Why I Saw “Citizen Kane” When I Was Nine Years Old

The reason I begged my mother to take me to see Citizen Kane when I was nine years old was not because I was some sort of budding cineaste or junior film scholar—
it was because I was a budding special effects geek, with a bookshelf full of film books, including several on visual effects.

In their easy-to-read, yet info-PACKED book, The Saga of Special Effects (published by PrenticeHall in 1977), authors Ron Fry and Pamela Fourzon devote almost a whole chapter to the visual effects of Citizen Kane:
In the film there are oodles of matte paintings, stop-motion animation, miniatures, travelling mattes, rear projections,
and so many of the camera tricks that The Great Orson W. is rightly famous for
(and let’s not forget the contributions of editor—and future director—Robert Wise).

(BTW, The Saga of Special Effects is downloadable here)


For example, this shot of Boss Jim Gettys (directly above) looking down at Kane on the podium is a combo of about five (if not more) elements. You’ve got:
--Actor Ray Collins
--The actors on the podium
--The two groups of people standing in the aisles (which was two separate elements)
--A matte painting tying it all together


Brooklyn-born special effects pioneer Linwood Dunn (perfecter of the modern optical printer—which has been unfortunately replaced by computers…) is responsible for most of Citizen Kane’s effects.

No matter what side of the fence you’re on
—and The National Film Board of Ivanlandia admits a particular fondness, if not OUTRIGHT LOVE for ALL of Citizen Kane—
you have to admit that the flick is a technical marvel.


So of course a nine-year-old Ivan of Ivanlandia HAD to see this movie!
And it was playing in a couple of days at the [I forgot the name of the theater, but it’s across the street from Lincoln Center], which also made an appearance in Annie Hall—
It’s the theater where, if memory serves, and no, I’m not going to bother looking it up, Alvy and Annie are three minutes late to the movie—
which I thought was stupid at the time (although now I get it), because mom and I would ALWAYS arrive late to the movies—but we’d sit down in the middle of the flick, watch it to the end, and then stay in our seats until the next showing began—remember when you used to be able to do that?

So of course I loved Citizen Kane, but what’s funny is this:
Back in the day, some art and revival movie houses in NYC would not serve stuff like food or soda. But they—or rather, understanding staffers—would often let you bring snacks in.

So after getting our tickets, mom and I went to a deli and picked up some candy and nibbles. Among the purchases was a candy bar, perhaps a Snickers or Three Musketeers….

We probably started munching our junk food the moment we sat down, but it wasn’t until the lights went down and the projector started that I took out the candy bar.
Now, honestly, I was TRYING to be as quiet as I could be as I unwrapped it, so at the time I couldn’t understand why that ugly old lady with the REALLY short haircut kept turning around and going, “SHHH!”

She’d do that, and I would turn around to try and see who she was shushing.
The funny thing was, I did not realize until we were on the way home that the old bat was shushing ME! I laughed and laughed.

Lucky for both of us, I only had ONE candy bar. What would she have done if I had a bag of chips? I shudder to think.

Albert Whitlock Is God

Friends of The United Provinces of Ivanlandia know we are big fans of “old school” special effects (and that includes superior gonzo makeup effects, as well!), that is to say, pre-CGI glut effects.

Anything that showed craftsmanship and ingenuity, of a level of engineering or artistic knowledge beyond simply one skill, well, that’s the stuff!

Effects that looked like they were hard work to accomplish—something that looked like it took effort and sweat, despite limited budgets.
Effects that oftentimes needed our willing suspension of disbelief—our desire to believe in the story—

Our heroes are L.B. Abbott, Derek Meddings, Dick Smith, Gene Warren, Willis O’Brien, Wally Veevers, Rick Baker, Eiji Tsuburaya, Doug Trumbull, and a host of others, not least of all,

The Fabulous Albert Whitlock (1915-1999).
Mr. W is the matte painter’s matte painter.
More than super-scientific recreation, with a few strokes of the paintbrush, he created moods.
Albert Whitlock was a special effects man of the old school, and
there is a beauty and a grace to Whitlock's work that I've really yet to see in CGI flicks--not that they haven't come close sometimes, but whoever
was paying ILM or WETA that week still hasn't learned that some FX
shots NEED the camera to stand still.

Just because you can do a 375-degree flyby of the castle doesn't mean it should be done.
When approaching some large building, when was the last time you did a 375-degree flyby?
Right, never.

New Zealand Pete is the world’s biggest matte painting fan, and at his site he’s had several super-informative posts on Whitlock and his art (and yes, I did swipe several jpegs from NZP:
thanks!):

Whitlock & Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part One
(there are more effects in this picture than you thought!)

