Citizen Kane (1941)
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Director: Orson Welles
Honors:
Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay)
The film was precluded with perhaps the greatest hype since Gone With the Wind, was buried by the
media, won only a singular Academy Award, and destroyed a creative prodigy whose
filmmaking career had yet to officially begin, yet it is most commonly
considered the best American feature film ever produced. This is Citizen Kane, the cinematic debut and
masterpiece of Orson Welles. This major studio picture would be unconventional by
utilizing unknown actors throughout its main cast and experiment with avant-garde
camerawork allowing the picture to stand out in 1941, later proving to be well
ahead of its time.
Citizen Kane is a drama
examining the life story of a newspaper magnate from humble beginnings, rise to
wealth and power, his striving and failure to achieve a state of happiness, through
his death and mysterious last words. A reporter (William Alland) attempts to
learn the meaning of media tycoon’s, Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), last
word of “Rosebud” sending him on a series of interviews with individuals who
share their stories with the man during his life. We learn of Kane’s boyhood as
a happy boy from a simple, impoverished family to being sent away and raised by
a wealthy banker. As a young man Kane gravitates towards running a struggling
New York newspaper and turning into a media empire that would span the entire
country, making him the richest and most powerful person in the country.
Even though Kane’s money permits him to acquisition everything he wants,
he grows to realize that money does not buy everything. He loses his first
marriage and a power with politics to an affair that becomes public. He turns
his affair into his second marriage and attempts to brand second wife into a
successful opera singer by building her a lavish theater and forcing his journalists
to write only good reviews about her. It becomes painfully obvious that though Kane’s
wealth cannot buy love or happiness, leaving him a shell of a man who dies emotionally
broken and alone in his cavernous estate on a lavish piece of land, pinning for
a simpler time in his life. In the end the reporter never understands what “rosebud”
is, but learns that he is a far more complicated man than most know.
What makes Citizen Kane so
unique, especially for its time, is it unconventional and creative way the life
of Charles Foster Kane is told. The story is shared in a non-linear style. To
further accentuate the artistic storytelling, the camera is placed from angles
a conservative major motion picture would not have considered. Even more so,
the complete cast was compiled of actors that were only known to have worked on
stage or in radio, new to the medium of movies. All of these creative choices
were made by the film’s fresh-faced newcomer, Orson Welles.
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| Welles and a cast of Hollywood unknowns. |
Orson Welles at such a young age had already made his mark on both
stage and radio before being enticed to come to Hollywood. He founded the
Mercury Theatre Company who he recruited from his experiences on stage and produced brash and creative
versions of Shakespeare with contemporary twists. To help fund his plays Welles
took to working in radio during days, using his distinctive baritone voice in
the audio centric medium, while still working rehearsals on Broadway at night, usually
working on very limited sleep.
A benchmark day for Welles would be the eve of Halloween 1938 as his Mercury
Theatre company produced the infamous radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “The War
of the Worlds.” Due to the nature of the production being played as a faux
newscast it is said, according to some questionable legends, listening audiences
were confused of the broadcasts story as a tale of fiction and believed that
the earth was in fact being invaded by beings from Mars sending multitudes into
a state of extreme panic. This publicity gained the young, creative genius a
great amount of exposure that would lead to Hollywood calls for him to consider
taking a chance at motion pictures.
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| Orson Welles. His first film would be his masterpiece. |
RKO signed a 24 year-old Orson Welles to a directorial contract that
would give him absolute control of his movies, including script, casting,
direction, and final edit. These contract terms would be an unprecedented for
any filmmaker, let alone a first time director. Welles mulled over a couple of
ideas with the studio before being deciding to go with the idea that would
eventually be Citizen Kane.
The plot of the picture is loosely based off the life story of the very
powerful media magnate William Randolph Hearst, the man that controlled most of
the nation’s most read newspapers, among other mediums. Like Kane, Hearst too
was a very powerful figure who utilized his vast news empire to control the
public consciousness of his reading audience. With major publication from coast
to coast he was one of the richest and influence men in the world. Even more
worrisome for Hearst, he, like Kane, had a very public mistress who was a
performer he attempted to make into a star in Marion Davies.
When people in Hearst’s publications caught wind of Citizen Kane it was clear that the film
was inspired by Hearst’s life which angered the mogul. With the knowledge of
this production it became a mission of Hearst to have the motion picture stopped
from ever being released. Hearst tried to buy the film in order to destroy it,
had his writers barred from mentioning the film and threatened RKO with a ban
of all there films from being advertised in his papers. Hearst even manipulated
his many Hollywood elite friends to talk, even begged, to Welles and have him
stop the film from being made. Welles saw all this and was more determined to
finish the picture.
