Mad Love

[Glenn Anders]

Peter, I envy your having seen MAD LOVE, which I have not. I shall happily accept your evaluation of the picture. The basic scenario of MAD LOVE, drawn from THE HANDS OF ORLAC, has been used many times in cinema.

Although I don't know how MGM regarded the business MAD LOVE did, audiences in 1935 would have accepted its gothic mis en scene, I should think. The influence of UFA on Hollywood had grown all during the 1920's, and with the collapse of the German Studios, there was a flood of Expressionistic themes, technicians, and actors to Hollywood.

The picture was produced for a modest $260,000 and brought in $365,000 Worldwide, turning (apparently) a reasonable profit. And that, despite the fact that a number of theaters, and whole countries, banned it for what we would call today, "excessive violence." The film had also evidently extensively been re-shot or re-edited.

But I'm afraid, Peter, in your zeal to skewer Pauline Kael (who, admittedly, became an increasingly bitter person as she grew older and more decrepit), you have over-arched yourself again. Remember that Pauline Kael had run one of the early successful repertory film theaters on the West Coast for over five years before she came to fame in New York and began to publish her best selling collections of ideocyncratic film reviews. Long before that, she had been an early day film buff, and so she would have seen MAD LOVE a number of times, and at least her theater audiences would have, too.

While your favorable critique may very well be correct, I fail to see how your put down of Ms. Kael is entirely fair.

I have not seen MAD LOVE, as I say, but I have read The Citizen Kane Book, a copy of which lies open before me. Ms. Kael writes that she has recently viewed a print of the picture, and her memory of it as a possible cinematographic model for CITIZEN KANE was reinforced. I think she may be at pains to emphasize the static quality of the production because she wants to press home, in her enthusiasm for CITIZEN KANE, that Welles has added sweep and pace to Gregg Toland's long lens, light and shadow photography.

In any case, on P. 78 of The Citizen Kane Book, there is a still of the bald headed, Kane-like Peter Lorre standing, his back to us, in front of a massive fire place, the mantle of which rises well above his head, and appears to be fifteen to twenty feet wide. It surely resembles the great fire pit of Xanadu pretty closely.

Is it possible that this scene was one of those cut out of the finished product?

Pauline Kael didn't seem to think so.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

Glenn:

So now the tables are turned... you berate me for not reading ROSEBUD, but based on the very poor quality stills you've seen in the CITIZEN KANE BOOK, you comment about the visual style of MAD LOVE - which you haven't actually seen!

Although, I don't think we actually disagree that much here - I think there is certainly no doubt that Welles was influenced by Karl Freund and the German UFA films, as well as many others when he directed KANE.

And Welles also certainly took photographic advice from Gregg Toland about how to shoot CITIZEN KANE. But Pauline Kael blithely ignores the fact that MAD LOVE was not only shot by Gregg Toland, but also by Chester Lyons. I don't think she ever even mentions that little "fact."

Even if she did, she seems a bit too eager to credit everything she sees in MAD LOVE that resembles KANE to the hand of Gregg Toland. It seems to me she should be giving the credit to Karl Freund - Fritz Lang's cinematographer, who turned turned director for THE MUMMY and MAD LOVE, before going back to being a cinematographer. Strangely enough, Freund ended up shooting I LOVE LUCY, in the fifties, and may have even shot the LUCY episode where Welles was a guest star. But, I would have to say, it was, in all likelyhood, Karl Freund who was the man behind MAD LOVE's visual style, as it would seem to me, that Toland and Lyons would simply be carrying out whatever Freund wanted them to do, as Freund certainly knew what kind of lighting he wanted, and how best to get it.

I'll have to let you borrow my DVD of MAD LOVE, so you can comment on it further after you have a chance to see it. And maybe I can borrow your copy of ROSEBUD. Now that I know it contains such juicy stories about seduction, rape, impotence and other topics, I think I might enjoy it, especially now that I realize it's supposed to be a work of fiction!

[Glenn Anders]

Todd:

I can see you sitting at your kitchen table, a semi-circle of empty Gimlet glasses about you. You are looking at a 1948 Miss Rhinegold poster on the opposite wall, your eyes are slightly crossed, the old tunnel vision setting in, and you are muttering, "I'm right, I am right, I AM RIGHT, by the Blood of Aleister Crowley, they shall recognize me!"

