Citizen Kane

Year Released: 1941

Runtime: 119 minutes

Directed: Orson Welles

Produced: Orson Welles, George Schaefer

Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Paul Stewart, Ray Collins, Ruth Warwick

Oscars: Won: Best Original Screenplay Nominated: Best Picture, Best Lead Actor, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Editing, Best Score

IMDb Plot Summary: Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance; 'Rosebud'.

Context, Context, Context: What Created Citizen Kane, and Why it’s Still Relevant

Welles, Mank, Hearst. The story of how this film came to be, and its immediate aftermath, is almost as legendary as the film itself. Welles was a natural talent when it came to writing, acting, and directing, but before the time of Kane left his endeavors to the realm of theatre. After the success of Orson Welles’ (in)famous broadcast of The War of the Worlds, Hollywood simply had to have him. Needing money for his next few plays, Welles signed a contract with RKO that would simply be unheard of today: a generous dollar split between RKO and Welles’ Mercury Theatre Company, and complete artistic control of two films for him to write, direct, and star in – including right of final cut. Even Quentin Tarantino didn’t have this kind of catapult into the driver’s seat. After all this, Welles still didn’t have a story – so he turned to his friend and Mercury scriptwriter, Herman Mankiewicz. I won’t step on what I assume the newly-released film Mank will cover, but the process of developing this script was a tumultuous one, and so too was the eventual fight for credit of authorship. Mankiewicz knew the publishing magnate and political figure of William Randolph Hearst well, and after a falling out, decided to use his life to explore how the pursuit of wealth and power could destroy the soul, as well as explore the arc of someone’s life as reflected by the people who knew him. For his actors, Welles turned to the Mercury acting troupe, many of whom had never acted for a film before – could have fooled me. Surrounding Kane behind the camera is an all-time list of talented contributors, many of whom had careers as legendary as Welles' following the success of this movie - but I shouldn't get too far ahead of myself.

The legacy of Citizen Kane. The greatest film ever? Depends on who you ask; regardless, it makes the short list, and is certainly one of the most influential. It ended up only winning the Oscar for Best Screenplay (shared between Mank and Welles), losing in most of the major categories to How Green Was My Valley. Hearst’s furious response to the film including him advocating for it to be banned in the newspapers he owned (a very Kane move), and his influence was so strong that it may have affected how the Academy voted that year. It received a rather strong response from critics, but as the case with many masterpieces, its influence and perfection only came into realization with the passage of time. “Perfection” is a word that I don’t like to throw around lightly, but there isn’t a thing about the film that I would change. I’ll deep dive into every corner of this masterpiece that I reasonably can without writing a novel below, but everything in this film works perfectly. On my latest rewatch, I realized that this film may very well have been The Social Network of its era: an utter technical masterpiece whose feel-bad story is based on a real person with incredible influence that is told through progressive flashbacks revealing how a once likable person became a monster when they began chasing power. Very fitting then that David Fincher, director of The Social Network (the best film of the 2010’s), is the one behind the camera for Mank – I can’t wait to see what he does.

The Story and its Characters

Brilliant structure, brilliant themes. I can only imagine how thrown audiences in 1941 must have been to witness this movie’s structure: a cold open of a mysterious old man dying, an extended newsreel covering his life, followed by a series of interviews and flashbacks that providing overlapping and sometimes conflicting points of view. It must have been thrilling, because the film still works incredibly well today. The structure also allows for a “highlight reel” of Kane’s life, and shows us his most defining moments in his newspaper career, political career, and personal life through the lenses of those most directly affected by it. It also paints a very nuanced picture of the man; even though we watch him descend into an isolated monster trying to control everything within his grasp, we also recognize the wounded soul we are seeing on the screen. The Charles Foster Kanes that exist in our world today, likewise, aren’t supervillains (save for a select few), rather individuals whose need for wealth, power, and control may have stripped them of their humanity, but not erased the fact that they are human. Kane’s arc is one of the most recognizable in all of literature; a man who goes from rags to riches but either loses all his riches, or in the case of Kane his soul (and plenty of riches as well). However, this film’s structure and rapid pace create the illusion of time slipping away from us; what was the tipping point for Kane? What was the meaning of his deathbed utterance? The film’s ending seems to mostly give up on these questions, as our reporter Thompson is unable to discover the rather simple meaning of “Rosebud”. Rather, he tells his fellow reporters that there is no way to boil a man – especially a man with a life like this – down to a simple meaning. This creates a sense of open-endedness that allows the film to mean vastly different things to different viewers, which is another reason why this film has endured and will endure.

The performances. Most of this cast had never acted on camera before but had experience with Orson Welles’ Mercury theater company on both stage and radio. Nearly 80 years on, that fact is astonishing. Most of the most important cast members had to play both younger and older versions of themselves across many years, and properly convey a sense of themselves “before Kane” and “after Kane”; they all crush it. Joseph Cotten is great as the young and old versions of Jedediah, Kane’s former best friend who becomes disillusioned with him when he unsuccessfully runs for office, and is ultimately fired by Kane in flashback; the older Jedediah seems to have let go of any negative emotions, but has clearly lost touch with Kane and ends up just as isolated, but not nearly as wealthy. Everett Sloane is fantastic as Mr. Bernstein, a much less free-thinking man than Jedediah who also works as a source of comic relief in the flashbacks. In the present day, he is a philosophical and contemplative older man who seems hopelessly attached to Kane, despite never having been the friend that Jedediah was. Dorothy Comingore is terrific as the naïve Susan who becomes Kane’s mistress, only to later become a depressed alcoholic coping with the trauma that Kane had put her through by pushing her to live up to his image. Other shoutouts go to Agnes Moorehead as Kane’s mother, Ruth Warwick as his first wife, and Ray Collins as the vicious corrupt political boss, Jim Gettys.

