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Like ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’, “The Great Gatsby”, “The Simpsons”, and the 1927 New York Yankees, there’s “Citizen Kane”, and there’s everything else. 25-year-old Orson Welles stormed Hollywood from Broadway with a new kind of cinematic vision, experimenting with narrative, lighting, cinematography, performance, make-up, and ambition not seen since before (or since), and his film is as much an enigma as the man (and his Charles Foster Kane) himself. Simply put, this remains the most fascinating film to watch, er, behold, in perpetual wonder.

How ironic that Citizen Kane, which has twice been nominated by the AFI as the greatest American film ever, was made by a man who was a non-Hollywood Hollywood mogul. As immortalized as he was in the movies by Citizen Kane, Orson Welles was a man of theater, radio, and road shows, who built himself a number of Xanadus around the world.
Many of his films were hybrids, drawing in influences from other mediums (usually theater). A great example was his first film the now lost short Too Much Johnson, which was not an entity in itself but an intended celluloid link to a farcical Mercury Theater production. Sadly, a fire at Welles’s home in Spain destroyed the only complete print of this film which also featured Joseph Cotten.
By the time he set out to make the greatest American film, Welles was already a well-known radio and stage personality (he had spooked thousands of Americans with his notorious War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938) but had little experience with film. But even in his early 20s, this gifted young man had a remarkable understanding of spectacles and Citizen Kane feels like the cumulative work of a veteran showman.
Even the trailer confirms that Welles enjoyed kidding his audience, and Citizen Kane is never as droning as its status suggests. It is, as Pauline Kael called it, “the funnest great movie.” It opens on an ominous looking mansion upon a misty cliff. It looks as if nature is starting to take over the land allotted to it. Venturing inside we discover it is inhabited by an unidentified being on his deathbed, whispering “Rosebud” as his final word before death. This hushed scene is immediately followed by a noisy and bouncy newsreel explaining who Charles Foster Kane was and the kind of life his death brought to an end. It’s a subtle trick, but it works. With this juxtaposition, Welles promises not be a drone, but an entertainer of the highest caliber.
One can dispute its placement on the top of the AFI’s list of the 100 greatest American films, but no one can deny that Citizen Kane is the most innovative and at least among the most important films ever made. Seventy years later, it remains a most impressive accomplishment, all things considered. The very fact that one can easily see why studios were reluctant to release it and it met with disapproval from early audiences now only proves its significance. It was too revolutionary, too new, and too unlike anything ever attempted before.
In large part, Kane was undoubtedly based on William Randolph Hearst (the “yellow journalism” mudsling is flung at one point), but there is no sense in denying that Welles himself was reaching out through the embodiment of the newspaper tycoon. Kane is as much a failure as the Great Gatsby. He wasted a life building himself a fortress of solitude and were it not for an investigative reporter (William Alland0 assigned to discover the meaning of “Rosebud”, few would likely be interested in him after his passing.
Why don’t we ever get a clear image of the reporter’s face? It cannot be a coincidence with a maestro as meticulous as Orson Welles. Likely, it’s because Welles wants to discourage us from identifying too much with the character and think of him merely as our vehicle through the mysterious and turbulent life of Charles Foster Kane, in search of Rosebud.
There is a certain coldness to the look of the film, evoked through the use of iron doors, spacious but empty marble floored rooms, and frequent use of snow (Kane dies holding a snow globe). Most significantly, at the age of nine, Kane is taken away from his impoverished parents by the kindly Mr. Thatcher (George Coulouris) and loses his innocence on a wintry day in 1871. It’s an appropriate atmosphere. This is the story of a man who was never knew love and lived and died alone, after spending his life trying to buy love, the one thing that his fortune could never bring him.
Despite this, and here is where Welles is smiling at the audience, Kane starts his new life in the newspaper industry with promise thanks to the guidance of Mr. Thatcher. But an early sign of his road to ruin is not that he is headstrong. Rather, it’s that he associates money too closely with success and begins to think of power as a permanent state. He measured his success by the number of statues he collected. The women in his life are, to him, just another possession to decorate his Xanadu estate.
His obvious talent and astuteness is testament to his observation that, “If I hadn’t been rich, I’d have been a really great man.” But Kane’s mistakes are all too human errors. Certainly, they are not unheard of in corporate America, especially not in places like Wall St. where greed is often admired. Evidence for this lies in the way Kane is admired even after his fall by those too shallow to see that it was not money that Kane truly wanted. Observe, for instance, the way Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane) idolizes his late boss, prominently displaying his portrait in his office.
Oh yes, Citizen Kane is an all-American story of the rise and tumbling fall of the mighty. If Charles Kane represents capitalism corrupted, his best friend Jed Leland (played by wonderfully by Joseph Cotten, Welles’s colleague from his Mercury Theater days) embodies America’s free spirit and idealism. In fact, there is nothing sad about Leland’s eventual retirement to a nursing home after the death of Kane. There is nothing wrong with him, the nurses say, and, if anything, he seems happier than he did when working for Kane as the paper’s drama critic. Still, there is something somber about the effects that a lifetime as Kane’s best friend and employee had on him. His idealism and enthusiasm have vanished giving way to his transformation into a cynic. But he is a cynic with regrets. His regret is having worked for a man who, for all his wealth, was ultimately a phony.
No one knew this better than the two women who had the misfortune of entering his life. His first wife Emily (Ruth Warrick) is well aware of his decaying soul and leaves him once she learns of his affair with Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore), an aspiring opera singer. She uses Kane to get ahead in her road to stardom despite her lack of talent. At the finale of her disastrous stage debut, Kane’s loud applause cannot conceal the fact that he is the only one clapping. Kane’s corruptive influence also becomes visible in Susan, who goes from a humble airhead to a shrill brat.
Citizen Kane is a different looking film and a carousel of innovation. For the first time, a ceiling was shown in the same shot as the walls, the microphones and headlights concealed with cheesecloth. During the flashback to Kane’s childhood there is a terrific shot of the little boy playing outside in the snow while his saddened parents (Agnes Moorehead and Harry Shannon) discuss their son’s future with Thatcher inside the cabin. In a single shot we see both courses of action and both in sharp focus. Much as been made of the dancing stovepipe hat in this scenes, which is a result of resting the prop on the movable dolly with which Welles expanded the view of the shot. Even the imperfections caused by Welles’s innovations serve as testaments to his genius.
The best complimenting of technical and narrative brilliance are the scenes inside the Kane mansion, as they are the most revealing. The vast rooms are a testament to his empty life. Xanadu was supposed to be his legacy of a successful life, but after he dies his statues, though they are valued in the millions, are heaped into meaningless piles.
Citizen Kane is a film of tremendous visual power and, for once, it’s visual splendors empower the human story instead of the other way around. Guided by Welles’s use of darkness to match the soul of Kane, the artistry paints the picture of a man corrupted by his own success. The more his power grows, the greater his need for control. That Kane’s world crumbles is a tragedy and though we may disagree with the reporter who “can’t help but feel sorry for Mr. Kane”, we have to see that Kane’s fault was not entirely his fault. He never asked to be given everything.

