RKO 281 (2000)

Simply Perfect

A lot of fun.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The myth of "Citizen Kane" outruns the reality in this snazzy, highly fictionalized presentation of the origination of, and subsequent fallout from, Orson Welles' cinematic triumph.When we first see young Orson, he is lighting his own birthday candle, at a party consisting of himself and his bedridden mother. "You were made for the light," she tells him. Becoming a young man, Welles (Liev Schreiber) lands in Hollywood with a film contract and a reputation as a "boy genius" with no film to his credit. Orson casts about for a film to launch him properly, and finds it at the mansion of the crusty plutocratic publisher William Randolph Hearst (James Cromwell) and his mistress Marion Davies (Melanie Griffith).Welles played fast and loose with the truth in his lifetime. So does "RKO 281." In "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," director John Ford famously had a scene where the facts of a case are disregarded so a newspaper can "print the legend." Welles was a student of Ford's, as "RKO 281" reminds us, and we get similarly legendary moments here presented as life.Welles and Hearst clash memorably in a couple of chance meetings. Hollywood executives are threatened by Hearst into trying to buy "Citizen Kane" in order to destroy it unseen. The mysterious death of Thomas Ince is revealed to be a murder showing the extent of Hearst's dangerousness and pull.All of this is at best speculation and more likely hyperbole of the kind that Welles himself trafficked. "RKO 281" thus obscures the real historic record, but director Benjamin Ross and writer John Logan do so with a verve that makes it work. "Take my hand, Menk," we hear Welles tell screenwriter Joseph Menkiewicz (John Malkovich), just after pushing the guy into a pool. "We'll make history!"Schreiber doesn't look or sound much like Welles, but he has the right presence for the role and I enjoyed his performance. Nobody really convinces, yet everyone does well with their off-center parts, especially Griffith. She has the toughest role, playing Davies in the same brassy way Dorothy Comingore portrayed her counterpart Susan Alexander in "Citizen Kane" but as a completely different person than Susan Alexander was, someone who is sincerely devoted to her rich lover. Also ironic is Cromwell, effectively nasty yet more sympathetic as a foil than Welles is as protagonist. In a film celebrating Welles' genius, it's notable the uptight Hearst gets the better of Welles in their exchanges."Men like Hearst don't love," Welles sneers, blind to the fact its Hearst's love for Davies rather than his pride in his wealth and fame that fuels the old man's rage against his picture.I enjoyed the way "RKO 281" plays with your rooting interest and sends up the old-Hollywood style of Welles' day. It doesn't feel real, but it entertains, and at 90 minutes doesn't waste your time about it. That's the kind of Hollywood production everyone can enjoy.

The battle between William Randolph Hearst and Orson Welles over the latter's classic film Citizen Kane is the stuff that film history legends are made of. And after the amazing PBS documentary on it, it doesn't seem surprising that a film version would follow it. Though this film isn't a documentary and plays many things differently then they really happened, RKO 281 is an excellent film.The cast is first rate from Liev Schreiber's Orson Welles onwards. Schreiber might not do Welles distinct voice, but he captures the arrogance and genies of the young man. James Cromwell brings both menace and sympathy to William Randolph Hearst and for the two scenes in the film when these two are together you can feel the tension.The rest of the cast is just as superb. Of special mention is Melanie Griffith's performance as Marion Davies, the unfortunate victim of Citizen Kane and who becomes the reason for the battle over the film. John Malkovich, Brenda Blethyn, and the late Roy Scheider bring flesh and blood to these long dead members of the battle (writer Herman J. Mankiewicz, columnist Louella Parsons, and RKO executive George Schaefer). The production is a lavish one. The filmmakers take you to San Simon (aka Hearst Castle), the RKO sets for the film, the boardrooms of Hollwood and New York, and the homes of those involved. The effect is giving the viewer a sense of being there as film history happens. It's not of course but one gets that feeling. And now for the writing. The film is not, and does not claim to be, a documentary though it is based on the excellent PBS documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane. The events seen in the film are a mix of fact and fiction. The opening dinner party scene is questionable and the apparent motive for Welles to do the film is likely fictional. But many of the details and even chunks of dialog are real or based on real events. Indeed the final third of the film (apparently) happened almost exactly as it is seen in the film. While some might argue over this, it works in the context of the film.In short RKO 281 is fiction based on fact. From the strong performances to the lavish production values, the fiction gives the viewer a new light on the legendary battle over a classic film and how it almost never made it to the public. If you're a fan of Welles or Citizen Kane, this is a must see. If not, prepare for a journey into the battle over Citizen Kane and how it almost brought down the film industry.

