richards-5

What an offensive piece of philistine nonsense this film is - and what a disgraceful thing that America's greatest film and greatest film-maker should be so patronisingly denigrated! This film presents Orson Welles as a selfish, lying, destructive monster creating a whole movie purely in order to spite William Randolph Hearst for a mild insult over the dinner-table. But it was Hearst who was the monster - the film can hardly avoid showing this, but seems to find him tragic rather than despicable - and the meeting between Welles and Hearst which sparks off this film never took place, as Welles never went to San Simeon. Their only meeting (and we have only Welles's word for it that it took place) was after the filming had finished. More than that, Welles is shown as occasioning the dismissal of RKO chief George Shaefer, who is said to have been fired on the day "Citizen Kane" opened commercially in May, 1941 - in fact, he lost his job considerably later, I think in 1943, and RKO had not had a hit in many years under his leadership, so it was always on the cards. Welles is shown to be spendthrift and wasteful - but, in fact, "Kane" came in on a budget of just $842,000, more than a quarter of a million cheaper than, say, "Bringing Up Baby". He is seen being arrogant and rude to his cast and crew, even cameraman Gregg Toland and his best friend, Joseph Cotten - whereas it has been widely reported that Welles was the soul of courtesy and charm to everyone on the film with the sole exception of the masochistic actress Dorothy Comingore (to whom, however, this film shows him being only polite!). He's even seen talking idly whilst poor Bernard Herrmann tries to record the music for "Citizen Kane", although Welles, of all people, would know better than deliberately to annoy the terrible-tempered Herrmann, his frequent radio collaborator (who, in reality, always said that Welles knew more about music than any director he ever worked with). It is typical of the ignorance of writer John Logan that his Welles even addresses Herrmann as "Bernie" - the real man was always called "Benny" by his friends. "RKO 281" gives no hint whatever of the great-ness of "Citizen Kane", only a nasty, petty portrait of the genius who made it. What a terrible waste of a great subject.

This is a pretty shameless piece of film-making. There is absolutely no hard evidence to support the film's flat claim that Bruno Hauptmann was entirely innocent, and most accounts of the Lindbergh kidnapping case, even those which cast doubt on his conviction, suggest that he was an arrogant, boorish man, not the kindhearted saint presented here. It's as unscrupulously manipulative as Ludovic Kennedy's original book, which has the temerity, in a work of non-fiction, to tell us what people were thinking about - and more than 60 years ago at that. There is, similarly, no back-up offered for the vilification of several of those responsible for Hauptmann's conviction. There are plenty of reasons to view the case with alarm, and to believe that Hauptmann was the victim of a miscarriage of justice (which doesn't necessarily mean he was innocent). To present so biased and distorted an account of the case does no good to the cause of getting at the facts. Stick with 1976's "The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case", which sustains a neutral viewpoint - and is far more disturbing.

This was a TV comedy series, but it was produced by the BBC's drama department, not its comey department; hence, each episode ran 50 minutes, not half-and-hour, and there was no audience or laugh track. Charles Wood wrote it, and part of the fun lay in our wondering how much of it was based on his own life, as the hero, Gordon Maple, described as a "lesser-known English dramatist", makes most of his money by writing screenplays for films which are never made. Throughout the first series, he was toiling away at a script called "Thundering Hooves", whilst coping with his near-hysterical wife (Gwen Watford) and oddball children, not to mention his neighbour, best friend and deadliest rival, a very successful playwright indeed, allegedly based on Wood's real-life neighbour and friend Peter Nichols. The friend (Francis Matthews) is said to be the author of a play called "Soldiers In Spurts" - Nichols had recently written "Privates On Parade"; Gordon is said to be the author of plays called "Elephant" and "Dog" - Wood had written a play called "Dingo". The first series also featured a famous actor-knight clearly based on John Gielgud, who had starred in Wood's script for "The Charge Of The Light Brigade". By episode six of the first series, Wood seemed to have deliberately written himself into a corner to avoid a second series, but a second series nonetheless appeared in 1979. It was very nearly as brillaintly funny and original as the first, but the BBC have never repeated either. Why not? More people should know it.

This film seems to have vanished completely, but if you can find it, it's intriguing. The plot is serviceable, but not dazzlingly original - what is striking is its concept of the central character (James Coburn) as a kind of Nowhere Man, someone who exists only in terms of other people's (mistaken) assumptions about him. We never really find out anything concrete about Eli Kotch, the character in question, beyond the fact that he's an unscrupulous crook - even the name is highly suspect, as Coburn isn't Jewish. Hence, he's able to adopt half-a-dozen disguises in the course of the story (without changing his face once) and is convincing every time. One unfavourable review noted that the film is 107 minutes and 20 seconds long and that the 20 seconds were quite good. Actually, this is truer than the catty critic knew - the twist in the film's tail is dynamite and you really do have to wait until the last moments to get to it. On the merry-go-round of life, Eli Kotch's sins catch up with him and he never even knows it. It's a dead heat all right - on one level, he seems to get away with his crimes, but on another level, he's as big a loser as he deserves to be.