An exhaustive scrapbook (this will amaze you)

Other New Zealand Pete entries on Whitlock include:
Whitlock & MacArthur

And
Whitlock & Earthquake (BTW: Much in the same way old school miniatures wizard L.B. Abbott—
who worked on ALL of Irwin Allen’s flicks: Abbott inferno’ed the tower, flipped the Poseidon, and piloted the Seaview—was in charge of in-house effects for Twentieth Century Fox,
Whitlock was the in-house genius for Universal Studios—which is why Big Al W.
got a major credit on a lot of flicks that only had one or two matte painting effects, like Michael Winner’s The Sentinel,
Michael Ritchie’s The Island, Eliot Silverstein’s The Car, John Carpenter’s The Thing, or Paul Schrader’s Cat People.

Not to say that Whitlock’s work wasn’t always welcome, and not trying to begrudge him some public recognition, but for example—I remember when I was a troubled youth going to see The Thing on its opening weekend (the same weekend as Blade Runner—which I went to see the same afternoon!), and being a tad disappointed that with such large credit placement (Whitlock was mentioned on The Thing’s poster!),
he only contributed to about one scene:
the flying saucer discovery—which is still awesome, and is perhaps a bad example to use,
but my point is that with such a prominent credit placement, mentally disturbed adolescents with a special effects fixation (me!) would feel disappointed that,
after his effects-laden work in flicks like Earthquake, The Wiz, The Hindenburg (more on that in a moment) and 1981’s History of the World Part One,
these other flicks would only have one or two matte shots, and sometimes, as in The Sentinel, the FX are completely unobtrusive and almost unnoticeable (which is to his credit, I’ll admit; Whitlock painted a series of apartment buildings and other outdoor locations to make it seem as if the film was all shot on location).

And this is after knowing that Whitlock often provided a slew of paintings and effects for a film, like Colossus: The Forbin Project, and only gets a tiny credit—
if one at all (Whitlock’s work in Diamonds Are Forever is uncredited, as are his great efforts in Hitchcock’s The Birds).
Anyway, blah-blah-blah; I always need to complain about something…

Whitlock really loved those castles (and mental institutions and Air Force radar installations) by the sea….






Star Trek owes much of its intergalactic architecture to Whitlock





“Oh, the humanity!”
The Hindenburg (1975)
Cast & Credits


The Robert Wise-directed The Hindenburg, released at the tail-end of the early- and mid-1970s “Disaster Movie” trend (a glorious genre of flick, if you ask me!),
is undoubtedly
Whitlock’s masterpiece.

His effects for Earthquake were flashier, and his later effects were “better,” but The Hindenburg really shows Whitlock's elegance.

Wise and Whitlock had worked together previously on the another Universal release, The Andromeda Strain (1971).

For The Hindenburg,
I’d say 99% of the shots of the mighty zeppelin, both inside and out, were matte paintings.
And they are perfect—in the sense that the matte paintings aid in transporting us to a bygone day of air travel that will never exist again; Whitlock’s matte paintings aren’t just details, they are moods and memories.

The film is a great/cheesy disaster/suspense/soap opera movie, based on a screen-story by the creators of Columbo.
George C. Scott is restrained as a "good" Nazi, Anne Bancroft is a hoot as an opium-smoking contessa, and there's practically every character actor you can imagine in a part (but no Elisha Cook, Jr! What the?!?).

The script strives for a "Casablanca of the Air" feeling, and sometimes succeeds.
Most of the exposition can be tuned out, and you can sit back and enjoy familiar faces sliding through a wonderfully designed film—
with several genuinely suspenseful, effects-heavy sequences.

Definitely one of the last products of the "Old" Hollywood—
director Robert Wise, a Hollywood veteran, brings a strong 1940s vibe—
The Hindenburg is especially worth a look for any nostalgia buffs.

The Inadvertent Psychedelia of GORGO

The National Film Board of Ivanlandia loves it some giant monster movies!
Whether from the sci-fi, fantasy or horror genres, movies about big, BIG monsters are always in heavy rotation at the Imperial Palace.

We’re really looking forward to the upcoming release of such flicks like Monsters, Skyline and The Troll Hunter.

Monsters from the Land of the Rising Sun
predominate the cinematic landscape by sheer volume.
And Yankees get the silver medal due to so many dinosaur movies,
but our Limey cousins haven’t really been on the scene but occasionally—and then it’s something like Konga, a flick I don’t remember liking.

But recently, out of curiosity, The National Film Board of Ivanlandia screened Gorgo, and WOW!
This has got to be one of the most inadvertently psychedelic flicks—on par with Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster for bizzarro mash-up of LSD and kaiju, but more inadvertently.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote about seeing big lizards when he was wigged out on LSD, and now here’s a movie about a big lizard that feels like it was made for people to watch while really fucking high.

