Want to buy an Oscar...?
... You can have Orson Welles' if you can afford it!
Orson Welles only won one Oscar (well, two if you count the lame "Honourary" award) but his legacy and importance to cinema can't be denied. Sotheby's are set to auction off Welles' screenwriting Oscar (which he shared with Herman Mankiewicz) for Citizen Kane on December 11th and it's expected to fetch somewhere in the region of $1 million. The history of this particular statuette is somewhat convoluted. Welles originally gave it a cinematographer as payment and it turned up at a Sotheby's auction in 1994. Welles' daughter Beatrice sued the cinematographer and Sotherby's and was able to claim the Oscar, however when she tried to sell it she found herself facing a court case as the Acadamy had long wanted to keep the awards off the commercial market. Since 1950 the Academy has required that Oscar winners give them first option to buy back the award for just $1. Since Citizen Kane was made in 1941, Beatrice emerged from court victorious. She then sold it on to the Dax Foundation in LA who are putting the award up for auction. It's quite tragic that Welles' last contribution to cinema was in Transformers: The Movie (I still can't figure out whether that or Michael Bay's assault on the senses is worse). Mind you, it could be worse, Welles could have starred in The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (seriously Sean, don't bow out with that movie!). Nevertheless, Welles' Citizen Kane is still a masterpiece - a vital example of the power and potential of cinema. There's a reason why Watchmen is called the Citizen Kane of comics. Both Alan Moore and Orson Welles did things with their respective mediums that had never been done before. Kane was technically and stylistically groundbreaking and pretty much invented modern cinema. Watch any film prior to Kane and then go back and note the camera work, framing, use of deep focus and mise-en-scene of Welles' film and you'll see just how much of a genius he was. Michael Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay describes the effect Citizen Kane has on the titular comic book creators and it's vivid, awe-inspiring and uplifting. That great novel is worth reading for the brief mention of Kane alone.