Citizen Kane

 “Rosebud” These dying words of the title character of then 25-year old Orson Welles’ debut film become the MacGuffin of the story as a reporter (and by extension the audience) tries to figure out what it means.  At the end of the story we find out what it is attached to but the audience is left to discern the meaning.  I certainly have my opinion but others likely have their own.

Citizen Kane was one of the late film critic Roger Ebert’s favorite films.  Citizen Kane also appears on a lot of favorite critics list and for years topped the decennial list of Sight and Sound favorite films.  I think for these reasons, as well as a reluctance to try to embrace a film that was released in 1941, a lot of modern audience members do not watch Citizen Kane or are quickly disappointed if they do and are not quickly swept up into its rhythms.  Film fans should ignore the praise around the film and give it a look and see if it grabs them.  While I do not rate it as one of my favorites it I find it stylistically completely original with many details under the surface.

Welles played unsympathetic characters in many of the films he directed.  In Touch of Evil and The Stranger Welles played villainous roles.  The only other director I can think of who has done something similar is Kenneth Branagh who played the villain in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.  The villains are often the most colorful parts and Welles clearly relished playing them.  Welles, particularly as Kane, had a polished diction and a mischievous glint in his eye that took the edge off the character’s natural arrogance.  As audience members we it is hard to accept many of Kane’s actions but we sure enjoy watching him.

One detail about Citizen Kane that I noted upon first watch was how much the 25 year old Orson Welles looked like he actually did as an older man.  The elder Welles was a lot more likable than Kane in the third act of his film but physically the only think lacking was the beard and the constant cigar smoking.

Spoilers (for a film released in 1941):

The story of Citizen Kane is about a boy, Charles Foster Kane, who is taken away from his parents and is placed in the care of a guardian inherits a fortune from gold found on his family’s property.  Kane, lacking above all else, a nurturing parent who could give him some moral guidance, eventually purchases a publishing company that grows immensely due to Kane’s use of yellow journalism.  The company folds after several years and Kane runs for governor of New York but loses his election after his opponent discovers the unhappily married Kane is having an affair with a much younger singer.  Kane marries the singer and tries to turn her into an opera star which fails miserably after he pushes her far too hard and embarrases her publicly.  Kane eventually builds a castle called Xanadu where he lives the last few years of his life.  Susan,  his second wife leaves him soon after it’s built because she feels too isolated.  As Kane dies he whispers the words “Rosebud” and a reporter spends the film interviewing people from Kane’s life trying to identify what it means but never does.  At the very end of the film some workers are burning some items from Kane’s house and one of them is his childhood sled, which is called Rosebud.  The workers never notice the name and one of the last shots is of the name burning off the sled.

Welles famously got creative control of the film from RKO Pictures before a frame was shot based on his success with unconventional productions of classic plays at the Mercury Theatre in New York and his prank reading of H.G. Welles “War of the Worlds” on the radio which many people took to be real.  Welles, alcoholic screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz (whose story is told in the David Fincher film Mank, originally written by Fincher’s late father) and cinematographer Greg Toland teamed up to make an original film unlike any other that has been made before or since.  The score was the first by composer Bernard Hermann, who later worked on many of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films (including my favorite Vertigo) and who closed out his career with the score for Taxi Driver.

Citizen Kane is an ambitious and challenging film, but especially for a filmmaker so young.  Welles took a big risk as to whether audiences would be willing to invest in this story.  The title character is fascinating but unsympathetic.  There is no other character who appears throughout the film for audiences to latch onto.  The reporter’s full face is never scene and while Kane’s friend and employee Leland (played by lifetime Welles friend Joseph Cotten) is more sympathetic but he only appears in one section of the film.  As a result audiences are a little unmoored throughout the film.

Citizen Kane, like most films of the early 1940s, is in black and white which is fitting for its morally compromised central character.  The opening shot, with a foreboding score, is of a sign outside of Xanadu that says “No Trespassing”.  This cues the audience that we are about to see a dark tale.  Soon we see a closeup of Kane’s mouth whispering “rosebud” right as he dies and a snow globe that appears throughout the film falls to the ground and breaks.  

By starting the film this way Welles is not just setting up the mystery of the film but is (especially for the time) establishing an unconventional structure.  Starting a film with the death of the lead character is one thing but Welles zips back and forth in time throughout the story.  The newsreel tells us the highlights of Kane’s life but when the reporter starts digging in then we see the effect of Kane’s life in the eyes of many of the people who knew him (his ex-wives, friends, butler) and so at any given moment we may be with Kane as a younger or older man.  

The flashback to Kane’s childhood is told efficiently.  Kane and Toland show us the key moment in Kane’s life in one scene that uses Toland’s innovative deep focus technique, which allows the camera to keep characters both in the foreground and background in focus.  In one take that would be impressive now once the narrator informs us that young Charles is due to receive money we see the camera outside the Kane cabin in Colorado where Charles is playing in the snow.  Bernard Hermann’s score sounds inspiring as the flashback begins but changes as soon as Charles throws the snowball at the sign on the boarding house as the scene goes from nostalgic to disquieting.

