Many argue that it’s the greatest film of all time. But Orson Welles’s feature directorial debut Citizen Kane is far from my favorite film, despite being on the list of the “1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” by Steven Jay Schneider. So, on the 80th anniversary of its release, I want to share why I struggle to like or enjoy what many cinephiles and critics call “the” masterpiece of cinema.
[NOTE: This blog will contain spoilers for “Citizen Kane.” You have been warned.] The History As early as 1937, acclaimed theater actor and director Orson Welles (The Stranger, Macbeth, Touch of Evil) was turning down scripts and acting offers from acclaimed studios and directors such as Warner Brothers and William Wyler (The Best Years of Our Lives, Ben-Hur, Funny Girl), respectively. Only in the wake of his now-famous radio broadcast adapting H.G. Wells’s novel “The War of the Worlds” did a lucrative enough movie contract come along to lure Welles away from theater out west to Los Angeles. After arriving in 1939, with the intentions of staying only a few months to make enough money to pay off his debts and fund his next play, Welles was mesmerized by the movie studio. Thus, his film career was officially in motion. On August 21 that same year, Welles signed his revolutionary contract with RKO Pictures which granted him (at that time) unprecedented creative control over his two films with the studio. Not only did Welles retain final cut privilege and freedom to develop his stories without studio interference, but RKO was not allowed to make cuts to his films without his permission. In addition, Welles had complete control over the hiring of his cast and crew and RKO was barred from seeing any footage until Welles deemed it necessary. However, after several months developing projects, Welles’s prospects for creating a finished film under RKO’s required $500,000 limit that could make money seemed lesser every day. Eventually, after workshopping some other ideas to no avail, Welles began brainstorming with New York screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz who was already employed by Welles writing plays for his CBS Radio series. By February of 1940, Welles gave Mankiewicz hundreds of pages of notes before hiring him to write a first draft based on their collaborations up to that point. Infamously, Welles seemingly downplayed Mankiewicz’s involvement in the final script. Despite initially agreeing to be a script doctor and thus receive no official credit for his work on the project, Mankiewicz eventually threatened Welles with claiming credit for the whole thing unless his work on the screenplay was publicly acknowledged. The controversy was not resolved until January of 1941 when RKO Pictures agreed to give Mankiewicz credit. However, questions of the true authorship continued well into the 1970s with film critics such as Pauline Kael and university professors like Robert L. Carringer publishing essays and books reviewing the evidence of who was the primary author. While the film’s protagonist, Charles Foster Kane, was a synthesis of different personalities, the life of newspaper magnate and politician William Randolph Hearst served as the basis for the character. Some of the other people that helped form the basis of Kane were business tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold Fowler McCormick, publishers Joseph Pulitzer and Alfred Harmsworth, and journalist Herbert Bayard Swope, Sr. Welles hired many actors from the Mercury Theatre, an independent theatre company that he founded, and for many of them it was their feature film debut. One of the exceptions to this rule was Welles casting Los Angeles native Dorothy Comingore, who was recommended to him by fellow actor and director Charlie Chaplin (The Kid, City Lights, The Great Dictator) and immediately cast Comingore as Kane’s second wife Susan Alexander Kane. In breaking with tradition of much of Hollywood at the time, Welles had his actors rehearse every single scene before principal photography to ensure that he was given the best performances possible when filming actually began. In preparation for filming, Welles carefully studied the fundamentals of filmmaking from a textbook given to him by production advisor Miriam Geiger and watching the films of Frank Capra and Fritz Lang (among others), especially John Ford’s Stagecoach (which he watched approximately 40 times). Welles described the experience learning to be a film director as “like going to school.” Welles chose to begin principal photography on a Saturday morning in 1940 so as to prevent studio executives from RKO from being aware that any filming had actually began at that point. Apparently, the executives were under the impression that Welles was doing camera tests. While there was some locating shooting (specifically at Balboa Park in and around the San Diego Zoo), most of the film was shot on Stage 19 at the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood. Furthermore, Welles went through incidents of physical trauma throughout production including severe pain from the contact lenses applied to his eyes to age him up. He also fell ten feet during a scene with Ray Collins (The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil), resulting in two bone chips in his ankle that bound him to a wheelchair for two weeks (which he directed from). Ultimately, the film was made on a budget nearing $840,000 (more than one-and-a-half times the maximum budget allowed by RKO in Welles’s initial contract). Citizen Kane received its wide domestic release on September 5, 1941. Although it did not recoup its costs during its initial theatrical run, the film was lauded by critics for its innovative style of filmmaking (notably the cinematography and editing) with many identifying it back then as one of the greatest movies ever made at the time. