Citizen Kane (1941)

Directed by: Orson Welles | 115 minutes | drama | Actors: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton, Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane, Paul Stewart, Dorothy Comingore, Ruth Warwick, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, William Alland, Paul Stewart, George Coulouris, Fortunio Bonanova, Gus Schilling, Philip van Zandt, Georgia Backus , Harry Shannon

The film to which the Dutch pop group Kane owes its name has a huge reputation. For decades, Citizen Kane has been regarded by film critics as the Best Picture of All Time. Still, probably few people these days will be really overwhelmed during their first encounter with this film. The story is not particularly exciting and there is quite a bit of distance between the viewer and the main character. The great technical qualities of the film are not equally prominent for everyone, partly because of our habituation with certain techniques. However, the more aware (and often) you see the film, the more you will appreciate the film, in all its facets.

The ‘objective’, almost documentary-like style may keep you at a distance, but it is also a distinctive strength of the film. The film manages to tell an interesting and fundamentally emotional story, without falling into the melodramatic Hollywood traditions of the time.

What immediately stands out when the film starts is Greg Toland’s beautiful camera work. We pass the sign “no tresspassing”, after which we enter the mysterious estate of Kane. The film begins as a kind of gothic horror film, with Kane’s obscure mansion and appropriate music by Bernard Herrmann. The transitions of the shots here are fascinating: you are always in a different position towards the house while the illuminated window of the upstairs room remains in the same place. In the room behind this window, the event that drives the entire film takes place. Here Charles Foster Kane takes his last breath and utters his last word as he shatters a crystal snow globe: “Rosebud”. This word here has the function of what Hitchcock called the McGuffin: an object or element that propels the film, but which in itself does not have to mean anything. By figuring out what this word meant to Kane, one wants to discover his true thoughts and identity. Through conversations with “eyewitnesses” an attempt is made to find out the meaning of the word and in this way his whole life is reconstructed.

In the effective news clip about Kane, we are quickly informed about his life. We notice that Kane was a famous and controversial person. As was the case with Lawrence in David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia”, everyone has their own opinion about Kane, while no one really seems to know him.

What was actually going on in the head of this special figure? What has the sudden wealth for Kane from a poor family done to him? How does he view things like power, money, friendship and love? What has he missed most in his life? What does he regret most, and what is (or has been) the most important thing in his life? The more you think about this, the better Kane’s drama emerges. You want to be able to feel and understand him as a spectator, and this is intriguing and frustrating at the same time. You want to get to know him, but this never quite works out. While the final revelation of the word “Rosebud” does say something about Kane’s (final) desires or thoughts, the investigative journalist’s words also seem very truthful: one’s life cannot be defined by a single word. You can hear and combine different points of view like the jigsaw puzzles that Kane’s wife Susan Alexander deals with, but there will always be pieces missing.

At least as memorable as the content are the technical qualities of the film. Never before have cinematic innovations been applied on such a broad scale and in such an effective way as in this film. The use of “deep focus”, keeping both the background and foreground in focus, is optimally used here, which is especially evident in the beautiful shot of the inside of Kane’s childhood home, where we see little Kane through the window. playing outside in the snow. The camera work is often very ingenious. Long before David Fincher was even born, Toland was going through walls and windows with his camera. And the amount of “special effects” is not inferior to the average blockbuster of today. The lighting is beautiful and effective and the layered shots are complex, with foreground and background sometimes shot and exposed separately. The gigantic sets, the realistic paintings, Herrmann’s music, the tight editing and direction: it all contributes to the excellence of the film.

Countless books have been written about the making of the film. Production company RKO became interested in the idiosyncratic theater maker (and twenty-four year old) Welles after his controversial radio adaptation of HG Wells’ “War of the Worlds”, and offered him a contract for two films. It was unique that a budding filmmaker was offered such a large contract and given so much freedom in making a film like Welles.

Welles decided, along with veteran screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, to write a story about the rise and fall of a great public figure, taking as its basis the powerful newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst. Although the film received critical acclaim, Hearst himself was less enthusiastic. He used all his influence to blacken Kane and tried to have all the film’s negatives destroyed. He may not have fully succeeded in this, but Welles never quite recovered from the smear campaign and never regained the freedom he had been given for Kane.

As unfortunate as this is, we can count ourselves lucky that the favorable conditions and pooling of talent, driven by Welles’s vision, have taken place at all. Citizen Kane is a film that made Welles legendary in one fell swoop and will forever occupy a very important place in cinema history. It’s an intriguing and beautifully crafted film that still deserves our attention.