Citizen Kane (1941)

Credits: Production: Orson Welles, Richard Baer, George Schaefer Direction: Orson Welles Cinematography: Greg Toland Screenplay: Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz Editing: Robert Wise Sound: Bailey Fesler; James G. Stewart Music: Bernard Hermann Art Direction: Van Nest Polglase Set Direction: Darrell Silvera Costume Design: Edward Stevenson

Cast: Charles Foster Kane: Orson Welles Jedediah Leland,  Kane's old school friend: Joseph Cotten Mr. Bernstein, Kane's business manager: Everett  Sloane Susan Alexander Kane, Kane's second wife: Dorothy Comingore Walter Thatcher, banker and guardian to young Kane. . . .George Coulouris Raymond, Kane's butler: Paul Stewart Thompson, a reporter: William Alland Mary Kane, Kane's mother: Agnes Moorehead Emily Norton Kane, Kane's first wife: Ruth WarrickJames W. Gettys, Kane's political opponent: Ray Collin

Key Terms/Concepts/Figures to Know this Week: Orson Welles, William Randolph Hearst, Herman J. Mankiewicz, Greg Toland, Robert Wise, Pauline Kael, Bernard Hermann, narrative structure, prismatic structure, montage, deep-focus photography, wide-angle lens, voice-over narration, sound bridge,  crane shot, tracking shot, dissolve, March of Time

Critical Commentary

“Everything that matters in cinema since 1940 has been influenced by Citizen Kane.”—Francois Truffaut

“Apparently, the easiest thing for people to do when they recognize that something is a work of art is to trot out the proper schoolbook terms for works of art, and there are articles on Citizen Kane that call it a tragedy in fugal form and articles that explain that the hero of Citizen Kane is time—time being a proper sort of modern hero for an important picture. But to use the conventional schoolbook explanations for greatness, and pretend that it’s profound, is to miss what makes it such an American triumph—that it manages to create something aesthetically exciting and durable out of the playfulness of American muckraking satire. Kane is closer to comedy than to tragedy, . . . ”—Pauline Kael

Background on Citizen Kane and Orson Welles

It is no great mystery that Citizen Kane repeatedly earns top honors on lists of the best films ever made. Its innovative cinematography, sound editing, and narrative style broke with many conventions of classical moviemaking to create an inspired, original, and truly monumental work of film art. 

A child prodigy  and the son of an inventor and musician, Orson Welles was well versed in literature—especially Shakespeare —at an early age. He also demonstrated unusual artistic abilities, which, by all accounts, led to his being labeled a genius by the age of 3. Through the unusual circumstances of his life (both of his parents had died by the time he was 12, leaving him with an inheritance and not a lot of family obligations), he found himself free to indulge his many interests—most importantly, theatre. He was educated in private school and traveled the world. At 19, Welles arrived in New York with the intention of revolutionizing the theatre. He soon made a name for himself as one of the founders (along with John Houseman) of the Mercury Theater with radical productions like a Caribbean Macbeth with an all-black cast, and the legendary production of Julius Caesar which substituted Nazi Germany for Rome. Equally famous for his voice, Welles also performed on the widely popular radio show, The Shadow, and in 1938 frightened the nation with an adaptation of War of the Worlds performed as a series of all-too-realistic news bulletins. Thousands of listeners believed that an actual Martian invasion was occurring, and many left their homes in panic. Like the Mercury productions, Welles’s War of the Worlds broadcast demonstrates his penchant for controversy.  He reveled in his ability to cause a stir, both in the audience and in the radio and theatre establishment. He made the cover of Time magazine when he was only 23 years old. 

His flare for the dramatic and his interest in literary sources—not to mention the enormous buzz, as they call it in the business, that the War of the Worlds broadcast had garnered him—earned Welles the confidence of RKO studio boss George J. Schaefer, who wanted his studio to supplement its production of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire musicals and other light comedies with more prestige pictures such as literary adaptations and serious dramas. In an unprecedented contractual agreement, Welles was given complete control over the production, direction, and writing of his first film. He was also guaranteed cast approval and, more importantly, “final cut,” something that directors under studio contract in the 1940s never got. (Even successful, established directors today have trouble securing the right to the final cut of their pictures.) After a scrapped attempt to adapt Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to the screen—a novel of human corruption told through a decidedly modernist narrative structure —Welles collaborated with veteran screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz on a thinly veiled biography of still-living newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Apparently the portrait that Mankiewicz and Welles created was not veiled enough. Hearst lived in a castle called San Simeon in California with his mistress, Marion Davies, a film actress. (We will see Marion Davies perform in Show People, so you can judge for yourself how fair Welles was being.) Welles was apparently too young and cocky to see the danger he was walking into when he designed his first film.