GORGO (1961)
After an immense underwater earthquake/volcanic explosion in the North Sea, a couple of salvage divers capture a 50-foot-tall dinosaur/monster off the coast of Ireland.

Unlike Gojira or Gamera or The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Gorgo wasn’t frozen or in suspended animation, but rather the Gorgosauruses lived in some sort of giant cavern underneath the ocean floor—some strange mega-ecosystem from prehistoric times—and after the quake, the Irish waters are filled with weird, dead jurasssic-esque fish—
indicative of what the Gorgos were eating?
Or just cool stuff? Like the parasites in Cloverfield, a monster also from the ocean floor (or outer space, depending on whom you’re listening)?

Back to the story:
Blowing off requests from Irish museums and zoos, the divers make a very lucrative agreement with a circus-sideshow to exhibit the beast in London.

Kept in an electrified pit, the monster—now called “Gorgo” by the circus promoter (after the mythological Gorgon)—is a big hit with sell-out crowds.

But sadly, most ticket buyers aren’t there to marvel, but to jeer and sneer at a chained and shamed unique natural wonder.

Then the divers and the circus promoter get a warning: what they captured is a child—in fact, practically a newborn!
When it becomes an adult, it will be about 200 feet tall, the biologists say.
Then they realize, if this is the baby, where’s the mommy?

Meanwhile, back at the island off Ireland where the baby Gorgo was captured, a very large adult version shows up, wrecks the place, and starts following the spoor her offspring left behind.

Along the way, she trashes the British Navy, and gets to London, the town that put her little baby in a pit to be laughed at by a bunch of slobs and dumbasses.
Mommy’s not happy…


A lot of folks consider Gorgo to be a kid’s film, and while I don’t necessarily agree, I’ll concede that it’s a point that’s hard to argue against:

First, the film presents a child-viewer surrogate in young Sean,
the 10-year-old islander who warns the divers not to disturb the beasties (but is ignored, like most kids are ignored), and
later the child-viewer stand-in becomes baby Gorgo—which ties in a young child’s feelings of persecution and helplessness, as well as body image or feelings of self-worth: “I’m a monster.”

The child-like perspective the film brings aids in its emotionality—you feel bad for baby Gorgo being teased, and when Mama Gorgo shows up, you cheer (and the way Gorgo is filmed, it gives the impression that the more they shoot at Mama, the angrier she gets—like Mongo in Blazing Saddles, “shooting only makes him angry,” and since the audience can see that—while the puny humans in the movie can’t—we join the monsters in mocking all the attempts the grown-ups make at stop pure maternal emotionalism, which kids can tap into better than adults anyway…)

But consider this:
Since it’s a film about a mother rescuing a child, Gorgo must be looked at from a psychological perspective—
Mom saves us, but she wrecks the joint.

See, Baby Gorgo should’ve kicked ass and taken names on his own—we must break free of the apron strings!
If we keep Mommy too much in our lives, massive havoc and destruction may occur.


Originally released in 1961, full of swirling reds and purples, and many, many crazy opticals, this (almost forgotten) monster movie is coincidentally one of the trippier flicks I’ve seen in a long time.

A delight for fans of man-in-a-monster suit flicks, as well as appreciators of travelling matte optical work (which always leaves a shell or trail around the items being superimposed: oooo trippy!), it often feels that Gorgo’s SPFX crew only had a very tight budget, and instead of spreading it around too much, spent it all on some wild, you-must-suspend-disbelief keiju-esque city trashing, and then spent what was left on stock footage.

I found Gorgo’s unconscious lysergicness to be much more engaging—and convincing—than the super-self-aware madcapness of the recently-released-to-DVD Hausu (1977)—as a comparison [more on Hausu in a moment]

Some examples:
At 59:38, there’s a beautiful scene of Mama Gorgo stalking towards Big Ben, the burning and smoke behind them not smoke bombs, but optically superimposed time-lapse photography of clouds pretending to be flames and smoke!

These shots look like they should’ve been used as the cover of a rock album—but I’m not sure if Deep Purple or Black Sabbath….But not Blue Oyster Cult!

My screengrabs will never do it justice—and to imagine seeing this flick in an old NYC movie palace with a new print: Yow!










And maybe being psychedelisized wasn’t an inadvertent subtext:
By 1:02:16, young Sean, the flick’s character for kids to relate to (as I already mentioned), is watching Mama Gorgo trash the joint—
and the boy has a fixed grin of rapt glee that the orange glow from the burning city only makes more LSD’ed out.
(It could also be the joy the child-surrogate feels when it is being vindicated: “SEE?!? I told you this would happen, but I’m a kid and you wouldn’t believe me! HA!)

