RKO 281: Who Were The Flies On The Wall?

krocheav

The best to be said about this one is that it is shorter than most. RKO 281 sets itself up to be a semi-factual account of events leading up to the filming of Orson Well's "Citizen Kane". Like most HBO TV productions it's stylish to the point of being borderline overdone. Perhaps they needed to spend more time on script research than on sets and costumes. The presence of some production involvement by WGBH gave hope of more historical accuracy's but this didn't seem to help (not a good move WGBH stay with your far better documentaries). Liev Schreiber while a fine performer, did not quite fit the Wells character (whereas Vincent D' Onofrio from the over-the-top 'Ed Wood' did an uncanny job of convincing us Well's was still among us). It's difficult I know to cast performers in roles of well known personalities but fact is, so few of the performers here seemed suited to their character identities and this had the effect of hurting the final outcome.

With a screenplay that contains so many intimate details - most have to represent massive amounts of supposition - to the point it probably misrepresented far too many of the 'facts'. The intentions the writers and producers wanted to convey seem unclear - or were they just having campy fun at the audiences expense?. Perhaps the one thing they did get across was that Mr Wells may have been equally as hypercritical as the man he wanted to expose (maybe even more so?). Hurst (James Cromwell) on the other hand, as written and played, comes across more as the wronged victim - even as a rather sympathetic character. So who's right? perhaps none. Melanie Griffiths as Marian Davies, by most accounts, is also somewhat doubtful.

Don't come to this one looking for facts, they're simply not there. Even the final accolades indicated at the end of this movie - during the premiere screening of 'Citizen Kane' don't gel - it was largely ignored. Perhaps this was partly due to limited promotion or could it have been ahead of it's time?. It's not easy to tell because the 1930's- 1940'S saw many great movies come and go, so audiences of the day did have a very good idea of what constituted a great film.

At least, this production offers some good insights to the movie business - including some of the more sinister expose's of otherwise 'respectable' high profile personalities - but, like several others of its genre (before and after) it could have been better.

score 5/10

krocheav 15 June 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3488296/