
Sartre and Borges on Orson Welles - benbreen
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/08/12/sartre-and-borges-on-welles/
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huxley
Love the line:

"Sartre reviewed the film in 1945, meaning he took four years even to bother
seeing it."

One would think German occupation of Paris and wartime censorship might have
contributed to that delay.

~~~
krylon
That was my thought, too - when your country is at war, you most likely have
more pressing things on your mind than going to the movies.

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gwern
Synchronistically, I just read a brief discussion of the same pair of quotes
in Simon Leys's anthology _The Hall of Uselessness_:

'Talking of Orson Welles, I wonder if many people still remember how, soon
after the Second World War, his artistic reputation in Europe was nearly
wrecked for a while by a blistering attack which Sartre launched against
_Citizen Kane_. The profound silliness of this diatribe is startling half a
century later:

... [same quote as in op]

The impact of this condemnation was devastating. _The Magnificent Ambersons_
was shown soon afterwards in Paris but failed miserably. The cultivated public
always follows the directives of a few propaganda commissars: there is much
more conformity among intellectuals than among plumbers or car mechanics. A
few years earlier, Jorge Luis Borges (who wrote superb film reviews) had also
expressed a critical opinion of _Citizen Kane_, but whereas Sartre’s censure
now appears odious and ridiculous in its self-importance and dogmatism (it was
actually dictated by a “politically correct” anti-American prejudice), Borges
made a point that should retain its validity—even for the admirers of _Citizen
Kane_:

"We all know that a feast, a palace, a huge enterprise, a lunch of writers or
of journalists, a cordial atmosphere of frank and spontaneous comradeship are
all particularly hideous. Citizen Kane is the first film that made conscious
use of this reality ... It is not an intelligent film, but it is the work of a
genius—in the most nocturnal and Germanic sense of this ugly word."

Sartre had an unquestionable genius (and we just learned what this
means)—which may not be enough to reach posterity; in this respect, Borges was
perhaps better equipped: he had a sense of humour—which is also the other side
of a genuine humility.'

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hderms
Whether you agree with Borges' opinions or not, you gotta give the man credit
for being a great writer, whether short story or film review.

~~~
krylon
I've noticed over time that great writers - at least the ones I admire - have
the ability to make almost anything interesting by writing about it.

I remember reading a review by David Foster Wallace of a biography of some
tennis player I never even heard of. I still would not touch that biography
with a ten foot pole, but that review, and Wallace's reflections on
professional sports and athletes' biographies, was fascinating to read.

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ableal
Borges was not wrong about the endurance, and the reasons. I'd guess that few
under-30 year olds, even here, know of the movie, and even fewer have seen it.

But then, Borges' reasoning would apply to most anything not made recently.
There's a very small cadre of writers/creators aware of anything not produced
in their lifetime.

(Furthermore, Borges could not guess at the time that Citizen Kane would be
anointed as one of the show pieces of "the seventh art" for a few decades - a
fate that could probably have been bestowed upon a few other contemporary
movies, but was not.)

~~~
olavk
Much of the praise for Kane is because it used groundbreaking cinematography,
which have influenced many later films. But to appreciate that, you have to
know that Kane was the first movie to use these techniques. The movie (like
many historically groundbreaking movies) will be underwhelming when seen
without this knowledge.

A popular classic like Cassablanca have endured due to strength of story and
acting, something which ages much better than "groundbreaking at the time".

~~~
manachar
Interestingly, I use Casablanca as my go to example of a classic that younger
audiences find boring, predictable and cliché.

By the time most viewers today see Casablanca they'll have already seen most
of the scenes ripped-offed, parodied, homaged, or referenced. For the first
time viewer it won't feel like the original and instead will feel like an old
black and white copy with a strange style of overacting.

~~~
krylon
For me, it was quite the opposite - when I saw Casablanca for the first time,
I remembered all the scenes from it being parodied or quoted, and I thought,
"so _that_ is where those came from".

The same happened to me watching The Wizard of Oz. Suddenly I remembered all
those scenes from the Simpsons which I did not get before and was like, "
_now_ I get it".

There is an episode of Star Trek DS9 where a character almost literally quotes
the speech at the end of The Third Man (given, incidentally, by Orson Welles).
Had I not seen The Third Man, I would have thought it was just a stupid
monologue, but knowing where it came from changed the tone and gravity of that
scene completely.

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malingo
If anyone in the Minneapolis / St Paul area wants to see Citizen Kane for
themselves, in a theater, it's showing this weekend at the Trylon Microcinema:

[http://take-up.org/series/123/](http://take-up.org/series/123/)

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Jun8
Borges at least made some interesting points (most of which are spot on, e.g.
the film being too grand, etc.) but Sartre's review is populistic:

"Kane might have been interesting for the Americans, [but] it is completely
passé for us, because the whole film is based on a misconception of what
cinema is all about."

What does that even mean, assuming "us" means the French and not film
connoisseurs anywhere in the world? Note that Truffaut, who was himself
heavily influenced by Hitchock, later heavily criticizes general tendencies of
French film of this era in a famous essay on (PDF:
[https://soma.sbcc.edu/users/davega/FILMST_113/Filmst113_ExFi...](https://soma.sbcc.edu/users/davega/FILMST_113/Filmst113_ExFilm_Movements/FrenchNewWave/A_certain_tendency_tr%23540A3.pdf))

This xkcd strip seemed to be relevant in this case:
[https://xkcd.com/1112/](https://xkcd.com/1112/)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Remember that Sartre was an existentialist. He therefore _defines_ cinema to
be an existentialist thing, and then criticizes Kane for not fitting into
Sartre's definition.

But to paraphrase Shakespeare: "There are more things in cinema, O Sartre,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

~~~
sp332
Welles' _F for Fake_ is practically a treatise on phenomenology, and it's
nearly all in the present tense.

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uptownJimmy
If all I had ever read from Sartre was this excerpt from his review of
'Citizen Kane', I would think him simple-minded.

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lotsofmangos
I really like 'Citizen Kane', but to be honest, when it comes to films
involving Orson Welles, by far my favourite is 'The Third Man'.

Though many of Orson's scenes he isn't actually in as he refused to leave the
hotel until they tempted him out with a magician, so he is often represented
by shadow.

~~~
krylon
The Third Man is one great movie. As the saying goes, they don't make 'em like
that anymore...