The movie’s story structure would be very distinctive for its time. The
film’s non-linear format opens with a faux newsreel to introduce the audience
to the titular character, giving a quick glance at the individual’s life, as
detailed as any public figure’s biography would in a quick, glorifying
highlight reel would. We dive deeper into Kane’s story as a reporter interviews
Kane’s old employee and agent in Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane), best friend Jedidiah
(Joseph Cotton), and second wife Susan (Dorothy Comingore), as well as reading
the memoirs of his former guardian, Walter Thatcher (George Coulouris). With
each character we are introduced into new, meaningful moments of his life,
discovering more about his issues and insecurities. In a time where movies were
usually very linier this kind of storytelling was very unique for movie goers.
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| Joseph Cotten would later become a Hollywood leading man. |
Welles casted actors he knew and brought over from the Mercury Theatre.
They would be unknown at the time of the picture’s release, but some would go
onto decent careers in Hollywood. Joseph Cotten would become a leading man and
work in the movies for 40 years. Dorothy Comingore caught the attention of many
studios with her dramatic performance, but RKO would refuse to loan her out and
later in her career she would begin to refuse “uninteresting” roles which
ultimately would bring her time on screen to an end ten years after Citizen Kane. Actors like Everett Sloane
and George Coulouris would go on to service long careers as characters for
decades.
With Welles’s background on the stage it appears he enjoyed the use of
deep focus. Every inch of the film’s frame was utilized for a purpose, either
to help tells the story of evoke further emotion of the moments. His dramatic
use of shadows and lighting, extreme high of low angles, and keeping action in
the foreground and background relevant to the story all are used to the peak of
artistic merit as Orson Welles was an experimenting with the use of telling a
story within the confines of the motion picture frame. This camera work would
prove to be ahead of its time as future generations of filmmakers would begin
to utilize more often camera angles that appear to be inspired by more European
style of filmmaking as seen by the young Welles here.
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| An example of Welles' deep focus. |
Despite all the unconventional techniques, the ill-will towards the
picture by Hollywood and what press there was to report on the picture, and the
hardships of production Citizen Kane
premiered at the RKO Palace Theatre on Broadway on May 1, 1941 after being
refused to open at Radio City Music Hall. Responses would be mixed due to
Hearst’s papers. Some critics saw it as wonderful filmmaking, others as first-time
filmmaking hogwash. The picture would garner amazingly nine Academy Award
nominations including Welles for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor,
but the production came away with only one win, being Best Writing for Welles
and fellow screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewcz. Outside of Hearst’s controlling media
arms however Citizen Kane would garner the greatest praise with Best Picture
honors from prestigious circles such as the National Board of Review and the
New York Film Critics, but these awards would not shine as bright as the film’s
lose at the Academy Awards
The picture was a financial hardship for RKO and Orson Welles. RKO came
away with poor box office numbers, leading to Citizen Kane being put away for years without a thought of a
re-release. Citizen Kane was on the
road to being a forgotten film. Welles’ reputation was tarnished before his filmmakingcareer
official started. Despite his great creativeness he was buried by press and a
poor reputation. His follow-up picture, 1942’s The Magnificent Ambersons, would be hijacked by RKO in the editing
process, jading Welles over the industry and essentially destroying a possible
promising directorial career.
With the rise of film schools and art houses in the 1950s Citizen Kane found
a new entrance into the forefront of the cinematic consciousness. As students
began to learn in a classroom setting the skills of filmmaking, the production
quality and creativity of Citizen Kane
was beginning to be played again and observed for how unique and genius it was.
Breaking down the writing, acting, cinematography, editing, music, and effects,
scholars of film began to see the feature as masterpiece once removed from the
time and place of Hearst and his influence. At this time Citizen Kane would be
re-released and audiences saw the film with new and enthralled eyes.
Contemporary film critics digested the material realizing that Welles
techniques were ahead of their time and influences later generations of
filmmakers with how to direct and use their camera and edit a motion picture.
Decades would pass and film critics began to use Citizen Kane as the ultimate measuring stick to which all movies
would be measured against.
Citizen Kane was one of the
very first films added to the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress
in 1989 as one of the most historic and significant American motion picture
ever producsed. When the American Film Institute voted on a list of the
greatest American made films of all time in 1998 Citizen Kane came out on top, and repeated the feat again on their
2007 list, voted on by filmmakers, historians, and critics.
Orson Welles would be outlived by his masterpiece, but his impact has
been felt for generations as his work influenced throughout the medium of
filmmaking. Through the decades of being proclaimed the “best film of all
time,” Citizen Kane has suffered a
bit of inevitable backlash as critics have become tired of its high praise, yet
it remains one of the single most praised motion pictures in American cinema.
It will be hard to believe there will be a serious best of all-time list
without Citizen Kane not being placed
near the top. 
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