********************* (out of ****)
Starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Everett Sloane, Ruth Warrick, Ray Collins, George Coulouris, William Alland, Paul Stewart, Alan Ladd, and Agnes Moorehead
Directed and produced by Orson Welles, written by Welles, Herman J. Mankiewicz, and maybe John Houseman, music by Bernard Hermann, edited by Robert Wise, & photographed by Gregg Toland
1941 PG
What more can be said about “Citizen Kane” that wouldn’t be redundant? Part of “Kane’s” claim to fame is that it is simply so entertaining. Does it require deep-thinking to get into all its nooks and crannies? Must it be seen over and over again to fully understand everything that goes on? Is it sometimes difficult to keep track of “Kane’s” shifting chronology and frequent history lessons? Yes. But can you watch “Citizen Kane” on a Friday night just for the heck of it? I would say definitely.
“Citizen Kane” is the brainchild of the great Orson Welles, who starred in it, co-wrote it, produced it, directed it, and then went on to live it by never quite fulfilling his expectations and dreams. The movie begins with the death of the great man, Charles Foster Kane (Welles), old and lonely in his palatial Florida estate known as Xanadu. We see a group of faceless newsmen watching a newsreel describing Kane’s life in broad strokes: the enormous inheritance from his mother, his tiny newspaper transforming him into a nationwide media mogul, his numerous political opinions which bought him friends and enemies, and his thwarted attempts at elected office. We also see his two failed marriages, one to a president’s niece, the other to a singer, his attempts at making an opera sensation out of his second wife, and his final seclusion in his giant, lonely mansion, watching his empire crumble. But at the end of the newsreel the reporters are undecided. Who was this man who shaped the first half of the twentieth century?
Out goes the reporter Thompson (William Alland), who for the rest of the movie will speak softly, stand with his back to the camera, be hidden in shadow, or seen only in long-shot. He tracks down the prominent figures of Kane’s life, including Kane’s best friend from college (Joseph Cotten, who also starred with Welles in “The Third Man” and “Touch of Evil”), who went on to become a theatre critic for Kane’s first newspaper. He meet’s Kane’s second wife (Dorothy Comingore), who sings and drinks at a dimly-lit nightclub. Then there’s an absolutely ancient descendent of the Gilded Age’s robber barons who became Kane;s boyhood guardian (George Coulouris); then his meek general manager, who stood by him through everything (Everett Sloane) and ran the empire while the great man hid at Xanadu; and then the butler at the palace (Paul Stewart), who “knows where all the bodies are buried.”
Most of “Citizen Kane” is comprised of criss-crossing and hopelessly non-linear flashbacks from all these points of view. From them is assembled one of the most interesting characters in the movies. Charlie Kane is charming, persuasive and tremendously affable, and blessed with vigor, intelligence, and an endless amount of charisma. But he is also overbearing and even cruel. He is also a man for whom all the money and possessions in the world cannot gain the sense of being loved. All the efforts throughout his life are toward this goal, which is unknown even to him. In his first newspaper he makes a declaration of principles, and then sells off his values one by one, because they weren’t what he was ever after in the first place. Kane just wants to be liked but, as with his possessions, he never knows when enough is enough. Of course, this is only one interpretation, and if “Citizen Kane” makes one thing abundantly clear, it is that every man, great or small, is an unknowable island all to his own.
The techniques used to tell the story of Charlie Kane are mesmerizing in their ingenuity. I’m no film historian; I can’t say what “Citizen Kane” was first to do and what it inspired. I can say “Kane” is great to look at. Like all black-and-white masterpieces, “Kane” makes great use of light and shadows, and is often cited as the first film noir. Throughout the film, Welles and his brilliant cinematographer Gregg Toland use a process known as “deep-focus.” A deep-focus shot means that, by a combination of lighting and camera-work, far-off parts of a scene remain in focus even while the foreground is perfectly sharp. The human eye can only focus on one thing at a time, so this means that “Citizen Kane” often looks “better” than what the human eye is capable of seeing. While “Kane” is packed with throwaway visual tricks, the deep-focus is not one of them; the film feels morally uncertain by showing us so much at once instead of focusing our attention heavy-handedly on one image or person at a time, like most movies.
Another visual strategy made famous by Welles in “Kane,” and later in “The Trial” and “Touch of Evil” are all the wacky camera angles. Many of them are meaningful: a character’s size or position in a scene is liable to denote his increasing or decreasing influence or sense of well-being. At other times, when the great men discuss great things they loom over us like giants. But many of Welles’ shots are art for art’s sake, and delightful for no other reason than seeing the world from a skewed angle; every film by Orson Welles can be watched with the sound off. If this meant he had to drill a hole in the floor of a set, or in the ceiling, or have a table that could split open to let a camera roll through it, so be it.
Kane’s pleasure palace Xanadu is one of the great pieces of movie art decoration. The work of art directors Van Nest Polglase and Darrell Silvera, it’s even more remarkable because of how little there really is. Many of the exterior shots are paintings and not especially deceptive, but they look great, are enormously atmospheric, and combined with real objects in front of them. Other exteriors include cleverly disguised stock footage, while the vast, desolate hall of Xanadu is a masterpiece of luxury gone out of control.
Just about everyone with a technical credit for “Kane” has gone on to greatness. Film editor Robert Wise went on to win Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director for “West Side Story,” and also directed the first “Star Trek” film. Composer Bernard Hermann’s credits also include “Psycho,” “Vertigo,” and his swan-song “Taxi Driver.” His work in “Citizen Kane” includes a jingle written for Charlie as young newspaperman, a jingle that follows him throughout his life in different forms and variations. Hermann’s other contributions to the film are several opera excerpts sung by Kane’s no-talent second wife (whether he composed or adapted them I’m not sure; besides “Tannhauser” and “The Barber of Seville” I couldn’t tell what the movie made up). Actress Comingore lip syncs to a professional opera singer (rather effectively, I might add), but to create the proper effect, Hermann wrote the music just a step or two out of the real singer’s range.
Page two of "Citizen Kane." Back to home.