The camera moves inside the cabin where Charles’ mother is making the arrangements to turn Charles over to the guardian while his father who seems old to have a child who is about eight protests.  The camera is able to keep both faces in focus despite their being at different depths.  The dialogue establishes the arrangement and Welles toys with our sympathies.  The father, played by Harry Shannon, is distraught that his son is being taken from him and the mother Agnes Moorehead and guardian, Mr. Thatcher, George Coulouris are portrayed as cold so we feel for the father, though he behaves a little hungover.  There is a cut as Mary Kane goes to the window and we see her from behind and then editor (and future Sound of Music director) Robert Wise, cuts to the front of Mary.  As the final arrangements are set the camera moves and the news is laid on Charles.  As Charles protests we learn why the mother has made this choice.  The father takes an awkward swing at Charles and threatens to thrash him for disobeying and we see that his mother is sending Charles away to protect him from his father, who has probably beaten him before and now we understand the mother’s motivations.

Charles holds tightly onto the sled.  To me this signifies that “Rosebud” represents Kane’s lost childhood.  Perhaps if Charles had not inherited all that money he would have been a much more decent man.  Mary’s cold behavior is probably the state she had to put herself into both deal with her husband and be able to separate from her child.  The slight acid she puts into her comment to her husband “Where you can’t get at him” is the only hint of emotion she shows throughout the scene.  

What happens to Mary Kane after this scene?  We never learn.  The film, after a couple of quick transitions, flashes forward 18 years to extended scene of the now grown up Kane with the first full scene of Welles in character, already working in publishing.  Kane’s childhood was stolen from both the viewer and the boy himself and we are left to infer what happened during those years.

The breakfast montage, showing the deterioration of Kane’s first marriage, is fun to watch for its staging.  Kane and his wife Emily played by Ruth Warwick eat breakfast first closely early in their marriage largely in a two shot and then through several scenes (staged over a little less than two minutes of screen time) they are shown in separate shots and the dialogue from each of the scenes reveals more tension between them than the one before.  Kane especially is doing nothing to help matters and in the last scene Emily is reading the rival The Chronicle instead of Kane’s newspaper the Inquirer. 

Leland’s flashback has a moment where Kane is celebrated and dances with several showgirls.  I do not know if it is a modern sensibility or not but Kane looks foolish doing the dance caught up in his own fame.  Whether it is intentional or not it definitely works for how we, and probably Leland, perceive the character.

Toland used another unconventional filming technique.  Film sets usually do not show the ceilings of the buildings they are pretending to represent because they are usually open because the lights and microphones are placed there.  If a viewer looks at many indoor scenes in Citizen Kane ceilings appear.  In fact they appear usually low, often less than a foot above the actor’s heads.  In many cases Toland used cloth double as the ceilings and put the lights and microphones right above them.  Upon first viewing many people might miss that detail but just generally perceive that the something is a little different.

Kane’s relationship with Susan gets a lot more screen time than that of his first wife.  Kane has an affair with her while married to his first wife but we only see him go to her apartment and talk with her.  This is probably due to screen restrictions at the time (Welles was forced to adjust another scene that originally took place in a brothel) but it places the focus on Kane’s attraction to Susan which is that she likes him for him and not because of who he is.  Kane’s first wife is related to a politician (echoing FDR marrying Eleanor who was the niece of then President Theodore Roosevelt) so his status as a wealthy publisher played a role in the marriage as much as anything else. Kane ultimately leaves Emily for Susan to have a relationship that is more authentic but Kane blows it by trying shoehorn her into an opera career and not letting Susan be herself.  

Xanadu, the home Kane builds for Susan after her opera career fails, is a mix of a fairly obvious matte paintings and unrealistically big sets.  The main hall is gigantic and at one point Kane stands in front of a fireplace that is so big he could leap into it if he wanted to.  Despite the display of wealth the mood inside Xanadu is glum and depressing as the outside shots indicate.  Susan feels isolated from the world and eventually leaves Kane.  The final shots of the film show an enormous amount of expensive items being thrown into a fire.  If Kane were more generous he might have had them donated to charity but for the purposes of the film it shows how empty his life ultimately ended up.  Kane died wealthy but utterly alone.  The last full scene of him before his death is Kane destroying all of Susan’s things in a rage after she leaves him.  

Welles and Mankiewicz famously based Citizen Kane in part on William Randolph Hearst, with plenty of Welles himself (especially the arrogant brilliance) thrown in for good measure.  I do not want to focus much on that since I think it is important for audiences to watch Kane on its own terms without thinking of Hearst who died about ten years after its release.  Certainly the castle, newspapers using the yellow journalism and the mistress come from Hearst.  The HBO film RKO 281 starring Liev Schreiber as Welles and James Cromwell as Hearst tells a fictionalized version of the Welles-Hearts feud.

For all of Kane’s pomposity Welles gives a showcase credit to each of the Mercury Theatre actors whose careers he was trying to launch with this film during the end credits.  Welles only gives himself a brief credit at the end.  During the opening credits Welles shared his title card with Toland as he likely felt the distinct look of the film was due as much if not more to Toland who according to Welles was thrilled to work with a director who broke so many filmmaking rules.  

Citizen Kane is a brilliant film and a rewarding one for those eager to embrace a challenging and unconventional film.  It is not one of my favorites but I do enjoy visiting it every now and then.  ****