Review - Citizen Kane (1941)

Citizen Kane, as you probably know, was mostly based on the life of news magnate William Randolph Hearst. His anger at the film’s portrayal of him and of his mistress, the actress Marion Davies, led to his papers refusing to mention the picture and intimidating most theaters into not showing it. The film quickly fizzled at the 1941 box office, but is now one of the most famous movies ever made – ironically it has become more famous than Hearst himself, who is now inextricably connected to it.
The picture begins and ends with a “No Trespassing” sign outside the massive estate of Xanadu. The camera, and we who watch, ignore it and slowly get closer to the huge mansion. One bright light shows the bedroom of the dying tycoon Charlie Kane (Orson Welles). With his final breath, Kane gasps out one word: rosebud.
A newsreel is put together announcing his death and summarizing his life, but the editor wants something more: who was Kane really? He seemed a very contradictory man; perhaps his final word could help explain it all. A reporter (William Alland) is sent on a hunt for the meaning of “rosebud.”
We follow Alland through archival research, interviews with friends and employees, even with Kane’s second wife, but nobody can tell him what “rosebud” was. We in the audience finally do learn what it was, but it proves less valuable than the rest of what we learn along with the reporter.
Charlie Kane came from a poor family in the West, who fortuitously came into a large gold mine; his mother sent him East to go to the best schools and be prepared for greatness, but he always chafed at his guardian, the banker Walter Thatcher. Upon coming of age he shows little interest in so-called respectable business ventures, instead choosing to run the New York Inquirer, a small newspaper.
Kane begins his career with a high-minded declaration of principles, but it is a mistake to think that he ever really cared more about the common man than himself. As one of his friends states when being interviewed, “he never had a conviction except Charlie Kane in his life.” He is willing almost from the start to stir up scandal for the sake of circulation, and ultimately urges the United States to go to war. Through such sensational headline-making, he turns his newspaper into one of the biggest in the nation.
Although he wields great influence through his papers, real political influence – elected office – eludes him thanks to an affair with the young singer Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore). The scandal ends his hopes for the White House, so Kane becomes determined to make his new wife an opera star, building a huge opera house for her and staging lavish productions in spite of her less-than-ideal voice.
It is this second marriage and his attempts to give his wife a career that ties together the two great aims of Charlie Kane’s life: to have influence and power over others, and to recapture his youth. (Indeed, it is on his way to look at items from his family’s old house that he first meets his second wife.) “Rosebud” was ultimately an expression of loss for the youth he never had. Once he was whisked East, he went to exclusive schools and enjoyed a very comfortable existence, but the relatively carefree and easy youth that most of us enjoy was denied him. Through his relationship with this younger woman, it is as if he wants to have the young life that he never got; the irony of all this is that he ends up pushing her into a singing career that she doesn’t want.
Simply describing the story may make you think that Citizen Kane is simply a conventional screen biography, but what makes it special is the way that this man’s life is recounted to us. The newsreel gives a quick overview of his life and career, and through flashbacks and interviews with surviving friends we learn more and more details about him. His story isn’t told in chronological order, but neither is it terribly scrambled: first we learn about his rise and fall in the business world, then his decline of morals and integrity, and finally his failed marriages. We can ultimately follow the path of Kane’s life better this way than if it had been told in a more linear way.
The unconventional structure and Orson Welles’ superb characterization are all vital to the movie and have been praised at length, but most important – and most discussed – of all is Gregg Toland’s deep-focus photography, which lets us spot small details in both the foreground and background. This allows for many long takes as the film doesn’t need to cut to a close-up of something for us to see it as everything in the frame is already in focus, which ultimately provides a much cleaner and more economical narrative; the film is only two hours long but we learn as much about Charlie Kane’s life and character as it is possible for us to know.
The camera angles and lighting style also contribute to the film; Welles shoots the film almost like a gothic melodrama or a noir, which when combined with Toland’s deep focus produces a movie that is haunting without being at all sentimental. Welles made many noirs and mystery films later in his career, but this same visual style always felt much more conspicuous and mannered in those pictures: their stories and characters weren’t nearly as compelling as this one so the photography is much more noticeable to us. In contrast, a first-time viewer will probably not notice the many visual tricks that are put to use in Citizen Kane. The visual and narrative techniques aren’t just designed to show off here, but to serve the story of this man’s life.
The film has been regarded for decades as one of the greatest films ever made, if not the greatest;  in a way this is unfortunate, as anyone now who sees it for the first time is going to have expectations that can never be matched, or will already resent it and expect not to like it.
Why is it so acclaimed? Everything I have already mentioned contributes to its reputation but the film is also one of the most entertaining you will ever see, with plenty of humor throughout and even a song and dance number. Welles was a showman first and foremost, and while he had serious points to make he never forgot to make the movie enjoyable.
That is ultimately the most appropriate way to end a review of Citizen Kane: forget about the acclaim that it’s had from highbrow cineastes and film geeks, and enjoy it as the marvelously entertaining movie that it is and was meant to be.