Like Heart of Darkness, the new film, originally entitled American, would explore the corrupting influence of power on an otherwise great man. But unlike that first adaptation, Citizen Kane would be a much more cinematic story, one that would push the limits of what film could do and demonstrate the preeminence of the medium as a literary art. Welles approached filmmaking the same way that he approached the theatre and the radio: he intended not merely to make a film, but to revolutionize filmmaking. To that end, Welles gathered around him a host of talent known for their willingness to break with convention, many of whom had worked with him in the Mercury Theater. While much of the grandeur of Citizen Kane is owed to technical innovations of his crew, as much is owed to Welles's synthesis of existing technique and his meticulous attention to every detail. Maintaining an unprecedented control over all aspects of production, Welles established himself as an instant auteur. In fact, Welles inaugurated the age of the director-as-star.  

Other films by Welles: 

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942); The Stranger (1946); Macbeth (1948); The Lady from Shanghai (1948); Othello (1952); Mr. Arkadin (1955); Touch of Evil (1958); Chimes at Midnight (1967).

Films that deal with the life and/or career of Welles:

RKO 281 (1999, dir. Ridley Scott)  recounts the battle over the production and release of Citizen Kane). The Cradle Will Rock (1999, dir. Tim Robbins) recounts yet another pre-Kan e controversy in the career of Welles—this time involving right-wing opposition to the Mercury production of a political, union-themed musical).The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996, dir. Thomas Lennon and Michael Epstein) is a documentary that traces the rise and fall of both Welles and Hearst, and the controversy surrounding Kane. It is a more objective look at the story that is the basis for RKO 281.   

Discussion Questions

1. In what ways is Citizen Kane a summary of, or a response to, the filmmaking techniques illustrated by all the other films we've seen so far? For your blog response, you might want to focus specifically on ONE of the following: camera angles; shots; narrative structure; lighting; sound; musical soundtrack.

2.  Review the elements of Classical Hollywood cinema from the lecture for Week One.  How does Citizen Kane incorporate these elements? How does Welles deviate from classical Hollywood conventions? What challenges does viewing Citizen Kane pose for an audience more accustomed to films like It Happened One Night?

3. The use of flashbacks is not unique or original to Kane:Rebecca, for example, also used a flashback structure. What are some differences between the flashbacks in the two films? How does Welles use flashbacks to add ambiguity rather than resolve it? What does each flashback in Kane contribute to our understanding of the man? How do these contributions complicate rather than explicate Kane’s life?

4. Compare the five narrators’ stories with the newsreel overview of Kane’s life. What do they have in common? What is different about them? Consider what each narrator chooses to reveal to Thompson. What do these choices tell us about the narrators’ feelings about Kane? Compare the visual depictions of Kane in each of the flashbacks.  How do the differences in his appearance reflect or contradict the each narrator's feelings toward him?

5. Each narrative includes a montage sequence, which will be discussed in Tuesday’s lecture. What is each montage used for? What does each montage reveal and conceal?

6. One mark of the film’s formal perfection is its careful and consistent use of symbolic elements. Consider these recurring visual motifs: Rosebud, mirrors, windows, the glass ball, snow, jigsaw puzzles, portraits, and statues. How does the repetition of these images serve the film’s thematic agenda?

7. As your reading for this week emphasizes,  sound is another important aspect of Citizen Kane. How does Welles’s use of sound combine realistic and nonrealistic elements? How does his use of sound create a sense of space? How does his use of sound shape our response to the events in the film and to certain characters?

8. The film manipulates audience response by seeming to include the conventions from a range of common film genres: the backstage musical, the biopic, the newspaper film, the documentary, and even the horror movie. What would audiences expect from these various genres? How does Citizen Kane violate these expectations?