The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

60 Peter Bogdanovich
everything they had ever done becomes more intimate. I mean I recognized
Orson in it very strongly ’cause it was him; the performance reminds me of
him at times.
Where specifically in the film?
Bogdanovich: That moment about his mother is still the most touching
moment in the picture, when he talks about her to Susan Alexander. She
says, “You know what mothers are like,” and it just cut to him, and he says,
“Yes.” Good moment.
Now do you think the film takes on different dimensions when it’s given
its perceived parallel to Welles’s own life?
Bogdanovich: I don’t think it has that much of a parallel to Welles’s own
life. I never saw that.
What about the parallel of the “boy wonder” who has this success early
and then loses it all. Hell, people have written the same thing about you.
Bogdanovich: Well, they say it about a lot of people. Kane wasn’t really
like that; Kane didn’t have early success and then have it taken away from
him. He had power until he died. Different story. I don’t think there’s any
parallel between Kane and Orson. Kane is not an artist; Kane is a plutocrat.
He’s not misunderstood or a genius.
Almost the entire cast was brought over from Welles’s Mercury Theatre.
How do you think that’s reflected in the film, in the performances?
Bogdanovich: It has cohesion and a kind of unity from an ensemble that’s
worked together in theater and radio. He was able to get that subtleness, the
way the actors played with each other, the overlapping, all of that. A lot of
them were familiar to each other.
One of the other things I like about this is just the pace of the writing,
and it was, as you said, the first modern film. Welles shared the Oscar
for Best Original Screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz. Do you think
that was vindication for him or—