THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 16, 1996 TAG: 9608160044
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book review
SOURCE: BY CRAIG SHAPIRO
LENGTH: 82 lines
ALTHOUGH David Thomson refers to himself as a biographer, it would be inaccurate to call ``Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles'' a biography, by the conventional definition.
It isn't a straightforward account of Welles' life and achievements; libraries are already stocked with those. Instead, Thomson, a film historian and critic, assumes the persona of Thompson, the fictional reporter in ``Citizen Kane,'' in trying to get a fix on Welles' mad, self-destructive genius.
The author recalls falling under ``Kane's'' spell in an otherwise empty theater as a teenager in England: ``Being alone felt appointed - I had been called there. I can see now that my future was taken care of, and ruined maybe.''
In one of several contrived exchanges with an imagined publisher, Thomson says that after years of teaching and watching ``Kane'' over and over, he had to stop. ``It became only its tricks. It lost its life. Welles felt the same, I think.''
Since he never met Welles, who died in 1985, that's a brazen assumption - and more than a little self-serving.
But it explains why this ``story'' is so seductive. In being subjective and unconventional, it dares to cross the line. Radio audiences who marveled at the resonant timbre of Welles' voice years ago surely felt the same way.
On the other hand, if readers come away frustrated, it's by design. Welles, Thomson contends, wore ambiguity as if it were a cloak. ``Rosebud'' is nothing if not ambiguous.
``I'd like the readers to go away as muddled in their feelings as everyone left behind after Kane's death,'' he tells his publisher.
The ground rules are spelled out early. Where many biographies hang on a series of abiding questions, Thomson writes that his is one of those great answers that makes it harder to know the question.
When Charles Foster Kane, alone and on his deathbed, muttered ``Rosebud,'' it was an end, not a beginning. The futile interviews conducted by Thompson yielded only clues, most of them contradictory. The treasures of Xanadu were incinerated. All that remained was the illusion.
Welles lived mostly in hotels the last decades of his life, working on a half-dozen scripts that would never be finished. He died alone. And he once told an interviewer: ``I don't want any description of me to be accurate; I want it to be flattering.''
``Rosebud'' is not intended to be flattering. It may not even be accurate.
``Orson Welles lied a lot; you will see,'' Thomson writes. ``You may even decide that he lied all the time as the only available way of keeping patience with life. You have to decide when he knew he was lying, and when that clerical care was lost in the rush. And you have to wonder how much the difference makes.''
Thomson draws on the parable of the scorpion and the frog:
When they meet at a riverbank, the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across the water. Fearing the scorpion's sting, the frog resists. But the scorpion is persuasive. If I sting you, he says, I will die, too. So the frog reconsiders. Halfway across, he feels a sharp pain in his back. As they slip underwater, he asks the scorpion why.
``It is in my character,'' the scorpion answers.
The inference is obvious - deception was second-nature to Welles. He deceived his family, his associates and his public. And he deceived himself. If ``Citizen Kane,'' the greatest movie of all time, had lost its life, what could possibly be left for its creator to believe in?
Thomson's thoughtful, acute probing into Welles' motives makes the actor/director's accomplishments all the more remarkable: a starring role at Dublin's Gate Theatre as a teenager; groundbreaking productions of ``Macbeth,'' ``Doctor Faustus'' and ``Julius Caesar''; ``The War of the Worlds'' scare, and, at 26, ``Kane.''
To put it in perspective, Quentin Tarantino was 31 when he made ``Pulp Fiction.''
Thomson points out that a rosebud never quite blooms, or withers. The same can be said of ``Rosebud.'' But it does take root. MEMO: Craig Shapiro is a staff writer. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
BOOK REVIEW
``Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles''
Author: David Thomson
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf. 463 pp.
Price: $30 by CNB