i really liked this movie, even the bits with Melanie Griffith's which is something. I appreciate that people who are familiar with wells work might be a little bit more critical of the piece but i thought it was super. Liev Screiber was outstanding in the lead because he chose to play Wells as a man as opposed to simply doing an impression of an already famous face. He made Wells sympathetic and compelling even though lets face it, as the movie presents it hes not really that likable a man. Id definitely recommend it to any Liev Schreiber fans. Hearst is also presented as an unlikeable character, but Cromwell plays him with great dignity that you almost feel sorry for him.

Hate to say this, though I do, I think audiences have at last become too sophisticated for docudramas and film biographies of people who lived since the very late 19th and early 20th century, which we might term The Recorded Age. This is so very largely because a plethora of documentaries that are rich feasts of real visual source material and oral history appear every single day on cable TV. It is hard to watch anyone impersonating a figure who has been extensively recorded. I could buy Paul Muni as Louis Pasteur or Emile Zola. But I didn't buy Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman or Will Smith as Muhammad Ali. The technical aspects of impersonation are too much in the fore front of my mind as I watch, because I know too intimately, almost second nature, what the subject's style and physical presence are like. This will more often than not prove to be the case. Who can impersonate Lucille Ball or Clark Gable or Orson Welles once you have been media-saturated by the real thing? Or put another way, in this age, when we learn every facial tic and pattern of breath of really big personalities, how could an impersonator HOPE to make the original subject of a docudrama or film bio come fully to life? Because of the omnipresence of modern media, I think they are doomed to fail.Where RKO 281 succeeds --dramatically, at least, if not in terms of history-- is in giving us portraits of people who, famous though they are, have not been over-recorded, and exist more as legend or enigmas, as part of an oral tradition, than as flesh and blood people. John Malkovich's Herman Mankiewicz works beautifully because we have seen a couple of photos of the man, and have heard a lot ABOUT him, without actually having heard the man himself. Malkovich gets behind this character to a rare degree. Perhaps he identified with this three times burned out alcoholic ghost in the Hollywood machine who can walk the razor's edge because he has nothing to look forward to, and nothing to lose. And James Cromwell's playing of Hearst feels like a revelation. His Hearst is not a voluble man. In fact, he is reticent, almost withdrawn. He takes care of business, but his personality is dry and interiorized in the extreme, and he is slow to rise to comment about anything. Whether these people were really this way is another question. But while the drama is on the screen, you buy it. These roles work. (Melanie Griffith's Marion Davies is a woman child/simpleton. I still don't know what to make of that interpretation.) Liev Schreiber is serviceable, as they used to say, as Orson Welles. But truthfully, his portrayal is more than 'okay' only if you are in an especially easy frame of mind coming to the film.Early in RKO 281 there is a mock newsreel of Welles' arrival in Hollywood of the sort that opened Citizen Kane. The contrast between the care used in recreating a newsreel in the original film, and the amateurish sloppiness of this one is telling. We are good at using computers to create fantasy worlds of mythic cartoon figures. You'd think we would be able to do unprecedented things --like dead-on copying the style of a 60 year old newsreel-- if we gave it even half a try. For whatever reason (budget?) this just doesn't seem to be the case. I have seen as convincing mock-ups of old broadcasts or news film in a throw-away sketch on Saturday Night Live. I overlooked Schreiber's bizarre failed period hair that screamed out FAKE! in this mock newsreel. But, as I say, only because I wanted to watch the film. I had to start cutting it some slack in the first couple of minutes. Bad sign.