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CITIZEN
KANE
8/10
USA
1941 : Orson Welles : 119 mins
1.
SYNOPSIS
Spoof
biopic tracing the life of billionaire newspaper publisher Charles
Foster Kane (Welles), from poverty-stricken rural childhood through
to lonely old age in a vast, opulent Florida castle. Determined to
solve the mystery of Kane’s dying word “Rosebud,” a newspaper editor
sends reporter Thompson (William Alland) to track down key figures
in the tempestuous life of the fiercely ambitious but fatally flawed
magnate.
A
fractured portrait of Kane’s private and public faces takes shape, with
key testimony provided by Jed Leland (Joseph Cotton), his long-time friend
and business associate, and by Kane’s second wife Susan Alexander (Dorothy
Comingore). But while the reporter ends his quest no closer to unlocking
the “Rosebud” mystery, the film’s final shot seems to provide the audience
with the last piece in the Kane puzzle…
2.
THE GREATEST FILM EVER MADE
It’s
ironically appropriate that the exalted reputation of Citizen Kane
(which so relentlessly lays bare the reality behind its central figure’s
looming public image) should itself be based partly on a lie. Or, more
accurately, on misconceptions and shoddy reporting. Every ten years Sight
and Sound magazine polls the world’s leading film critics for their
all-time top ten movies – and from 1962 to 2002 Kane has been the
most frequently named title.
This
is the main prop behind Kane’s habitual “greatest film” tag – but
in the 1992 poll, only 43 out of 132 critics included Kane anywhere
in their lists. Which means that more than two thirds of critics
wouldn’t even put Kane in their top ten. Admittedly, if
any film does deserve the burden of wearing the ‘greatest film’
crown on the basis of such polling, Kane is the one – the next
most cited film in ’92 was La
Regle du Jeu on 32. But the Sight and Sound poll is, if
anything, surely an argument against naming any one title as ‘the
greatest’ – until, that is, a film makes it into a majority of the ballots
cast.
The
mystique surrounding Kane is, in itself, a strong piece of evidence
against the practice of compiling any such ‘best ever’ lists in
the Sight and Sound mode. It’s all but impossible to settle down
and watch Citizen Kane with anything approaching fresh eyes, so
heavily does its oppressive reputation weigh on every frame. This is unfortunate,
because Kane is essentially an unexpectedly light-hearted, even
jaunty enterprise. It’s very much a very young man’s film, the result
of a 25-year-old director being let loose on the film-making medium and,
like Kane on his newspaper, gleefully trying everything he can think of
just to see what happens.
When
Welles hits his directorial stride, the effect is exhilarating (the larky
‘March of Time’ montage that opens the film is at least as stunning as
more recent, knock-em-sideways expositional prologues like Magnolia
and The Royal Tenenbaums,
and Amelie.) But
there’s an inevitably price to pay in terms of consistency – when the
energy sags, as it intermittently must, Kane can suddenly seem
like very hard work, and its fundamental deficiencies become more noticeable.
After
a while the viewer may start to wonder exactly what lies behind Welles’
virtuoso skill – there’s a show-off quality to Kane, as if the
brash director is determined to push established film syntax as far as
it can go. But to what purpose? What is Welles’ motivation, his aim with
Kane? There is, perhaps, some degree of contempt in the way he
so facilely throws off his tricks – contempt for the medium and, by extension,
for the audiences who insist on treating cinema as a serious dramatic
form in which ideas and emotions can be explored. What is this film actually
about? Is this even an especially interesting or worthwhile story?
3.
AT SLOPPY JOE’S
Welles’
superb, charismatic performance and anything-goes direction (along with
Gregg Toland’s equally innovative cinematography and Robert Wise’s razor-sharp
editing) means that Kane is, superficially at least, a delight
to watch. So much so that one can almost – but not quite – overlook the
rickety script, on which Welles collaborated with Herman J Mankiewicz
(exactly who did what has been a source of endless tedious debate).
At
one point Jed Leland, gently mocking his former friend’s ‘pleasure dome’
Xanadu, feigns forgetfulness about the mansion’s grand name: “What’s it
called, now… Shangri-La… Eldorado… Sloppy Joe’s?” It’s perhaps the neatest
bit of pomposity-piercing in the whole enterprise – which is, itself,
more than a little sloppy from time to time, despite its portentous title.
It’s hard to think of another film, for instance, in which the death of
the main character’s wife and only child is mentioned only in passing,
and so briefly that this crucial detail may not even register at all with
many viewers.
The
script is much more concerned with compiling witty lines than with tackling
serious issues – be they political or psychological. It’s clever, but
seldom intelligent, packed with cheap jibes at the expense of the ‘real’
Kane, William Randolph Hearst – even ‘Rosebud’ is a crudely opportunistic
gag, this being Hearst’s pet name for part of his wife’s genitalia. Citizen
Kane, then, revolves around nothing more or less than a dirty joke.
But
the joke is very much on us. The film has built up a quite unwarranted
head of critical steam, one that bends over backwards in its attempt to
converts its flaws into touches of ‘Wellesian’ genius. Just as Susan spends
her hours compiling a jigsaw puzzle, Thompson – and Welles – construct
their vision of Charles Foster Kane. But it’s an incomplete picture, with
several gaping holes at the centre. Kane devotees, of course, buy
the film’s own apologias wholesale – the notion that we can never ‘know’
anyone, especially any public figure, meaning the reporter’s quest was
always an exercise in futility.
Welles
makes it clear that Kane was seldom anything other than a hollow vessel,
an impressive self-made construct with nothing inside. Just like Kane:
a dazzling, precocious achievement, but one which pales when placed alongside
a genuinely great film of genuine, adult substance - Welles’ own Touch
of Evil, perhaps…
1st
October, 2002
(seen 21st April, Ritz Cinema, Thirsk)
by Neil
Young
Buy Citizen Kane on DVD
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