Go FURTHER!






Director Eugene Lourie also directed the stop-motion animation packed The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and The Giant Behemoth (1959; also set in England), and created the special effects for Crack in the World (1965) [review below] and Krakatoa, East of Java (1969)—both of which have color palettes as lurid as Gorgo’s;
and just look at the bulbous smoke behind and around our lovely monster!






Like these other films, Gorgo has a style that I would call Terry Gilliam-esque: design heavy, leaning very heavily towards an anti-naturalism that I enjoy, not afraid to show its seams because it has faith that the audience will be caught up in the fantasy and suspend disbelief properly.

After all, there’s no way Lourie & Co. cannot see that their monsters and miniatures are paper mache—but their suspension of disbelief connects with their artistry, and is infectious.
I love Gorgo!


And I just have to say that Gorgo is much better as an exciting movie than Lourie’s previous Beast From 20,000 Fathoms—while Beast’s FX animation, done by the incomparable Ray Harryhausen, is better than the FX of Gorgo, there is only so much of it, and the rest of the movie is weighed down with dumb, boring dialog and stupid scenes of stupid people pretending to be scientists. Very fast-forwardable until the monster makes landfall in New York City.

In addition to some fun action and an increase in tension (monster germs?), when the Beast shows up in NYC, there is a lot of great, crisp footage of the Big Apple, especially the docks and tenements (the stuff Robert Moses—damn him!—tried to get rid of).

As for The Giant Behemoth, it’s been ages since I’ve seen it (and I’ve got it at the top of my N-flix list; but if I’m finished with this post before it gets here, well, tough), but I remember it was a decent and spooky Big Monster flick. A vicious, radioactive brontosaurus-like beast shows up in England, causing the routine amount of mayhem—but one cool thing about the flick I remember is that the beast could project its radiation, zapping helicopters out of the sky and frying soldiers where they stand.

Hausu (1977)
Hausu was a disappointment—perhaps I had been spoiled by all the pre-DVD-release hype heaped on this flicks for months beforehand.

Hausu must have been a mind-roaster for those fortunate enough to see it near or around its 1977 release, but as a spoof/riff on the haunted house genre (especially the ones by William Castle, I feel), it does not have “legs”—and personally, I found Hausu’s maxed-out quirkiness to be very annoying after a short time—the film (and filmmakers) are not taking their subject seriously, so why should we?

(And Hausu isn’t funny enough to be a comedy—at least to those who do not speak fluent Japanese: Sumimasen, nihongo wakaramasen!
It’s not that self-conscious weirdness is always a bad thing, it just needs a foundation of some sort, it has to really be about something—look at Eraserhead, also initially released in 1977: Yes, it’s a completely self-consciously arty piece of cinematic madness.

But that weirdness is the dressing on a very personal tale of parental fear and the lack of responsibility. It’s an extremely harsh personal assessment, I feel: all the more brilliant because it’s dressed in total id imagery. I saw Eraserhead in 1980 when I was 15, liked it, but didn’t love it.
Now I’m an old fart, and boy-oh-boy, I get it. The film (and I) have grown.

I cannot even think that about Hausu—a Scooby-Doo episode has more cultural relevance (and enjoyment) for me.
Hausu is about nothing except making fun of a genre that has grown and mutated far beyond what Hausu was trying to spoof. Hausu isn’t bad, it’s just very dated.

Crack in the World (1965)
Recently finally released to DVD after being MIA for a long, long, long time—
I credit the American Cinematheque in L.A. for renewing interest in this flick when they screened it in L.A. in 2007—
Crack in the World was on TV constantly when I was a kid, and I loved it then and watched the movie practically every time it was on:
Massive earthquakes! Train wrecks! Underground labs! Atomic bombs! Volcanoes! Upside-down rockets! Copious stock footage! Obvious miniatures! TOTAL FUCKIN’ DESTRUCTION!
All of it stuff a 10-year-old sci-fi nerd could fall in love with!

Crack in the World was also more ambitious than the disaster movies that followed it (this movie wasn’t going to destroy just one city or building!), and is really the grandfather to contemporary disaster movies, like 2012 and The Core (both flicks that I enjoyed immensely!), that feature exciting, exquisitely crafted global-scale destruction--and huge gaps in logic.
That said, Crack in the World, while still charming in its quaint mid-1960s way, has been ultimately surpassed in pacing and quality of special effects by other films (including the disaster flicks from the 1970s, like Earthquake, and anyone who wasn’t some sort of disaster movie completist might find the flick slow and clunky.
Its greatest value may be to nostalgia buffs (and I could be one).

I’m very happy to have managed to get a copy of this film’s DVD, and every now and again use it to satiate the disaster movie monkey on my back…