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.