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards (including Best Director and Best Actor for Welles), but only won Best Original Screenplay for Mankiewicz and Welles. Nevertheless, it has gone down in history as one of the best films ever made (evidenced by its selection by the Library of Congress as one of the first 25 films to be preserved in the National Film Registry for its cultural, historic, or aesthetic significance). The Cons After watching Citizen Kane for the first time, I struggled to narrow down what exactly I disliked about it. The acting? The story? The themes? I remained puzzled about why I was not fulfilled by this movie that was supposed to be one of (if not the) greatest films of all time. It was a second viewing that clarified what my dismay was ultimately about. And after researching the making of the film, the source of my disdain for Citizen Kane became even clearer. For a film that was made in the 1940s about political corruption and big business through the lens of newspaper tycoons, it was obviously made to be a look at contemporary American society (that is, early-20th-century society). And while audiences in 1941 may have found the themes explored by the rise-and-fall of Charles Foster Kane (Welles) to be prescient and timely, that story being told 80 years later simply fails to be “timeless” like other films are. Are there younger films that tackle “rise-and-fall” stories which could be considered “timeless”? Certainly, for films like Goodfellas, Boogie Nights, and The Wolf of Wall Street come to mind. All of which capture a particular time period (often spanning more than one decade) in a way that is both entertaining and engrossing. Furthermore, the protagonists of these films are all more compelling and interesting than Kane in Welles’s feature directorial debut. Why? In my humble opinion, a lot of it comes down to the story being told. As I’ll expand more on in “The Pros” section of this blog, my lack of investment in Kane’s downfall has nothing to do will Welles’s acting chops which are front-and-center and unquestionable. Rather, the story of Citizen Kane of a poor boy who is given an inheritance and becomes a successful newspaper magnate is not at all relatable on a personal level nor captivating on a cinematic one. Fans of the film, however, might ask: But what about the degradation to Kane’s mental and emotional state due to his success? Does that make him relatable? Ultimately, my answer is not enough. Simply put, I think that this kind of tale is done better in other films. Citizen Kane may be timeless for other reasons, but its story and themes are not those reasons. The Pros To give some much-deserved praise for Citizen Kane, I will grant that its technical achievements do earn their place in cinematic history. While there are many I could dissect here, I will focus largely on two. First, the cinematography of Illinois native Gregg Toland (The Grapes of Wrath, The Best Years of Our Lives) which earns the praise that it gets for being both unique for its time and forward-thinking for cinema as a whole in terms of its approach to visual storytelling. I want to dissect one famous scene from Citizen Kane to highlight its accomplished cinematography. Early in the film’s first act, it is the first flashback to Kane’s life (specifically his childhood). While he is playing in the snow outside his home, his mother (Agnes Moorehead) and father (Harry Shannon) are indoors agreeing to place their son’s newfound inheritance in a trust overseen by a banker Walter Thatcher (George Coulouris) who is also becoming Kane’s legal guardian. The master shot of the scene is framed so as to place the audience inside the house and at the table where Kane’s future is being decided. However, the focus of the frame is not on the three adults but on young Kane playing outside in the snow. This scene is significant for a few reasons. Thematically, it shows that the foundation of Kane’s success was not of his own making but rather a fate decided for him which plays into the tragedy of his downfall very effectively. Furthermore, the lack of attention paid to the sled that young Kane is playing on is a tasteful way of introducing such an important element of Kane’s life (and death) without beating it over the audiences’ heads. Overall, this scene early on in Citizen Kane is one of numerous examples of how the film’s approach to visual storytelling marked a new phase of Hollywood filmmaking. Regarding its production design, I was most impressed with the make-up effects done on Welles himself. Pivotal to the story is the reliance on flashing backward and forward through time to show different parts of Kane’s life from a young up-and-coming newspaper manager to one of the most powerful and well-known names in American politics. Aside from the early scenes of Kane as a child playing in the snow, Welles portrays Kane spanning decades from young adulthood to the deathbed. Unquestionably, Welles’s acting plays into suspending the audience’s disbelief as he moves differently the older he gets. But enough credit cannot be given to Maurice Seiderman (Gunga Din, The Hunchback of Notre Dame), whose aging of Welles to contrast with the virile younger Kane is easily one of the most noticeable innovations of the film. So, what are my final impressions of Citizen Kane? While I understand it being viewed as a masterpiece of cinema back in 1941, I do not believe that it remains one today. But, it deserves credit for being an important film for what it did for the art form back then and that may just be enough to justify watching it if you never have before. What do you think about Citizen Kane? Do you think I am being too harsh on it? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Austin McManusI have no academic or professional background in film production or criticism; I simply love watching and talking about movies. Archives
May 2024
Categories
All
|