Happy 100th Birthday Orson Welles! This man was a magnificent talent for his time. He first gained recognition with his radio broadcast in 1938 on War of the Worlds. By debuting into films, he started off with what every poll has considered being “The Greatest Movie Ever Made,” “Citizen Kane,” released in 1941. After mentioning this a few times in my reviews, I think that it is about time that I finally give in and review this masterpiece.
Chris Cabin started his review out by saying, “The ghosts that haunt barons of industry and commerce—breeding obsession, greed, arrogance, vanity, and cruelty of the most malicious sort—are the same as those that envelope, corrupt, and exhaust the titans of the screen and those most talented of artists, a fact that has never more evident than in Citizen Kane.” Rising Star Orson Welles’s deeply haunting depiction of the life of William Randolph Hearst, from working-class hero to failed political inspiration to newspaper magnate has long been the same with the director’s spectacularly odd and really sad career – and for good reason. Desiring power and control were at once central to both Hearst and Welles’s legacies and the deadly injury that led to both of their most devastating pitfalls.
Getting back to this famous work of Welles’s “Citizen Kane” in his paper-spread office after losing a bid at political office, towering above Gregg Toland’s camera as he gets a proper moral beating from his only true friend in the world, it becomes impossible to not consider all those similar beatings that friends, colleagues and complete strangers gave Welles at the force of the project, during its production, and most of all, upon its release. Hollywood threw an epic impatience, but what appeared on screen was immediately recognizable of a singular artistic vision that made many, if not all, of Welles’s peers and colleagues look behind the times.
Made largely through the recollections of supporting characters, including Kane’s best friend (the great Joseph Cotton) and the showgirl who accidentally ruined his political aspirations (Dorothy Comingore), Kane’s story is as much about locating the psychological bruises that shape public figures as it is about the essential mysteries of said figures. The founding of gossip journalism and the social ills reproduced by that arrival are here just as interesting and important as the building of Xanadu and the collecting of all these exotic treasures. Following the investigative pursuits of reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland), we see Kane as the adopted son of a steel-hearted tycoon (George Coulouris), but miss that crucial hint to the subtle “Rosebud” which Welles, in a beautiful stroke, reveals only long enough for it to be destroyed and lost forever.
Cabin said in his review, “Considering that "Rosebud" was rumored to be a nickname for Hearst's mistress's, er, loins, it's not completely surprising that most of Welles's projects met a similar fate as that most memorable of all sleighs.” However, like most great cinematic artists, it’s less the drama of “Citizen Kane” that’s remembered than it is rich, vivid look at the picture. Cabin went on and said, “One remembers the vast, echoing main hall of Xanadu, where Kane's showgirl wastes away while piecing together puzzles, or the newspaper office transformed into a den of indulgence and shadowy sin following Kane's ascension to the upper echelons of the newspaper industry.” However, unlike overwriting the dramatic turns these amazing set pieces, each one more eye-candy than the last, emphasize those forgotten moments of tension, grief, disappointment, good humor, and forceful heartbreak. Less famous scenes, such as when we finally see Kane’s political opponent, played by Ray Collins, quietly fillet Kane with his own sense of pride, is all the more powerful in the cramped vicinity of the showgirl’s tiny apartment than it is, nowadays, over the phone or in massive meeting rooms.
Cabin ends his review by saying, “Coming back to the film a solid five years since I last watched it, Citizen Kane remains as hard to talk about as ever, due largely to its symbiotic relationship with its own making and its reception forever complicating and deepening the psychological and philosophical valleys that exist within the proper narrative. I still stare at it, amazed and entertained, but dwarfed by the very idea of attempting to untangle the crow's nest that has formed through the film's ever-expanding histories. And what continuously stupefies me is that time works no miracles on this particular film: Scenes remain familiar, but the narrative seems to shift every time I return to it. No wonder it's such a pain to pin down! It sounds hyperbolic, but I might as well be trying to say something new about the life of Jesus.”
In this two-hour documentary, made for PBS and feeling a lot like it was made for PBS, there’s surprisingly little content useful to its title. Mostly, the film talks about the life of Hearst and the life of Orson Welles, separately. Not until the last half-hour when Citizen Kane is actually made and discussed, particularly as it relates to Hearst’s hatred to it. Rightly so…Welles was impaling the media magnate in the film. Who could blame him for doing everything in his power to stop its release?
The abuse of that power gets surprisingly little play here. Null mentions, “Instead, the same stock shots of San Simeon's building, Kane's opening night, and highlight scenes from the movie itself are shown over and over.” It’s nice to get insight from some of the original actors in this film as well as co-writer Herman Mankiewicz's son, Frank. Even “RKO 281,” the 1999 docudrama about the making of the movie, is just as appropriate at getting across the point that Hearst hated Welles.
Speaking of “RKO 281,” let’s talk about that and finally the review will be over. Based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, “Citizen Kane,” among its many accomplishments, brilliantly captured the spirit of early-20th-century America, a land dominated by larger-than-life characters that seemed to change the shape of the nation through sheer force of will. The story behind “Citizen Kane” almost as successfully sets the tone for the century’s second half. Keith Phipps mentioned in his review, “By playing off fears of commercial vulnerability, Hearst nearly suppressed, and could have destroyed, the film most frequently cited as the greatest single accomplishment of the medium. A timely bout of financial troubles worked against Hearst, but the pattern was set: The giants' empires would continue to dominate, only their power would shift to bottom-line-obsessed bean counters, more often than not at the expense of art.” “RKO 281,” its name taken from the production code for Orson Welles’s masterpiece, recounts behind-the-scenes struggle that nearly did “Citizen Kane” in. A typically solid, star-filled HBO production, the film stars Liev Schreiber as Welles, James Cromwell as Hearst, Melanie Griffith as Marion Davies, an especially good Brenda Blethyn as Hearst’s mistress Louella Parsons, and John Malkovich as Herman Mankiewicz. Writer John Logan and director Benjamin Ross open the film by drawing somewhat questionable parallels between Welles, the creation, and his enemy, but they in the end route to simply dramatizing the facts in typical HBO style. Still, with a cast this strong and a story this compelling, “RKO 281” proves the style’s capability. Even if it can’t help but look especially flat given its central subject its story remains timely.
In the end, if you haven’t seen “Citizen Kane,” why are reading this review? Go and see the film, even though you might already know what “Rosebud” is. That is one of the greatest quotes ever, and believe it or not, that is the first line said in the movie. Never has a movie sucked me in from the first line that I wanted to know what the mystery behind it was. After finding it out, it was done very nicely, that this easily becomes one of my favorites. I know you might be thinking that since I am a film critic, this should be my favorite since it’s the greatest movie ever, but that’s not necessarily the case. They are just my personal favorites, not films that I consider the best. A lot of you may already know what my favorite film is since I already reviewed that my first year of blogging.
Enough of about all this. Stay tuned for Friday for the second entry in “Jack Nicholson month.”
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