Of course the best performance on display is Welles’ Kane. He goes from charismatic and handsome to old, detestable, and ugly. However, he perfectly embodies the scarred humanity that I was describing earlier in his later scenes in a very nuanced performance. For this film to work, he has to absolutely own the screen during the flashback segments, and he delivers spectacularly.

Technicalities

The new foundation. Welles surrounded himself with some of the most talented and forward-thinking individuals he could when it came to the film’s technical aspects, and the results paid off spectacularly. Gregg Toland’s cinematography changed the way that movies looked forever, and compared to other movies from the same time, Kane looks like it’s from a much more modern era. This was accomplished due to very inventive shot framing, lighting, and experimentation with new lenses that added an incredible new depth of field, meaning that objects in the background could now be kept in decent focus compared to objects in the foreground, and the viewer could actually get a sense of the depth of the physical sets. Bernard Herrmann would earn some of his earliest recognition and his first Oscar nomination for this film and would go on to score the likes of Psycho and Taxi Driver. Editor Robert Wise, likewise, built his career off the success of Kane, and became one of the most celebrated producers, directors and editors of all time after directing and producing The Sound of Music. It’s no fluke that the technical leads on this film had the legendary careers they did; their prowess is on display here.

John’s Highlight Reel

· Cold open. The film’s mysterious opening scene, showcasing the once-grand mansion and grounds of Xanadu, has become iconic in every sense of the word. The mystery of what we’re seeing continues to reel in new viewers to this day, and rewards every re-watch.

· Newsreel. This must have absolutely astounded viewers in its time – “is this a real newsreel?” “Did Kane exist, and I somehow missed him?” This is a terrific piece of legend-building that is crucial to the story, but first-time viewers might not realize that all the critical events of Kane’s life are right here, in the newsreel. What the following interviews and flashbacks serve to do is bring Kane’s life to light in a personal way – thanks to the newsreel, we know what this man did; the rest of the film is focused on who he was.

· Kane’s origins. Kane is not a self-made man, and the very first flashback confirms this for us – a deconstruction of the myth we were just presented with in the newsreel. In fact, his mother’s worthless copper mine was about to come into value, and she signed the management of its finances and Kane himself to the care of Mr. Thatcher, whose unpublished memoirs this segment is based on. This extended flashback threads the needle of presenting Kane as being both spoiled and knowing a humble way of life; a child thrust into these circumstances is not going to grow up attached to anyone.

· Growing the Inquirer. Kane’s push for sensationalist journalism as a way of selling his newspapers and exerting greater influence over the public has aged like the finest wine. What’s most challenging about this section of the film, however, is how damn charismatic Orson Welles’ performance is. For a modern comparison, Scorsese basically took this 5-10-minute section and turned it into the first 2 hours of The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s disarmingly fun, but the audience also gets the nagging feeling that what the characters are doing is simply bad for society.

· Breakdown of a Marriage. The “kitchen sequence” is one of the most heartbreakingly powerful and efficient sequences in all of film; in one room, through one evolving conversation, Welles demonstrates a relationship breaking down over years of time.

· Political aspirations. One of the most famous images from the film is Kane giving a speech while running for governor of New York in front of a giant poster of himself. This film has a very negative view of politics as a system, since the two options here were the media tycoon Kane and the corrupt establishment politician of Gettys. It’s also during this time that Kane meets Susan Alexander, who briefly brings out his humanity. When she does this, he decides to let his first marriage dissolve, attaches himself to Susan and begins pouring serious finances into her opera career so that she can maintain the image of someone worthy of him. Long story short, here’s where it all falls apart.

· Firing Jedediah. Why did Kane finish his friend’s negative review of his new wife? Was he looking to take his friend’s thinking to its natural conclusion? Was he expressing his own opinion of her, under the guise of his friend’s opinion? Whatever the motivation may be, this scene plays out extraordinarily well, featuring some of the best wordless performances the movie has to offer.

· Xanadu. This large, empty palace is the perfect setting for the melodrama that makes up the film’s final flashbacks. We see Kane grow into his oldest age, Susan finally call him out on his treatment of her and the monster he has become, but the dialogue and acting are still perfectly nuanced – in the hands of lesser filmmakers and actors, this would be way too cheesy.

· Rosebud. What an ending. The movie offers the possibility of rejecting the past two hours as a meaningful way to understand someone, denies the idea one word can define a man, and yet its final shots are of Kane’s sled from when he was a boy, inscribed with the word “Rosebud”, burning with the rest of his junk. The ending is just vague enough about the meaning of the film to inspire countless debates without offering any sense of conclusion. A masterstroke.

Came for _____, Stayed for ______

An important movie. I mean it’s Citizen Kane! Taking movies with any degree of seriousness as a legitimate art form demands watching this along with The Godfather. I had done enough research and been interested enough in movies to know what this film meant for the medium at large, how many people considered it the best, and how radical and influential it was. I set out to watch this 1941 movie ready to pay attention to its “technicalities” and be impressed without loving it, almost as if I were attending a history lesson or watching a documentary.

A great movie. I’m so happy to have been wrong; I thoroughly appreciate and enjoy this film, and it’s going to live forever. It belongs alongside the likes of Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Godfather on the shortlist of best of all time, because will keep amazing people for all time. It’s really that simple.