Citizen Kane


Citizen Kane is the first film directed by Orson Welles, and is loosely
based on the life of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.

Produced in 1941, the film deals with the inability of Charles Foster Kane
(played by Mr. Welles) to love. Instead Kane has only "Love on my own
terms." As a result, Kane eventually alienates every loved one around him
and dies a lonely recluse in a opulent, but crumbling estate.

Kane dies in the opening scene of the film; this is followed by a newsreel
pastiche documenting Kane's public life; the remainder of the movie is told
through flashbacks being related to a reporter trying to improve the
newsreel; the newsreel is regarded as functional but not especially
profound, and the reporter is searching for the meaning behind Mr. Kane's
dying word, "rosebud."

What is revealed has been described by Jorge Luis Borges, in a 1941 review,
as a "metaphysical detective story. [Its] subject (both psychological and
allegorical) is the investigation of a man's inner self, through the works
he has wrought, the words he has spoken, the many lives he has ruined. . . .
Overwhelmingly, endlessly, Orson Welles shows fragments of the life of the
man, Charles Foster Kane, and invites us to combine them and reconstruct
him. Forms of multiplicity and incongruity abound in the film: the first
scenes record the treasures amassed by Kane; in one of the last, a poor
woman, luxuriant and suffering, plays with an enormous jigsaw puzzle on the
floor of a palace that is also a museum. At the end we realize that the
fragments are not governed by a secret unity: the detested Charles Foster
Kane is a simulacrum, a chaos of appearances."

The film combines revolutionary cinematography (by Gregg Toland) with an
Oscar-winning screenplay (by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz), and a lineup
of first time silverscreen actors, associates of Mr. Welles' from his stint
at the Mercury Theater, such as Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead.

Film scholars and historians view Citizen Kane as Welles' attempt to create
a new style of filmmaking by studying the various forms of movie making, and
combining them all into one. Examination of the techniques used by Welles
and his crew reveals elements of expressionism in the use of light and
shadow, noting the influence of German and Russian filmmakers. The film is
even seen as one of the predecessors of method acting, as seen during the
scene where Kane vents his anger at his political opponent, Jim Gettys, at
the top of a flight of stairs. (Welles actually tripped and broke his ankle
during the filming of that scene, but the scene continued and made it into
the final print of the film.)

Another unorthodox method used in the film was the way low-angle cameras
were used to display a point of view facing upwards, thus allowing ceilings
to be shown in the background of several scenes. Since movies were primarily
filmed on sound stages and not on location during the era of the Hollywood
studio system, it was impossible to film at an angle that showed ceilings
because there were no ceilings on the stages. Welles' crew used black cloth
draped above the set to produce the illusion of a regular room with a
ceiling, while the boom mikes were hidden above the cloth.

During the filming, Welles prevented studio executives of RKO from visiting
the set. He understood their desire to control projects and he knew they
were expecting him to do an exciting film that would correspond to his The
War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Welles' RKO contract had given him
complete control over the production of the film when he signed on with the
studio, something that he never again was allowed to exercise when making
motion pictures.

Much of Kane's life is seen by critics as a fictional parody of (or attack
on) media baron William Randolph Hearst. The most notable reference to
Hearst comes early in the film, as Kane (played by Welles) provides a quote
that mirror's Hearst's own comment on the Spanish American War: "You provide
the pictures, I'll provide the war." (An often-debated Hollywood legend says
that the reference to "Rosebud" was also an attack on Hearst: allegedly, it
was a nickname used by Hearst to refer to the private anatomy of his
mistress, Marion Davies!) On hearing about the film, Hearst offered RKO
Pictures $800,000 to destroy all prints of the film and burn the negative.
When RKO refused, Hearst was so angry that he banned every newspaper and
station in his media conglomerate from reviewing or even mentioning the
movie. This struggle was, itself, turned into a movie, RKO 281. Although
these efforts damaged the film's success, they ultimately failed considering
that nowadays, almost every reference of Hearst's life and career made today
typically includes a reference to the film's parallel to it.

Although it was little seen at the time of its initial release (largely due
to Hearst's blacklisting of the film), and virtually forgotten until its
revival in the 1950s, its critical fortunes have skyrocketed since. Many
critics consider the film the best ever made; the American Film Institute
ranked it #1 on its 100 Greatest Movies list; it has been selected for
preservation in the United States National Film Registry; and the film is
consistently in the top 5 on the Internet Movie Database. Beginning in 1962,
and every ten years since, it has been voted the best film ever made by the
Sight & Sound critics' poll.

The Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay was shared by Welles and
Herman J. Mankiewicz as the only one awarded for the film. It was nominated,
however, for another eight awards:

   * Academy Award for Best Picture - Orson Welles, producer
   * Best Actor in a Leading Role - Orson Welles
   * Academy Award for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration,
     Black-and-White - Perry Ferguson, A. Roland Fields, Van Nest Polglase,
     and Darrell Silvera
   * Best Cinematography, Black-and-White - Gregg Toland
   * Best Director - Orson Welles
   * Best Film Editing - Robert Wise
   * Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture - Bernard Herrmann
   * Best Sound, Recording - John Aalberg

Welles' original master film negative of Citizen Kane was destroyed in a
fire in the 1970s. All existing prints of the film are made from copies of
the original. When the film was owned by Turner Networks (which bought the
rights to the MGM and RKO film libraries), film restoration techniques were
used to produce a pristine print in the mid-1990s. The 2003 British DVD
edition is taken from an interpositive held by the British Film Institute.

In 2003, Orson Welles' daughter Beatrice sued Turner Entertaiment and RKO
Pictures, claiming that the Welles estate is the legal owner of the film.
Her attorney said that Orson Welles had left RKO with an exit deal
terminating his contracts with the studio, meaning that Welles still had an
interest in the film and his previous contract giving the studio the
ownership of the film was null and void. Beatrice Welles also claimed that,
if the courts did not uphold her claim of ownership, RKO nevertheless owes
the estate 20% of the profits, from a previous contract which has not been
lived up to.