In the interests of getting you off to bed, I suppose that you have fashioned a charming conceit in the notion that because you have not read Rosebud, some 460 pages, but know its many failings from selective reviews of extraordinary bias, it is somehow the equivalent of my being able to recognize the general shape and scale of Xanadu's fireplace later recreated for CITIZEN KANE, in a large, handsome still taken from Karl Freund's MAD LOVE.

But that's progress. I like it.

Your conceit matches the irony that you and others have castigated Pauline Kael for years over relatively mild critcisms of Welles credit, after she championed CITIZEN KANE when others in America had ignored it. [She did not believe that he put the whole thing together with scissors and scotch tape, singlehandedly.] And now you want to come down on her for suggesting that the lion's share of the credit for MAD LOVE belongs to Gregg Toland, because in retrograde, that means Toland was not such a player in the creation of CITIZEN KANE as many believe.

But that's progress. I like it.

The kicker you, and I, and Ms. Kael may have overlooked, as you presciently suggest, is that an unheralded MGM house cinematographer, Chester A. Lyons, in a last gasp effort [he died the next year] may have contributed large chunks to this little 68 minute film. Lyons, in a long career, was associated with such properties as White Hunter (1936); What Price Decency (1933) (as Chester Lyons); Deception (1932);Bad Girl (1931);The Naughty Duchess (1928) (as Chester Lyons); Love Makes 'Em Wild (1927) (as Chester Lyons); Flaming Love (1925) (as Chester Lyons) ... aka Frivolous Sal, 1922); The Bootlegger's Daughter (1922) (as Chester Lyons); The Egg Crate Wallop (1919) (as Chester Lyons); The Claws of the Hun (1918) (as Chester Lyons); and The Last of the Ingrams (1917) (as Chester Lyons) ... aka The Last of the Ingrahams (USA). He was evidently sent in to do emergency salvage on the creation of Karl Freund and Gregg Toland, who were, or would be, recognized geniuses.

The problem is one that I hinted at in my post. The plot of MAD LOVE seems to have a distant resemblance to The PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, and its German original, THE HANDS OF ORLAC (1925). The plot involves madness, murder, blood, dismemberment, train wrecks, and forced love [DING! DING! DING! Welles' alert . . . Welles alert.] Brilliant as Freund was as a photographer, some claimed he was incompetent as a director. [Zita Johann, for example, John Houseman's first wife, who starred in Freund's THE MUMMY, 1932 -- DING! DING! DING! Welles alert.] In any case, the film was re-shot, and re-cut, so that whole portions and characters were cut out, and other portions added, not to mention that the plot was changed, presumably under the eye of Chester A. Lyons. [DING! DING! DING! Welles alert.] For instance, in the original, a la THE BODY SNATCHER, Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre) performs an unsuccessful, painful operation on a little girl. In the movie, Dr. Wong (Keye Luke) does the surgery, and it works.

Karl Freund never directed another movie.

You may, of course, Todd, borrow my First Edition of Rosebud, and I look forward to viewing MAD LOVE. Has the DVD recently been issued?

Let's do it soon before kindly Larry French pops over with his copy of Rosebud (which he found "appalling" when he read it). My hope is that you will glean some small merit in its elegiac prose.

But that's progress. I like it.

Glenn

[Glenn Anders]

Fair enough, Peter.

I just think that we are talking influences here. Pauline Kael is at pains to point out that though certain motifs and lighting have been copied from MAD LOVE (apparently by Gregg Toland), Orson Welles paces CITIZEN KANE in a much more dazzling and seamless fashion. You seem to be in an argument with yourself. Ms. Kael nor anyone else has ever suggested that CITIZEN KANE is a copy of MAD LOVE. All Art, back to the days of the cave paintings, has its antecedents, its borrowings, its influences.

And of course, as Todd has brought up, and I have expanded upon, an unknown "company janitor" named Chester A. Lyons may have shot a lot of the film we attribute to Karl Freund and Gregg Toland (and by example, to Orson Welles). That's how Hollywood movies were (and are) made, Peter.

Be assured, if anywhere in bald headed Dr. Gogol's living room, there is a large, high mantled fireplace, suitable for roasting a wild boar in, people are going to associate the setting, lighting and makeup with CITIZEN KANE. Pauline Kael noticed that first, and I don't think it wise of you to belittle her observation.

