Citizen Kane

While recently watching the film Citizen Kane, rumored to be one of the best films of all time which in more ways than one it certainly could be...

Summary of the film...

A group of reporters who are trying to decipher the last word ever spoke by Charles Foster Kane, the millionaire newspaper tycoon: "Rosebud." The film begins with a news reel detailing Kane's life for the masses, and then from there, we are shown flashbacks from Kane's life. As the reporters investigate further, the viewers see a display of a fascinating man's rise to fame, and how he eventually fell off the "top of the world."

For the time this film was made, I was impressed by the cinematography used and how easily this film could be mistaken of being made in this time just by the way it was executed and perceived on screen, giving me the intense of feel of just awestruck and ground breaking this film must of been in its time when it appeared on the big screen.

The movie opens with an unforgettable image of a distant, fog-shrouded castle on a hill. It's a very gothic shot. Amazing me with such simple dissolve transitions, which make it, look eerie and ghost like even.

Within moments of the film's eerie, visually-stunning opening, Kane is dead, uttering the word "Rosebud" as he hunches over. His death, like his life, is a big news event, and the paper he owned, the New York Inquirer, is desperate to unearth the meaning of his cryptic last word. Is it a woman he bedded? A horse he bet on? A beloved pet? Some long-lost, unrequited love? The truth, which isn't revealed until the closing scene, represents one of the all-time greatest motion picture ironies, and leads us to believe that, on some level, Kane regretted not having led a simple, quiet life.

After showing Kane's death, Citizen Kane presents a ten-minute "newsreel" that details the man's accomplishments.

Then, as a reporter (William Alland) from the Inquirer digs into Kane's past to learn the meaning of Rosebud, Kane’s history is unravelled through a series of extended flashbacks that represent the sometimes-overlapping, non- chronological accounts of five eyewitnesses. All unreliable, since it’s from other their perspective not Kane’s and since Kane is dead we never get the real story only what they remember.  The people interviewed were...

   His closest friend, Jedediah Leland

    Employee, Mr. Bernstein 

   Affair, second wife, Susan Alexander

    Butler, Raymond

The use of cinematography throughout the film, with minor setbacks such as flashbacks,  a technique used quite a bit that was introduced through this movie was ‘deep focus’ which has everything in the frame even the background, in focus at the same time, as opposed to having only the people and things in the foreground in focus.  

Example of a screen that does this is when Kane’s mother gives him up, giving us the audience a clear view of the place Kane came from, and how he had no control over the matter, another example of deep focus is the scene where Kane breaks into Susan Alexander’s room after her suicide attempt. In the background, Kane and another man break into the room, with at the same time the medicine bottle and a glass with a spoon in it are in the ‘close-up’ (another technique) in the foreground. 

Then the background was lit, the foreground darkened. I liked the effect made by deep focus and the way it played on my emotions as it conveyed the scene using nothing but the effect to get the point of what just happened across.

Another technique used was ‘wipe’ where one image is “wiped” off the screen by another; I felt this was very effective in the way it transformed into another scene.  Alongside this there was use of ‘low-angle shots’ used to display a point of view facing upwards, allowing the ceilings to be shown in the background, something that wasn't done in Hollywood. This technique is used effectively in the scene where Kane meets Leland after his election loss.

My only real negative point this film was the amount of flashbacks produced and the drawn out question of ‘what or who is Rosebud?’ and with each flashback there was no correlation to what Rosebud was, dragging it on and on with no real answers to only have the flashbacks end with none of the interviewees knowing what Rosebud was. So I felt that was disheartening and quite drawn out, leaving me throughout the film with the words “another one...” spinning round and round.

As a film, Citizen Kane is a powerful dramatic tale about the uses and abuses of wealth and power. It's a classic American tragedy about a man of great passion, vision, and greed, who pushes himself until he brings ruins to himself and all around him. Of course, the production aspect that makes Citizen Kane so memorable is Greg Toland's landmark cinematography.

The movie is a visual masterpiece, made of daring angles and breathtaking images that had never been attempted before this film. Toland perfected a deep-focus technique that allowed him to photograph backgrounds with as much clarity as foregrounds (note the scene where Kane's parents discuss his future while, as seen through the window, the child plays outside in the snow). There's also an extremely effective low-angle shot late in the film where Kane trashes Susan's room.

There's no doubt that Citizen Kane was far ahead of its time. Yet, out of the conflict, Citizen Kane emerged stronger than ever.

Is Citizen Kane the best movie ever made? Many critics would argue "yes" without pause, but my enthusiasm is more restrained. While I acknowledge that Kane is a seminal masterpiece, I don't think it's the greatest motion picture of all time. Even so, there's no denying the debt that the movie industry owes to Welles and his debut feature. Motion picture archives and collections across the world would be poorer without copies of this film, which will forever be recognized as a defining example of American cinema.