Orson Welles

– Radio Cinema Essay, Research Paper

Orson Welles: Radio CinemaIn the first half of the twentieth century, a little boycould conceivably have heard Orson Welles longbefore he heard of him. The year was 1937, and over the ethercame the cavernous, menacingly righteous growl “Who knowswhat evil lurks in the hearts of men. The Shadow knows. Heh-heh-heh.” A twenty-two-year-old prodigy, world wanderer, andeventually, man for all media, had assumed the radio role ofthe Shadow, alias Lamont Cranston, the man of mystery whocould “cloud men’s minds so that they cannot see him.” Thereis indeed in this description a foreshadowing of the magicaltricks and Germanic expressionism that were to go into themaking of the film Citizen Kane. Some would say that Welles became a personification ofhis Lamont Cranston character when he began making featurefilms in 1940. That is to say that his prior work with radiohad taught him much about the workings of the human psyche,and as such, he had become a master of clouding the mindsof his audience to such an extent that what they saw in hisfilms and what they experienced while seeing them were twodifferent things entirely. Penny Mintz has described OrsonWelles as an artist who, gains control our ability toorganize the barrage of stimuli that is constantly assaultingus (Weis and Belton, Film Sound 289). She goes on to saythat a careful study of Citizen Kane, reveals a progressiontoward manipulation of the viewer s powers of concentration,his visual and aural perception, and disorientation of hisspatial and temporal organization (289). In fact, some would say that without having invented andhoned his storytelling craft as part of the Mercury RadioTheater Group prior to his embarkation on the Kane project,the resulting film, and those that followed it, might wellhave found a rather bland destiny. The influences of Welles background in radio drama uponCitizen Cane and much of narrative film thereafter are quitepronounced, and with little more than a cursoryconsideration, one begins to realize the extent of thisinfluence. The first, and most superficially apparent ofthese influences can be found in many of Welles castingchoices. In Ken Dancyger s book, Robert Carringer tells usthat many roles were created with certain performers in mind,whose voices had certain expressive qualities which would bea tremendous asset to the director in the telling of hisstory. Joseph Cotton s character, Jed Leland, is sited asthe primary example of this repertory approach (The Techniqueof Film and Video Editing 77). It follows that, givenWelles background and facility in radio drama relative tohis known lack of confidence in his own screen acting abilityas described by (James Naremore The Magic of Orson Welles147); one must conclude that Welles desire to portrayCharles Kane, the film s main character, was motivated by hisdesire to shape the character personally, through vocalexpression rather than physical screen presence. Another dramatic device with which Orson Welles becameconversant in radio drama, and brought with him to CitizenKane is the use of narrator to convey ideas which couldneither be demonstrated visually or through dramaticdailogue. In fact, Welles used not one but five narrators inKane. The first, a narrator in the conventional sense,speaks in what is described by Dancyger as Movietonefashion (78). The newsreel voiceover he providesaccompanies a montage of iamges from Kane s life, in which,Dancyger speculates, language rather than images shape ideasabout [Kane s] life (78). However, one can conclude that itis the synthesis of the two which create the desiredconveyance in the mind of the viewer. That is, the imagesthemselves have no implicit meaning until they are marriedwith the narrator s words, which then catalyze, and togrtherprovoke certain abstract themes in the mind of the viewer. Just one example is the reference to images Xanadu in thecontext of Kublai Kahn and Noah. As Dancyger says, thesereferences make demonstrate the shear scale and quality ofKane s abode (78). At the same time, Welles has very subtlyplanted the notion of Kane s aspirations of power and excessby drawing comparisons to grandiose, universal figures ofliterature. Welles uses four more narrators throughout theKane, but their dramatic contributions are different; Thatcher, Leland, Bernstein, and Susan are lessforthcoming than the newsreel narrator. Theirreluctance helps to stimulate our curiosity by creatinga feeling that they know more than they are telling.(Dancyger 79)These characters, who s dramatic roles go beyond narration,are much less objective, as if there is information they mustkeep from the audience to protect themselves, and perhapseven the image of Kane himself. In addition to careful choice of cast and spokendialogue, Orson Wells adapted many of the narrative editingtechniques which he had perfected in radio drama, for use inhis films. The most readily conceivable of these adaptationswould later be dubbed the lightning mix . This techniqueinvolved the use of continuous sound to tie montage sequencestogether instead of narrative logic. The first manifestationof Welles lightning mix technique comes early in CitizenKane as a young Charlie Kane is presented with a sled andwished a Merry Christmas by his guardian, and then thepicture cuts to a shot of the same man completing thesentence, and a Happy New Year , fifteen years later, and ina different location. In real-time, only a few mome