Citizen Kane est un film dramatique américain réalisé par Orson Welles sorti en 1941, considéré par l'American Film Institute comme le meilleur film de tous les temps et particulièrement vanté pour ses innovations cinématographiques, musicales et narratives1.
Synopsis
Au début des années 1940, Charles Foster Kane meurt dans son manoir de Xanadu, en prononçant dans un dernier souffle « rosebud » (bouton de rose) et en laissant échapper de ses mains une boule à neige. Ce dernier mot énigmatique attise la curiosité de la presse. Le journaliste Thompson est chargé de percer le mystère et va rencontrer tous ceux qui l'ont connu. Ces rencontres au présent où l'on plonge dans ses souvenirs sont accompagnées à chaque fois de flashbacks qui lèvent toujours un peu plus le voile sur sa vie.
Tout jeune, il a dû quitter sa mère, qui se trouvait par hasard héritière d’une mine d’or, pour être élevé par un financier dans la perspective de sa fortune à venir. Devenu un grand magnat de la presse, il épouse la nièce du président des États-Unis et espère faire une carrière politique, carrière qui s'interrompt lorsque l'on apprend qu'il trompe sa femme avec Susan, une pseudo-cantatrice. Sa femme demande le divorce et Kane épouse alors Susan, qui se sépare de lui par la suite. Kane finit par mourir seul dans son immense manoir inachevé.
Chaque personne qui l'a côtoyé, comme Thatcher, M. Bernstein, Jedediah Leland, Susan Alexander Kane et son majordome, a une perception bien particulière du personnage, souvent très différente de celle des autres : les récits, même entrecroisés, ne font donc qu'éclairer certains aspects ponctuels de Charles Foster Kane.
Fiche technique
Distribution
Et, parmi les acteurs non-crédités :
N.B : Le film n'a jamais été doublé en francais.
Analyse
Le narrateur
Le narrateur de Citizen Kane est omniprésent et omnipotent. En attestent la première et la dernière scène du film. Ainsi, dès le début du film, la pancarte filmée en gros plan sur laquelle on lit « No trespassing » (« Défense d'entrer ») est immédiatement transgressée par la caméra qui franchit les grilles de Xanadu. Ensuite, la caméra finit par arriver devant la fenêtre de Kane, et par un champ-contrechamp, passe outre cette barrière de verre pour s’immiscer dans la vie du vieillard. De même, lors de la conclusion du film, la caméra décrit des arabesques au cœur des innombrables objets laissés par Kane pour aboutir simplement sur une luge dont se saisit un ouvrier ou un domestique pour la livrer aux flammes. L’œil de la caméra aura encore le temps de se rapprocher suffisamment de l’inscription que porte le jouet avant que l’action de la chaleur ne la fasse définitivement disparaître : « Rosebud », le mot qu’avait prononcé le mourant.
Les flashbacks
Contrairement aux traditions de l’époque, Welles décide de raconter la vie de Charles Foster Kane sous la forme de flashbacks. Cependant, afin de ne pas perdre le spectateur, le réalisateur prend la peine de réaliser un « sommaire » grâce à la scène de la bande d’actualité, qui résume la vie de Kane. D’autre part, les flashbacks reprennent un ordre chronologique, avec dans le pire des cas des superpositions (par exemple entre le témoignage de Leland et celui de Susan).
La rupture de Susan avec Kane est ainsi racontée successivement en flashback par deux protagonistes différents, Susan elle-même et le majordome de Xanadu. Kane et Susan connaissent leur dernière altercation, et Kane, impuissant, regarde Susan quitter la pièce et s’éloigner en franchissant différentes ouvertures. Le dernier plan cadrant Susan peut prendre toute sa dimension dans la mesure où c’est elle qui relate leur séparation. Thompson interroge ensuite le majordome dont les souvenirs font l’objet du flashback suivant, qui débute de manière abrupte (par un cri de cacatoès) au moment où le majordome voit Susan partir. Welles choisit ainsi de couvrir la fin de la liaison entre Kane et Susan Alexander par deux personnages différents. La construction en flashbacks remplit ici son office car elle autorise une variation sur ce qui avait déjà été dit auparavant en ménageant un nouveau point de vue. Plus précisément, la rupture était déjà connue lors du flashback précédent, mais est visible dans toute sa continuité grâce à la présence du majordome qui assure sa fluidité à la narration.