Sight & Sound

Well, I suppose it was inevitable - Citizen Kane has been dethroned at last in Sight & Sound’s latest poll. I’m not sure how much can be read into this - more than four as many critics and directors were surveyed than were surveyed ten years ago, so comparing the two results is a little difficult - but I don’t think it’s either a seismic change or simply an act of boredom, which are the two main analyses being offered.
As has often been stated, great directors who made many great films often have a hard time getting a title in the top ten; a lot of films get a respectable number of votes, but not enough to place. Alfred Hitchcock, who certainly made a lot of terrific movies, finally got Vertigo in the top ten in 1982, and from then on I think his fans started to coalesce around this film - back in 2002, Roger Ebert switched his vote from Notorious to Vertigo as he felt that the latter film had a better chance - and with each poll it has risen higher and higher, coming within five votes of besting Kane ten years ago. I noticed that Hitchcock’s other films have also gotten fewer and fewer votes with each poll, which supports this theory.
Apart from Vertigo and Kane switching places, four of the top five titles stayed the same (if you split the two Godfather films in the last poll and adjust the results). Another big surprise was Sunrise, which has continued to climb: as far as silent films go, it’s usually been Potemkin, Passion (which reliably places in every second poll), and Keaton or Chaplin. Now, with Potemkin finally dropping out of the top ten for the first time, it looks like Sunrise may be the film that fans of silents coalesce around. It’s far from my favorite silent film, but it’s a much more welcome choice than Potemkin - yes, Potemkin’s of historical value because of its technique, but it doesn’t have a whole lot to offer beyond that.
The most disappointing addition to the list was The Searchers; it’s been on the list before, and almost placed last time, so it’s not exactly a shock, but I’m always a little amazed at the acclaim for it. Like Hitchcock, John Ford began his career making silent movies, but unlike Hitchcock he never became much of an ‘actor’s director.’ He doesn’t have much of an ear for dialogue, either. I’ve never tried, but if I watched the film muted and with subtitles I might like it more. The landscapes are beautiful, to be sure, but the sets are distractingly obvious and I want to cringe almost every time a character talks.
As with the 2002 poll, I found the directors’ top ten picks more interesting - Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now are welcome additions, a Tarkovsky film has finally cracked the top ten, and Tokyo Story going from off the list to #1 was a most pleasant surprise. The directors don’t seem quite as mired in the distant past as the critics do: no silents, and four films from the 1970s. Hopefully this means that more modern films will finally get some appreciation on best-of-all-time-lists at last. “They don’t make great films anymore” is one of the most common, and most irritating, clichés in film criticism. There weren’t any more great films being made in the 1960s than in the 1990s, but since the bad movies are forgotten over time, we tend to see past decades as better than they were.

All-time top ten lists are among the most popular items for people to make into Youtube videos or blog posts, so I suppose I’ll have to make one too - given the topic, it would probably be very bad manners if I didn’t! I’ve always found this a very difficult question and have been avoiding it for a long time. Making a top ten list for only one decade on my Youtube account was tricky enough!
A lot of critics say they spend a long time thinking about forming their list, while others make one very quickly. I think the second method is best: a person’s favorites always change, so why not make it simply a freeze-frame of your own thoughts, if I can phrase it that way?
Having said all that, and trying to put it off just a little longer, here goes:

The Right Stuff (1983) by Philip Kaufman - my all-time #1 (the rest of the list is alphabetical)
The Apartment (1960) by Billy Wilder
Bicycle Thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica
Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles
City of God (2002) by Fernando Meirelles
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) by David Lean
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) by Sergio Leone
Rear Window (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock
Schindler’s List (1993) by Steven Spielberg
Taxi Driver (1976) by Martin Scorsese

Pretty soon I’ll be doing a series on my all-time favorite films, with an ultimate goal being an all-time top hundred. The reviews won’t come in any particular order - just as they come to me - so the ones I do first will probably end up near the top of the list, as they’ll likely be the ones I’m most sure belong on such a list. The first film write-up should be finished in a week or so, with regular reviews coming out every week thereafter. It will be interesting to see what my top ten will look like after approaching it more analytically rather than just spitting it out like I’ve just done!

As well, here’s a video I’ve made of the results of each Sight & Sound poll from 1952 to now. For the 2002 results I’ve split the two Godfather films but this doesn’t change the result all that much:

Now that Potemkin has fallen off the list, Renoir’s The Rules of the Game is the only film that has placed every time. Citizen Kane didn’t make it in 1952 (it hadn’t been seen since its modest 1941 release), but came pretty close.

Now for discussions, assuming anyone still reads what I put up here. What do you think of this year’s list? What about past polls? What would you have chosen instead? Let’s talk about anything and everything - this year has been pretty dreary so far, movie-wise, so this is as good a subject as any!