Roger Ebert Review:







n 1941, Orson Welles had finished what would eventually become known as the greatest movie of all time. But he was having trouble getting it released.


CITIZEN KANE told the story of an aging press tycoon whose arrogance had alienated him from everyone who loved him, and who had died alone inside the vast Gothic pile of his lonely castle in Florida. To many observers, Charles Foster Kane bore an uncanny resemblance to William Randolph Hearst, the aging press tycoon who lived in San Simeon, his famous California castle. And to Hearst's underlings, CITIZEN KANE was so unflattering to their boss that they banned all mention of it from the Hearst papers, radio stations, and wire services. For good measure, they also banned all mention of every other movie from the same studio, RKO Radio Pictures.


During one extraordinary moment in the negotiations leading up to the release of CITIZEN KANE, the very existence of the film itself was in doubt. Terrified by the possibility of an anti-Hollywood campaign by the Hearst press, a group of industry leaders, lead by MGM's Louis B. Mayer, offered RKO a cash settlement to simply destroy the film. It would have covered RKO's costs and added a small profit. But by then Welles had already sneak-previewed the movie to so many powerful opinion-makers that it was too late to sweep it under the rug. CITIZEN KANE never did get a proper national release, however. It could not play in the major theaters in many cities, because they were block-booked by the big studios, which boycotted it. It could not be advertised in the influential Hearst papers (the ads referred only to a mysterious "New Screen Attraction"). And although the film was instantly hailed by many critics, John O'Hara in Newsweek and Bosley Crowther in the New York Times among them, it won only one Academy Award—which Welles shared with Herman Mankiewicz, for the screenplay. The legends of CITIZEN KANE and Orson Welles were, in the next half century, to become one of the central myths of Hollywood: How a boy genius in his mid-twenties was given a completely free rein to make exactly the movie he wanted to make, and how in response he made the greatest movie of all time, only to see both the film and his own career chewed up and spat out by the venal, small-minded Hollywood establishment. Welles became the great outsider hero of cinema, central to the French auteur critics, championed by independent filmmakers, cited by anyone who wants to make an argument for film art over film commerce.


And now Welles is dead and so are many of the other bright-eyed young people in his Mercury Theater troupe who went West to make a movie. But the legend of CITIZEN KANE lives on. It is routinely voted the greatest film of all time, most notably in the international polls by the British film magazine Sight and Sound in 1962, 1972, and 1982. And in 1991, on the film's fiftieth anniversary, a bright, sparkling new restored print of CITIZEN KANE played all over the country.


There is a certain irony in the national release of this revival, since CITIZEN KANE is now owned by Ted Turner, an international media baron with certain similarities to both Hearst and Kane. All three men came from humble origins, got their first broken-down media property cheap, had a vision of a new mass audience, and became famous millionaires who settled down with actresses. Turner says he has the time to watch only three or four movies a year, but I'll bet CITIZEN KANE is among them. And perhaps he notices parallels with his own career: how his undoubted achievements and great successes are sometimes undermined by a failure of taste. Kane's great downfall came because he fell in love with a humble shopgirl and became determined to turn her into a great opera singer, despite her lack of talent. The Achilles' heel in Turner's career came when he fell in love with a sleazy technical innovation named colorization, and became determined to turn black-and-white movies into ersatz color movies, despite the outraged protests of film lovers everywhere. Yes, the Ted Turner who has made the beautiful, lovingly restored new print of CITIZEN KANE is the very same man who also wanted to colorize Welles' masterpiece.


"Make me one promise," Welles told his friend Henry Jaglom a few weeks before his death. "Keep Ted Turner and his goddamned Crayolas away from my movie." In the event, it was a document fifty years old that kept Turner's crayons away from KANE. Welles' original contract with RKO, hailed at the time as the most extraordinary contract any studio had ever given any filmmaker, guaranteed Welles' absolute control over every aspect of the production—including its color, or lack of same. And so the new print that went into release around the country looks substantially the same as when the movie had its premiere in 1941. For many filmgoers, that will be a revelation. More than most films, CITIZEN KANE must be seen in a 35mm theatrical print to be appreciated. I've seen KANE at least fifty times on 16mm, videotape, and Laserdisc. I have gone through it a scene at a time, using a stop-frame film analyzer, at least twenty-five times in various film classes and at festivals. Yet I've seen it in 35mm only twice: In 1956, when it had its first major re-release and I was in junior high school, and in 1978, when a new print was shown at the Chicago Film Festival.


From my 1956 viewing, I remember only the overwhelming total impression of the film, which in its visual sweep and the sheer audacity of its imagination outclassed all the small-minded entertainments I was used to seeing at the movies. From the 1978 viewing, I remember how the brightness and detail of the 35mm print opened up the corners and revealed the shadows of the great film. Citizen Kane makes great use of darkness and shadow. Welles, working with the gifted cinematographer Gregg Toland, wanted to show a man's life that was filled to bursting with possessions, power, associates, wealth, and mystery. He created a gloomy, dark visual style for the picture, which in 35mm reveals every nook and cranny to contain a treasure or a hint. And because of Toland's famous deep-focus photography, the frame is filled from front to back as well as from left to right.


