15 p.m., and Mon., Oct. 29 at 7 p.m.) Strangers in particular is worth another look, especially since Day will be showing the ending to the film’s European version, which highlights the homoerotic tension between Farley Granger and Robert Walker. For my money, it’s Hitchcock’s greatest film, but that’s just the beginning of another argument.

Voyages

(Wed., Oct. 10, 8:30 p.m., International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6570, $5)

Believe it or not, film at I-House is back, structured as a handful of overlapping weekly and monthly series. The first to debut is "French Wednesdays," which kicks off with Emmanuel Finkiel’s elliptical drama about the lingering effects of the Holocaust on present-day survivors. Continuing monthly, the series — which also features Human Resources (Nov. 14), Faat-Kine (Jan. 16), Rosetta (Feb. 13) and L’Humanité (Mar. 6) — is a little disappointing in that every one of its entries has previously played here, but it’s good to see film back at 37th and Chestnut on a regular basis, and upcoming programs offer more in the way of variety.

The Simpsons: The Complete First Season

($39.98 DVD)

Okay, it’s not exactly Citizen Kane, but the arrival of the complete, uncut and duly annotated record of The Simpsons’ first year is cause for celebration all the same. Yeah, the animation’s ragged — in his first appearance, Smithers is accidentally African-Americanized — and the pace isn’t as mercilessly hectic as the show we’ve come to love, but if you’re at all curious as to how the once-funniest show on TV got that way, this three-disc set is basically indispensable. Not only can you follow the episode-to-episode evolution, but every single one of the set’s 13 installments comes with full-length audio commentary recalling the trials and tribulations of those occasionally shaky early days. (Contrary to what it says on the back, Matt Groening only shows up for 11 of the 13 segments, but who’s counting?)

Despite the occasional missteps, the show hit its stride shockingly early with such episodes as "Life on the Fast Lane" (Marge flirts with a sleazy French bowling instructor) and "Krusty Gets Busted" (Krusty the Clown is framed for armed robbery by future recidivist Sideshow Bob). The lamentable dearth of Tracy Ullman Show shorts notwithstanding (one imagines they’ll continue to turn up one at a time on future collections), there’s a drool-inducing wealth of riches here, including episode scripts (with handwritten last-minute alterations), original character sketches and outtakes from Albert Brooks’ improvised "Fast Lane" dialogue. Best of all are scenes from the original version of "Some Enchanted Evening," the show that almost killed The Simpsons. Originally intended as the pilot and bumped to last in the first season, the show — the one with Penny Marshall as the sneaky Babysitter Bandit — came back from overseas with its animation horribly wrong; it was, as the worst insult in Simpsons-land seems to go, "cartoony." The outtakes from the original version (about two-thirds was re-animated) last only until executive producer James L. Brooks walks out of the room; even a decade later, the memories of staring in the abyss are too painful to stomach. Good thing the story’s ending is about as happy as they get.