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Orson Welles changes film history as Citizen Kane |
Entire books have been written about seemingly every aspect
of the film’s creation. Welles’ original intention was to call the film American.
It’s a fitting title. Citizen Kane is perhaps the finest film ever made
on the corruption that ambition, money and power bring to the American spirit.
Kane starts out as a pioneering idealist, but his fatal flaw his is need for power.
That need to seize control of everything extends from buying all the art he can
find in Europe to controlling the lives of all around him. It’s the mentality
that will force his second wife into an opera career she is hopelessly unsuited
for. It will eventually leave him sitting alone in his huge mansion, surrounded
by wealth but bereft of friends. A large part of the American Dream is about
“making it big” – and few make it bigger than Kane, and have so little to show
for it at the end.
The film is a character study of ambition and power, using a
framing device of the late Kane’s final word: “Rosebud”. What did he mean? Will
finding out provide the key to understanding this powerful, elliptical man? A
reporter (William Alland) aims to find out by interviewing key people from
Kane’s life. From their recollections, the story of Kane’s life slowly comes
together in a non-linear style. Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) as a young
child inherits one of the world’s largest gold mines. Coming of age, Kane decides
to use his wealth to become a press baron. He builds a news empire and runs for
Governor – but the public revelation of his affair with amateur singer Susan
(Dorothy Comingore) ruins his campaign. He builds a mansion on a man-made
mountain, Xanadu, but is isolated and friendless in the echoing rooms of his
own mausoleum.
Welles worked with cameraman Gregg Toland to push the film
into a whole new visual language, deeply influenced by German expressionistic
film. It’s a beautiful film to look at, and each shot is covered with meaning,
Welles’ eye for the theatrical image matched with Toland’s genius for visual
language.
Citizen Kane is rarely thought of as a noir film, but it’s possibly the most noirish film you’ll ever see. Watching it again I was struck with how often shadows dominate the screen. Faces are frequently obscured, most famously in the projection room scene, where Thompson receives his instructions to find out what “Rosebud” means. But at key moments, faces disappear into black – while preparing his “Statement of principles” that will fill the front page of Kane’s first edition at the Inquirer, his face is lost in murky darkness. We hear what he is saying, but what is he thinking at this moment? It’s impossible to tell. Long shadows and inky black segments fill the frame frequently – it’s a film that gives a true feeling of darkness and unknowability at its heart.
If that wasn’t enough, Toland uses angles Hollywood films
hadn’t dreamed of. For some scenes, trenches were dug into the set and the
camera placed in it, allowing the camera to stare up, with the actors towering
over us. Citizen Kane is often claimed to be the first film where
ceilings needed to build for the sets, as Toland’s angles and camerawork
frequently made them visible. It’s not completely true, but it speaks to the
visual impact of the film. Nothing really like this had been widely seen
before. And I’ve not even mentioned the soaring, swooping tracking shots that
pass through signs and buildings, the sort of inspired movement of the camera
so many directors before had avoided in favour of stationary recording of the
story. It’s visionary stuff.
The same was true for the film’s sound and music. Welles
used his experience from radio to turn the soundscape of the film into
something truly different. In radio, all cuts are managed by sound, but film
had traditionally used only visuals to mark edits. Here, sound is used as often
as visuals. When Kane runs for Governor, the sound and vision cut seamlessly
from Leland on the stump for Kane to Kane finishing the same speech at a
cavernous rally. Early in the film, the words “Happy Christmas” are skilfully
cut together to leap forward years. Bernard Herrmann’s spare but perfect score,
rather than laid over every scene, only comes in (as on radio) where emotional
or transitional change is needed.
But then this is a film that uses editing as a way to tell
story that few films before had tried. The sequence showing the collapse of
Kane’s marriage to President’s niece Emily Monroe Norton (Ruth Warwick) is the
perfect example. Over about two minutes of screen time we see several short
scenes, all set at the breakfast table. Each scene shows a progressive step in
their relationship collapsing, from loving exasperation to annoyance to anger
to mute loathing. The scenes are no more than 20-30 seconds each, but the film
perfectly moves from one to the other. The music slowly changes from a romantic
waltz to a cold discordant rhythm. Transitions are marked by wipes. In each
scene the actors move further apart at their breakfast table, the dialogue
becomes harsher, sharper and more confrontational as the room they sit in
becomes grander. In a few moments, an entire marriage story is told. It’s quite
simply marvellous. The sequence is bookended by matching camera movements,
gliding in and then out from the room.
There’s controversy over who wrote the script. Welles and
Herman J Mankiewicz are credited – although arguments have been made that each
deserved the lion’s share. Whoever did create it, the script is quite simply
superb. Economic, but packed with wonderful lines and some extraordinary
speeches (Mr Bernstein’s speech about a powerful memory of a young woman he saw
once from a distance is quite simply one of the best small-scale speeches
you’ll see). Every scene is brilliantly assembled, and gives fabulous material
to an extraordinary cast of actors.
It makes for a compelling character study, wrapped into a
series of brilliantly done vignettes. Each set of recollections – from
Thatcher, business manager Mr Bernstein (Everett Sloane), old friend Jedidah
(Joseph Cotton) and ex-wife Susan (Dorothy Comingore) – makes for a fabulous
series of self-contained scenes, each gaining richer and deeper meaning with
every subsequent reflection that follows. There are so many sensational scenes
I hardly know where to begin: you could write an essay about each one.
Thatcher’s serio-comic reflections of the roguishly cheeky Kane are wonderful.
Bernstein’s memories of the chancer coming good – with a brilliantly playful
celebration scene – wonderfully entertaining. Jedidah and Susan’s far more
tainted reflections of the man’s flaws make for wonderfully constructed drama,
presenting a corrupted and bullying Kane. In every scene there is a beautiful
moment of dialogue or drama which sticks in the memory.
The acting is equally good. Cotton settles into the groove many
of his finest roles would fit into – the never-quite-grew-up schoolboy, who
slowly realises his hero has feet of clay. Comingore is wonderfully fragile and
then increasingly bitter as Kane’s ill-used second wife, forced into a
humiliating career because Kane won’t be married to a failure. Sloane is
charmingly loyal, with beautiful moments of profound sadness, as Bernstein.
Coulouris is brilliantly funny as the exasperated Thatcher. Ray Collins’ is
smooth and unabashed as Kane’s political rival. Agnes Moorehead is tinged with
sadness and ambition for her son as Kane‘s mother.
The only tragic note about Citizen Kane is that this
wasn’t the first in a career of non-stop genius from Welles. Instead, flaws in
his own personality, combined with his ability to make enemies and lack of
ability to focus on the task in hand, increasingly consumed Welles, making him
eventually a lost great, a man wandering from film set to film set, taking on
small roles for cheques that might one day help him make a film. But he’ll
always have Kane, the sort of film that is a marvel which can never,
ever disappoint. With every scene a classic, every moment compelling, every
beat in it perfectly judged, its influence stretching to almost every film made
since the late 1940s – it deserves its place as the greatest film of all time.
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