Is Citizen Kane really the greatest movie ever made? I don’t think it is but I’m not sure I could argue against those who claim that it is. It is a remarkable film in all respects and may be the only film I can think of that is critic-proof, meaning that those rating it can try to stand above it, beside it, below it and make their case but Citizen Kane has reached mythical status and nothing anyone says about it is going to knock it out of the top 1 or 2 best movies on the Sight and Sound poll, for example. Like Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai you can pick one aspect of the film – the camerawork, performance, direction, whatever – but any of these aspects are only 1 piece to a greater whole and yet the greatness of the whole transcends the greatness of the parts making any comment about one part of the film seem reductive. It’s a mystical alchemy of great visions, when all the parts just work. Its as if the filmmakers have found the right combination of 10,000 different ingredients, so wholly complex that it cannot be copied, and given us something so unique and grand and visionary that it will forever stand as a milestone where you can see very distinctly what movies were like before Citizen Kane and what they were after Citizen Kane. It shifted the form one way or another rendering most subsequent films de facto children of Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane was a great film for its time, is a great film for our time, and will be a great film for all time!

Fast, smart, inventive and fresh after all these years, it is a classic example of great showmanship without ego surfacing (i suppose i don’t know much about orson welles to say whether he had a large ego or not). This film has all the ingredients of fast paced modern films (eg, snatch etc) with a much grander scale while at the same time being more human. The plot is fairly simplistic, i guess, but the screenplay itself is among the best. It even surpasses Jules et Jim in being able to traverse years and years of a man’s life without even once becoming either tedious or scrappy. Five stars.

It’s amazing how a film so widely regarded for its technical influence still holds up from that standpoint almost seventy years later. Welles’ and Toland’s lighting and use of deep focus are astounding not just by history’s standard, but by any standard. But beyond the technical achievement, the film’s narrative is on par with any great American tragedy. Citizen Kane is film’s The Great Gatsby, those who recount Kane’s story a handful of Nick Carraways, Rosebud the green light across the water.

I’ll have to watch it again another time because I started late and kept falling asleep. Nothing against the movie, it was pretty good. What really turns me off is the “greatest film ever made” tag that is applied to it. Maybe I missed something but it was an outstanding fictional biopic with amazing technical prowess and immaculate acting, it just didn’t, on a personal level, blow me away. I think it pales significantly to Casablanca…please don’t kill me.