The first apartment of Kane's mistress, for example, contains the paperweight he drops much later when he dies. It's on a table with other odds and ends. The famous warehouse shot at the end of the film includes a portrait of young Charlie Kane with his parents. You can see those details easily in 35mm, but not so easily in the 16mm prints of the movie, or even in the superb Laserdisc issued by the Criterion Collection. If you've only seen the movie on broadcast television or in a beaten-up 16mm classroom print, you may be amazed at the additional details visible in 35mm.


The story of the making of CITIZEN KANE is by now one of the central legends of movie lore. Many books have been written about the film, most notably The Citizen Kane Book (Little, Brown) by Pauline Kael, with her famous essay "Raising Kane," which argues that the contribution of writer Herman Mankiewicz to the production has been underappreciated. Robert Carringer, a Welles expert at the University of Illinois, has published The Making of Citizen Kane (University of California Press), with much analysis of visual strategies and production details. And Harlan Lebo's new Citizen Kane: The Fiftieth Anniversary Album (Doubleday) includes many inside details from interviews with the participants. (Example: Welles gashed his left hand in the scene where he tears apart Susan's apartment, and pulls it out of camera view in the close-up where he picks up the paperweight.)


Recently, at the University of Colorado, I went through CITIZEN KANE once again, with a 16mm film analyzer, joined by several hundred students, faculty, and townspeople. We sat in the dark, and audience members called out "Stop!" when there was something they wanted to discuss. Scene by scene and sometimes shot by shot we looked at the performances, the photography, the special effects.


For the fiftieth-anniversary salute to KANE, I reread all of the books once again. There is much disagreement about many of the facts. You can read that Hearst did personally see CITIZEN KANE, or that he did not. That Hearst, if he did see the film, was offended by it, or actually rather enjoyed it. That Welles took credit for the work of his associates, or that he inspired them to surpass all their earlier achievements.


Reading the many accounts of CITIZEN KANE is a little like seeing the movie: The witnesses all have opinions, but often they disagree, and sometimes they simply throw up their hands in exasperation. And the movie stands there before them, a towering achievement that cannot be explained yet cannot be ignored. Fifty years later, it is as fresh, as provoking, as entertaining, as funny, as sad, as brilliant, as it ever was. Many agree it is the greatest film of all time. Those who differ cannot seem to agree on their candidate.


A Viewer's Guide to Citizen Kane


"Rosebud." The most famous word in the history of cinema. It explains everything, and nothing. Who, for that matter, actually heard Charles Foster Kane say it before he died? The butler says, late in the film, that he did. But Kane seems to be alone when he dies, and the reflection on the shard of glass from the broken paperweight shows the nurse entering the room.


Gossip has it that the screenwriter, Herman Mankiewicz, used "rosebud" as an inside joke, because as a friend of Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies, he knew "rosebud" was the old man's pet name for the most intimate part of her anatomy.


Deep Focus Everyone knows that Orson Welles and his cinematographer, Gregg Toland, used deep focus in KANE. But what is deep focus, and were they using it for the first time? The term refers to a strategy of lighting, composition, and lens choice that allows everything in the frame, from the front to the back, to be in focus at the same time. With the lighting and lenses available in 1941, this was just becoming possible, and Toland had experimented with the technique in John Ford's THE LONG VOYAGE HOME a few years earlier.


In most movies, the key elements in the frame are in focus, and those closer or further away may not be. When everything is in focus, the filmmakers must give a lot more thought to how they direct the viewer's attention, first here and then there. What the French call mise-en-scène—the movement within the frame—becomes more important.


Optical illusions Deep focus is especially tricky because movies are two-dimensional, and so you need visual guideposts to determine the true scale of a scene. Toland used this fact as a way to fool the audience's eye on two delightful occasions in the film.


One comes when Kane is signing away control of his empire in Thatcher's office. Behind him on the wall are windows that look of normal size and height. Then Kane starts to walk into the background of the shot, and we realize with surprise that the windows are huge, and their lower sills are more than six feet above the floor. As Kane stands under them, he is dwarfed—which is the intent, since he has just lost great power. Later in the film, Kane walks over to stand in front of the great fireplace in Xanadu, and we realize it, too, is much larger than it first seemed.


