Citizen Kane (film)
**Citizen Kane Overview**
"Citizen Kane" is a landmark 1941 film directed by Orson Welles, who, at just 25 years old, became an innovative auteur through an unprecedented contract with RKO Pictures that granted him complete creative control. The film is notable for its advanced cinematic techniques, such as deep-focus photography, low-key lighting, and non-linear storytelling, which collectively redefine traditional filmmaking. The narrative revolves around Charles Foster Kane, a powerful newspaper tycoon whose life is examined posthumously through a series of interviews, raising questions about identity, love, and loss. The film employs a rich array of symbolism, including the enigmatic "Rosebud," which serves as a key to understanding Kane's character.
Despite its critical acclaim, "Citizen Kane" faced significant challenges upon release, including attempts by William Randolph Hearst, a figure believed to inspire Kane, to suppress the film due to its unflattering portrayal. As a result, it struggled at the box office and won only a single Academy Award for its screenplay. Over the years, however, "Citizen Kane" has garnered immense respect and is credited with influencing various film movements, including film noir and the French New Wave, cementing its status as a pivotal work in the history of cinema.
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Citizen Kane (film)
Identification Film about the rise and fall of a rich newspaper tycoon, told in a newsreel documentary and then nonchronologically to an inquiring reporter in flashbacks from five people who knew the man
Director Orson Welles (1915-1985)
Date Released on May 1, 1941
Citizen Kane is undoubtedly one of the most important and influential films in filmmaking history. Consistently ranked as the greatest film of all time by the American Film Institute and Sight and Sound polls, it fostered the dark chiaroscuro look and flashbacks of the emerging film noir crime thrillers of the 1940’s and 1950’s and helped establish the idea of the director as auteur of the film.
At the age of twenty-five, Orson Welles signed an unprecedented contract at RKO Pictures giving him “final cut,” or complete control, over making his first feature film. Though he had much stage and radio experience, he had no knowledge about making motion pictures. That this novice auteur could harness and inspire the talents of his crew in this project—including famed cinematographerGregg Toland, screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, composer Bernard Herrmann, editor Robert Wise, RKO special effects and makeup artists, and the Mercury Theatre Players, with whom Welles had acted on stage—makes the achievement of Kane all the more remarkable.
While few of the film techniques in the unconventional Kane are new, they are refined and perfected to an incredible degree: deep-focus photography, low-key lighting, unusual low camera angles, overlapping dialogue, startling and abrupt edits and montage sequences, fluid and suprising camera movements, asymmetrical compositions, special effects (estimated in more than 50 percent of the film) not detected until recently, flashforwards and linked flashbacks, and a “mock” newsreel about Kane’s life. The film is replete with justifiably famous symbols: Xanadu (Kane’s palatial mansion), the “Rosebud” sled, the glass snow-scene paperweight, second wife Susan’s puzzles, Kane’s statues, Kane’s reflections in mirrors, and so on.
Rather than answer what happens next, the nonlinear story departs from Hollywood tradition by asking, who is this newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane, a man who rises in power and influence but loses love and innocence? The search for the mystery of “Rosebud,” Kane’s last word before he died and the most famous opening word of dialogue in cinema, ends ambiguously like a puzzle with missing pieces or a cubist portrait of an infinity of Kanes reflected in mirrors.
Though Welles denied it, Kane bore an uncomfortable resemblance to newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, and Kane’s second wife, Susan, to Hearst’s mistress, actorMarion Davies. In response to the extremely unflattering portraits, Hearst and his minions in radio stations and Hearst newspapers at first completely banned all references to the movie, and so it lacked advertising. Afraid of a backlash from the Hearst news empire, major Hollywood moguls offered RKO more than $800,000 (the film’s budget) to burn the negative. When the film was released, studio boycotts prevented it from being shown in large key theaters. It is no wonder, then, that the film was not a box-office success and that it won only a single Academy Award for the screenplay by Mankiewicz and Welles, despite the immediate critical acclaim upon release.
Impact
The fiftieth anniversary DVD edition of Citizen Kane demonstrated the film’s sustained interest and significance, its influence on the film noir style and the later French New Wave, and the audacious creative vision of the novice auteur Welles that still inspires filmmakers today.
Bibliography
Carringer, Robert L. The Making of “Citizen Kane.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Focus on “Citizen Kane.” Film Focus Series. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971.
Naremore, James, ed. Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane”: A Casebook. Casebooks in Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.