There was film before Citizen Kane and there was film after Citizen Kane. It’s a baroque, bold, incredibly innovative, totally engrossing masterpiece like no other. It combined the style of the European masters with the commercial touch of Hollywood and the depth of a great novel. It brought attention to style itself in a way that American filmmakers had previously completely eschewed. It did things with a camera that are still revelations. Welles’ performance is one of the great ones, as we spend all this time with a man who slowly becomes a total bastard, and yet we still feel sympathy for him. It’s beyond praise and impervious to cynics who now deride it. It’s the work of a genius from start to finish, and the greatest American film ever made.

“One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.”

I’ve been to Xanadu. Hearst’s San Simeon castle which was the model for Kane’s mountain top retreat. The scale is smaller but the decadence just as woozy. Crammed with Medieval tapestries and booty. A gothic chapel doubles as a dining hall. One of the first heated outdoor pools rimmed by white marble nudes. And a pool under the tennis courts with millions in gold flake decorating the blue tiles. The memory of an old man who glimpsed a girl in white decades ago and will never forget her. A very young con man made this movie: feel the boundless energy, the invention, the gleeful “What the fuck, let’s try this” aesthetic. Welles would never get away with it again.

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(Friday, May 22, 2009 7:34pm)

Citizen Kane did not win the academy award for best picture but it is arguably the best film ever made. People usually talk about how Welle’s camera direction ran smoothly and almost perfectly that they forget about the great performances by the characters. Citizen Kane is the only movie in my opinion that display more genre than any other films in history. The shot movements are superb, performances are flawless, and Orson Welles sprinkled this film with infinite classic moments. Great movie!!! 9.5/10. A must see film.

One of America’s most celebrated moving pictures, Citizen Kane is filled with nuance and stunning technicality, especially considering its year of release. Every facet of Orson Welles’ masterpiece is deliberately and intricately designed, sculpted with perfection in mind, where only infinitesimal flaws exist. BOTTOM LINE: Citizen Kane was revolutionary when first shown to the world, and as modern as any film today, if not more so. ‘Ahead of its time’ is an understatement.

I am not a filmmaker, as such most of the ground that this movie supposedly broke went right over my head (until i watched it with the Roger Ebert commentary available on the disk).
however this is more than just the text book for future films, it is a warning of what can become of us if we lose focus of the bigger picture, or maybe a prediction that we are all to die alone.
understandably heralded as one of the greatest.

What does “Narrative Filmmaking” and “Film Narrative” mean?

>A film narrative is the story that a movie is telling, whether that narrative is linear or fractured. Filmmakers often use flashbacks and voice-overs in their films, hence, Narrative Filmmaking.

I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about “Citizen Kane”, even before I saw Orson Welles’ feature film debut. I believe that my curiosity made me want to see this film. I wanted to know what’s the deal with this “Citizen Kane”, and why is it still popular 67 years later. Most of all, I wanted to know why does this film have the reputation of being the “greatest film of all time”. Why? Why? And WHY?

After seeing the film, my question turned from “why” to “how”. HOW in the hell did Orson Welles (at age 25) make such a gem of a film?!? HOW did he invent those magnificent shots? HOW did he make the dialogues so intense, thought-provoking and touching at the same time? HOW can he make a film that is 119 minutes long and not bore the audience? HOW did he make a film so realistic you can almost feel that you’re part of the movie?

HOW? Let’s check out the film, shall we?

>"Citizen Kane" traces the life and career of Charles Foster Kane (played by Orson Welles), a newspaper magnate who is born of idealistic social service, but gradually evolves into a ruthless pursuit of power. Narrated principally through flashbacks, the story is revealed through the research of a newspaper reporter seeking to solve the mystery of Kane’s last word before he died: “Rosebud.” The film begins with a news reel showing Kane’s life for the public. We eventually get to see flashbacks from Kane’s life, as well as interviews with the people who knew him the most. As the reporter investigates further and as the film moves on, you will see how a fascinating man rose to fame, how he became obsessed with power, and how he eventually fell off the “top of the world.”

Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” was first released in 1941. The film is innovative because of its technical aspects. Long-shots, deep focus shots and extreme close-ups weren’t really prominent during that time. Those technical qualities became Welles’ trademarks, and was eventually adapted by most contemporary movie directors like Quentin Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, Sofia Coppola, etc.

The film’s musical score. Hah! Bernard Herrmann did a great job with it – he also composed music for Alfred Hitchcock’s films like “Psycho”, “North by Northwest”, “Vertigo”, etc.

The performances are remarkable, considering the fact that most of the actors in “Citizen Kane” are newbies in the film industry – most of them came from theater and radio. The actors can make you feel like they’re talking to you, that you’re actually IN the movie. One of the most intense scenes in the film is by Welles himself, during Kane’s campaign speech, THAT monologue is powerful.

One of the most important movies ever made and a great exercise in Narrative Filmmaking, “Citizen Kane” is a great material that can be used when studying the Art of the Film (one of my most favorite subjects in college).