Citizen Kane (1941)

 Citizen Kane (1941)

It took me a long time to finally watch Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. I mean, it has the reputation as the greatest movie ever made. I did not want to ruin my perceived notion about this classic. I finally caved in, and I remember my thoughts as I watched the film and when it immediately ended. I was like, “this is good, but seriously the best movie ever?” Here is the thing. The movie kept replaying in my head for some time afterwards. I found myself thinking about how the film innovated cinema with its unique story structure, experimental cinematography, and strong performances from a cast that has never been in a motion picture before. The movie may not seem like a big deal to younger generations, but it was a huge deal in 1941. It paved a path for future filmmakers. When people like Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese or practically everyone who directed a film, they will always circle to Welles’s first Hollywood picture. In the end, my thoughts kept circling around everything and what it meant for Hollywood and its future. I was surprised about one thing. I did not realize how dark the themes are especially given the propensity for a happy ending in classic Hollywood. Forget about a happy ending here.

 

Personally, I find it hard to believe this is Welles’s first foray into Hollywood. He was very well-known in the world of theatre and he catapulted himself into freedom with his 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. People with pedigree such as William Wyler recruited him but to no avail. After failure of several plays and a lucrative contract from RKO he could not resist, he had no choice but to venture into Hollywood. He was given final cut privileges (something unheard of during this era) and the power to choose his own cast and crew (which in this case were nearly all newcomers to Hollywood). It took some time for this project to get off the ground. The project gained steam when Welles and screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz conceived the screenplay which Mankiewicz basing the film off William Randolph Hearst, a media magnate whom Mankiewicz despised. There was an incredible amount of time spent wondering who deserved credit for the screenplay, a question still talked about to this day. Regardless of screenplay credit, it is a really good screenplay that is not straightforward. The story is told in flashbacks and through different narrators. Even though the director and most of the principal cast were new to Hollywood, cinematographer Gregg Toland had the most experience. He chose this film because he was given freedom to experiment with his craft. His experimentation with lighting and lenses allowed the film to show off its use of deep focus, which means everything is in sharp focus. He also shot scenes with the ceiling in focus, an unorthodox method for this time. None of the technical or screenwriting aspects were new (you may recognize some methods in German Expressionist films). Its just that the methods were perfected in one single film shown to a wide audience.

 

Believe it or not, the film did not receive much hype in the beginning. In fact, it is even considered a box office failure. Some people laid the blame to a single person…William Randolph Hearst. He was livid that the film supposedly was based on his life. Leading a massive newspaper empire, he banned the film within his own conglomerate. Other theaters were scared to show the film because they did not want Hearst’s newspapers to publicly chastise them. In the end, Hearst won. Citizen Kane was officially a bomb. It did receive good reviews and earned some Oscar nominations (and apparently was booed at the ceremony), but it did earn its contemporary reputation until the late 1950’s. I really liked the film, but I found the drama surrounding the film even more interesting.

 

When Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) died, the leader of the large newspaper empire’s life is told, in detail, by those who knew him. A newspaper reporter is interviewing people close to Kane to figure out the meaning of his final word, “Rosebud." Kane was sent to a boarding school at a young age and inherited a vast sum of money from his mother. He used the money to buy a newspaper. He and his good friend, Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten) had plans to run the paper and lead a good, fun life. That changed when Kane decided to run for political office and failed thus allowing his relationships to those closest to him to fall apart.

 

The cast is brand new to Hollywood, but you would not know it based on the performances. Many of the actors are well-known but in the world of theater. Cotton was actually a major Broadway star. Many of the actors worked under Welles. I do not want to go too much into performances, but some favorites were Cotton and also Dorothy Comingore as Susan Alexander Kane and Agnes Moorehead as Mary Kane.

 

Citizen Kane is an incredible film, a film rich with storytelling and technical triumphs. Toland’s cinematography and Bernard Hermann’s score are just some of the awesome technical feats that must have been so impressive in 1941 (and still is impressive nowadays). I can talk about the excellent sound design or the makeup work, but I am running out of word space. Is it the best movie ever? Maybe not to me, but it still ranks near the top. I just could not stop thinking about the movie and connecting the storylines to the present. I am glad the film got its recognition it deserved and was not consigned to the RKO vaults. I am fascinated by the film’s production. It was doomed to fail…until it didn’t. Bravo to Orson Welles in making a film that influenced a wide dearth of filmmakers that I love and adore today.

 

My Grade: A