Glenn

[David N]

I'll chip in my two cents. I bought the Citizen Kane Book years ago on Roger Ebert's recommendation. I think Ken Russell's critique of the book was spot on. Outside of the pictures and the scripts and maybe the first two sentences the book is trash. Ms. Kael seemed to have an agenda to diminish Welles' contribution to Kane in every aspect. She did not seem to have a real appreciation of the film as say, Roger Ebert in his commentary of the dvd, who could not say enough things about his love for this movie. It was infectious. I learned something. Figuring out that Peter Lorre's makeup and the expressionist look of the film had been done before is interesting but when you are stating that to say that Welles didn't dream up every single aspect of the film in his own virginal mind, I don't find it very interesting. I find it petty. Welles fell over himself in his praise for Toland and what he brought to the film. Toland made masterpieces with Ford and Wyler. Does that somehow diminish them? FOrd himself was influenced by Murnau? That just proves he has good taste. I've said it before but the best evidence that Welles himself was a genius is the Magnificent Ambersons. No Toland. No Mankiewicz. Just Orson. Oh the beauty the beauty! (what a great line) David

[tonyw]

David N. Good post. You've also highlighted why I detest Roger Ebert as a critic. Despite his forgotten film festival - his version of Catholic penitence - his TV show with the vulgar thumbs up/down and pithy comments have done film criticism a major disservice for decades.

[Glenn Anders]

Peter: Todd Baesen is negotiating with me a DVD (I didn't know there was one) of MAD LOVE in exchange for my First Edition of Rosebud. When I've actually watched the picture, and if Todd really reads the book, we should be able to discuss this matter more intelligently.

I would just repeat that, though I was repulsed by both Thomson's Rosebud, initially, and Kael's Raising Kane, I knew going in by reading capsule reviews from the Berkeley Cinema Guild Bulletins of 1959 (many written years earlier) that Pauline Kael was a huge fan of CITIZEN KANE and Orson Welles. You must remember that CITIZEN KANE was pretty well forgotten here until its re-release in the 1950's, and it had never been seen in Europe until well after the War. Pauline Kael, whatever the failings of her handicapped last days, was one of the critics who made the reputation of the picture when it re-emerged. As late as "Raising Kane," consider what her pun is suggesting. She is still boosting CITIZEN KANE while examining the full panoply of influences that make it up.

[The film is, after all, about jigsaw puzzles.]

Pauline Kael created an eclectic style of movie criticism. She made the American reputation of films like BONNIE AND CLYDE, NASHVILLE, LOLITA, BREATHLESS, when other American critics were willing to dismiss them, and sometimes the directors responsible. She was in the corner of Welles and CITIZEN KANE from the beginning. But like Thomson (and lately, johnny-come-latelys like Simon Callow), she gradually came to the realization that Welles could not have done EVERYTHING himself. That's what got her in trouble with the new acolytes, and now, the old ones.

Pauline Kael, at her best, in the 1950's through the 1970's, displayed an incredible instinct for great movies, and a dazzling insight into what made them tick, tick, tick. She was as utilitarian with what she called "bad movies," such as MAD LOVE and CASABLANCA, as she was with the cineaste masterpieces. She saw how parts of program melodramas fitted brilliantly into the schema of certain renowned art films.

Her most fawning sycophants never said that she could not go hysterically into left field, sometimes in the middle of her most brilliantly right-on reviews.

Like David Thomson, she was an amateur.

As for MAD LOVE, Pauline saw a cockatoo. Pauline saw a bald head. Pauline saw a fireplace. Pauline saw Gregg Toland. Pauline saw CITIZEN KANE. That's all.

Glenn

[David N]

I usually like Ebert. He's tipped me off to a lot of great movies. And he truly seems to be in awe of Kane. I just don't understand why he recommended Kael's book. The "shallow masterpiece" garbage. She didn't like the Rosebud gimmick. Well I love the Rosebud "gimmick". It's one of the most subtle and inexplicable gimmicks in the history of film. Kane is one of the great miracles of art ever made. From Hermann's Wagnerian score to Toland's expressionist cinematography to Mankiewics and Welles script. Orson got lucky to have all these people at his disposal but nobody else could have taken those elements and come up with Kane. I used to think that Welles and Hermann had a falling out but I was delighted to see him quoted on this site as saying that Welles artisitic instincts were beyond reproach or something like that. I'd take his opinion or someone like Kael's any day. Kane to me is like Beethoven's fifth. You can't imagine it not existing. Unfortunately, like Orson said, film is a rather expensive paint box. In a more perfect world, Ambersons would still be 131 minutes and Orson wouldn't have had to spend most of his life hustling for money. David[/quote]