Citizen Kane (movie review)

Citizen Kane (drama) (1941) (1 hrs 54 mins)

Citizen Kane is a great film that, like a powerful dream rising from the unconscious mind, warrants and rewards study. It is remarkable in being the first film directed by Orson Welles, at the tender age of 25. Not many directors make their greatest film at the first attempt. Probably no-one in the history of cinema has made a debut film of such quality, originality and technical brilliance.

Of course Welles was not a complete novice. He had directed in the theatre and on the radio and already shown signs of rare ability. It was this early promise that led the studio to give him carte blanche to direct any film he chose. He took his time, mulled over different scripts and in the end decided to write his own screenplay, in collaboration with Herman J. Manciewitz.

The story itself is quite compelling. A young boy is given away by his parents to be brought up by a wealthy businessman, after the parents unexpectedly come into a fortune. The boy grows up, becomes a newspaper magnate, a highly successful businessman and a man of influence in world affairs. He has hopes one day of becoming President but his political ambitions are thwarted when an extra-marital affair comes to light. He withdraws to Xanadu, a vast estate where he has accumulated thousands of works of art, which sit gathering dust as he ekes out his final years in solitude.

What makes the film even more compelling is the way Welles chooses to tell the story. The structure of the film is bold and imaginative. From the opening scene, where we see a ‘No Trespassing’ sign on the barbed wire fence of Xanadu, we realise that what drove Charles Foster Kane to accumulate and wield such wealth and power remains a mystery. A reporter is dispatched to visit Kane’s second wife, his friends and colleagues to try to find out the meaning of the final word Kane ever spoke. As he lay on his deathbed, he uttered the single word ‘Rosebud’. As the reporter digs deeper, we see versions of Kane filtered through the lens of other people’s memories. And, tellingly, nobody knows what Rosebud represents.

Welles later rather disarmingly described the secret of Rosebud as a mere narrative device but it is far more than this. In the final scenes, we the viewers see what nobody in the film sees – we see the answer to the mystery of Rosebud, and by implication the answer to the mystery of Charles Foster Kane.

Above all, Citizen Kane is a visual film. From the superb  newsreel  images at the start of the film, to the haunting camera angles, lighting effects and visual segues that distinguish every passage of the film, and the surreal settings of Xanadu, we are taken on a visual journey, one that is further enriched by the captivating soundtrack. 

As director, Welles’ cinematic virtuosity is all pervasive. If the acting performances cannot quite match the quality of the visual work, this should not be seen as a criticism. Even Welles, playing Kane with all the charisma and force of personality he can muster, cannot help but be dwarfed by the film.The one weakness I see in the film, which I also see in all Welles’ other work, is that we, the viewers, do not invest emotionally in the characters. Yes, we feel sad for Kane and for the other characters we encounter but we never come close enough to them to really care.

If one of the great tragedies of cinema history is that Welles never made another film to match the heights of Citizen Kane, the comfort is that he did, for this one film, successfully marshal all his powers of creativity to leave the world with a genuine masterpiece.

 

Rating: 10/10