Tycoon Charles Foster Kane dies leaving an enigma: the meaning of his final utterace, "Rosebud". Looking for a scoop, a young reporter attempts to solve the mystery by interviewing Kane's old friends, lovers and colleagues. His quest goes unresolved – though we spectators are finally shown the meaning of Rosebud.
The staple #1 entry whenever a poll of critics (as distinct from Empire readers or Film Four subscribers) Citizen Kane has been endless debated and argued over to the point where it's impossible to say anything new. So, just the facts, then:
The film, co-scripted by Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz, is basically a fictionalised biopic of press baron William Randolph Hearst. He found enough to object to in Kane – particularly, one suspects, the screenwriters' use of Rosebud, which was apparently his pet name for his lover's clitoris – to have his papers and pet critics do their best to scupper the film's chances.
The tale, with its seeker hero failing to solve the enigma as he travels deeper into Kane’s past – Welles himself dismissed the central McGuffin and the resolution offered to the viewer as dime novel Freud – perhaps echoes Willard’s journey in Heart of Darkness , the novel Welles had originally wanted to adapt for his film debut.
It also manages to both celebrate the American dream – from log cabin to White House, but for a marital indiscretion – and show it up for the dream that it is – Kane is born into money.
Stylistically Kane it is not so much innovative in terms of the individual elements, more in their combination and further development.
With regard to the film's famed use of "deep focus" cinematography – basically where both foreground and background can be kept in focus simultaneously, for instance, James Wong Howe had pioneered the technique and Kane's cinematographer Gregg Toland had already deployed it on his work for John Ford. Welles's innovation, then, was to use deep focus in combination with long takes to present a new type of mise-en-scene that allowed his colleagues from the Mercury Theatre to apply their stagecraft to the cinematic medium.
Or, with regard to the multitude of influences – newsreel meets biopic meets German Expressionism meets Vorpavich montage – it’s the way in which the Expresssionist elements of the Kane not only summarise the German silents and Universal horrors, but also pave the way for the noir movement of the later 1940s. (Indeed, some have argued that Kane is the first noir, allowing them to neatly bookend the entire noir cycle with two Welles films – Kane and Touch of Evil .)
To sum up, then, a must see classic etc, etc, etc.
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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