Visible ceilings In almost all movies before CITIZEN KANE, you couldn't see the ceilings in rooms because there weren't any. That's where you'd see the lights and microphones. Welles wanted to use a lot of low-angle shots that would look up toward ceilings, and so Toland devised a strategy of cloth ceilings that looked real but were not. The microphones were hidden immediately above the ceilings, which in many shots are noticeably low. Matte drawings These are drawings by artists that are used to create elements that aren't really there. Often they are combined with "real" foregrounds. The opening and closing shots of Kane's great castle, Xanadu, are examples. No exterior set was ever built for the structure. Instead, artists drew it, and used lights behind it to suggest Kane's bedroom window. "Real" foreground details such as Kane's lagoon and private zoo were added.


Invisible wipes A "wipe" is a visual effect that wipes one image off the screen while wiping another into view. Invisible wipes disguise themselves as something else on the screen that seems to be moving, so you aren't aware of the effect. They are useful in "wiping" from full-scale sets to miniature sets.


For example: One of the most famous shots in KANE shows Susan Alexander's opera debut, when, as she starts to sing, the camera moves straight up to a catwalk high above the stage, and one stagehand turns to another and eloquently reviews her performance by holding his nose. Only the stage and the stagehands on the catwalk are real. The middle portion of this seemingly unbroken shot is a miniature, built in the RKO model workshop. The model is invisibly wiped in by the stage curtains, as we move up past them, and wiped out by a wooden beam right below the catwalk. Another example: In Walter Thatcher's library, the statue of Thatcher is a drawing, and as the camera pans down it wipes out the drawing as it wipes in the set of the library.


Invisible Furniture Moving In the early scene in the Kanes' cabin in Colorado, the camera tracks back from a window to a table where Kane's mother is being asked to sign a paper. The camera tracks right through where the table would be, after which it is slipped into place before we can see it. But a hat on the table is still trembling from the move. After she signs the paper, the camera pulls up and follows her as she walks back toward the window. If you look sharply, you can see that she's walking right through where the table was a moment before.


The Neatest flash-forward in Kane Between Thatcher's words "Merry Christmas" and "…a very Happy New Year," two decades pass.


From Model to Reality As the camera swoops above the nightclub and through the skylight to discover Susan Alexander Kane sitting forlornly at a table, it goes from a model of the nightclub roof to a real set. The switch is concealed, the first time, by a lightning flash. The second time we go to the nightclub, it's done with a dissolve.


Crowd scenes There aren't any in CITIZEN KANE. It only looks like there are. In the opening newsreel, stock footage of a political rally is intercut with a low-angle shot showing one man speaking on behalf of Kane. Sound effects make it sound like he's at a big outdoor rally. Later, Kane himself addresses a gigantic indoor rally. Kane and the other actors on the stage are real. The audience is a miniature, with flickering lights to suggest movement.


Slight Factual Discrepancies In the opening newsreel, Xanadu is described as being "on the desert coast of Florida." But Florida does not have a desert coast, as you can plainly see during the picnic scene, where footage from an earlier RKO prehistoric adventure was back-projected behind the actors, and if you look closely, that seems to be a pterodactyl flapping its wings.


The Luce Connection Although CITIZEN KANE was widely seen as an attack on William Randolph Hearst, it was also aimed at Henry R. Luce and his concept of faceless group journalism, as then practiced at his Time magazine and March of Time newsreels. The opening "News on the March" segment is a deliberate parody of the Luce newsreel, and the reason you can never see the faces of any of the journalists is that Welles and Mankiewicz were kidding the anonymity of Luce's writers and editors.


An Extra with a Future Alan Ladd can be glimpsed in the opening newsreel sequence, and again in the closing warehouse scene.


The Most Thankless Job on the Movie It went to William Alland, who plays Mr. Thompson, the journalist assigned to track down the meaning of "Rosebud." He is always seen from behind, or in backlit profile. You can never see his face. At the movie's world premiere, Alland told the audience he would turn his back so they could recognize him more easily.


The Brothel Scene It couldn't be filmed. In the original screenplay, after Kane hires away the staff of the Chronicle, he takes them to a brothel. The Production Code office wouldn't allow that. So the scene, slightly changed, takes place in the Inquirer newsroom, still with the dancing girls.


The Eyeless Cockatoo Yes, you can see right through the eyeball of the shrieking cockatoo, in the scene before the big fight between Kane and Susan. It's a mistake.


The Most Evocative Shot in the Movie There are many candidates. My choice is the shot showing an infinity of Kanes reflected in mirrors as he walks past. The Best Speech in Kane My favorite is delivered by Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane), when he is talking about the magic of memory with the inquiring reporter: "A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. 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."


Genuine Modesty In the movie's credits, Welles allowed his director's credit and Toland's cinematography credit to appear on the same card—an unprecedented gesture that indicated how grateful Welles was. False Modesty In the unique end credits, the members of the Mercury Company are introduced and seen in brief moments from the movie. Then smaller parts are handled with a single card containing many names. The final credit down at the bottom, in small type, says simply:


Kane…………………………Orson Welles


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