Welles brise ainsi le style linéaire habituel des films et invente de nouveaux codes cinématographiques.
La profondeur de champ
Le recours à une longue profondeur de champ est omniprésent dans le film. Comme pour le flashback, c’est la systématisation du procédé plus que le procédé lui-même qui marque une date dans l’histoire du cinéma[réf. nécessaire][travail inédit ?].
Un plan devenu à ce titre exemplaire est celui de la découverte de la tentative de suicide de la femme de Kane. L’image montre en amorce le verre et la fiole tandis que Kane force la porte à l’arrière-plan, Susan respirant avec difficulté sur sa couche dans le plan intermédiaire. On sait que ce plan n’a pas été effectué en une seule prise mais que la mise au point a été successivement faite sur les différents composants du plan avant intégration dans une image unique[réf. nécessaire][travail inédit ?].
De même, l’enfance de Kane qui fait l’objet des mémoires de Thatcher est représentée grâce à cette technique. La séquence débute par des images du jeune Charlie Kane jouant dans la neige avec sa luge. Puis, un travelling arrière fait comprendre que le point de vue se situait à l’intérieur de la maison familiale. Les jeux du garçon sont ensuite perçus en arrière-plan, tandis que son proche avenir est débattu dans le foyer, les deux plans étant nets.
Les plongées/contre-plongées
De nombreux plans du film sont filmés en plongée, ou en contre-plongée. Si la contre-plongée traduit souvent l’exaltation, comme dans le discours de Kane contre Gettys, la plongée sert à illustrer les périodes de doute et d’échec, telles que la demande de mutation de Leland à Kane après la débâcle électorale, et la destruction de la chambre par Kane après le départ de Susan[travail inédit ?][réf. nécessaire].
Welles transgresse aussi les règles basiques des contre-plongées en les inversant. Car si cette même contre-plongée traduit généralement l'exaltation, la puissance écrase parfois Kane, comme dans la scène de la rupture avec sa seconde femme[travail inédit ?][réf. nécessaire].
Effets spéciaux et trucages
Welles aime faire appel à des effets spéciaux pour enrichir son film. Ils sont dus pour la plupart au talent de Vernon L. Walker. On peut en citer six exemples, tous assez remarquables :
- La scène où Leland parle à Thompson à l'hôpital a été jouée devant un mur blanc, des diapositives ayant ensuite été utilisées pour créer le fond.
- Les vues extérieures de Xanadu et la foule du meeting politique sont des illusions : ce sont en réalité des toiles peintes.
- La scène où Gettys surveille le discours de Kane depuis le poulailler possède une caractéristique très particulière : chaque moitié d'image a été filmée séparément puis rassemblée, ce qui permet de voir nettement les deux personnages.
- Le départ de Susan a été filmé en trois fois, pour pouvoir avoir les trois plans nets. Seul un plan est éclairé et filmé, puis la bobine est rembobinée et le plan suivant est éclairé, et ainsi de suite.
- Welles a employé le procédé d'impression optique à la Truca. Cela consiste à aligner une caméra avec un projecteur dont le fonctionnement est synchronisé. La pellicule peut ensuite être retravaillée en post-production.
- Au début du film, dans la longue séquence de la bande d'actualités News on the March retraçant la carrière de Kane, est inséré un plan où Kane et Adolf Hitler sont côte à côte sur un balcon, ce qui est un habile montage.
Dernière réplique
« Throw that junk », traduit en français par Jette ce machin (ou mieux : cette vieillerie, ce déchet), constitue l'ultime réplique du film. Elle survient lors de la séquence finale de l'inventaire dans le château de Kane, lorsque le majordome Raymond (interprété par Paul Stewart) passe devant une luge d'enfant et s'écrie ces mots « Throw that junk ». On jette la luge dans un brasier, puis la caméra sur la musique de Bernard Herrmann s'avance lentement en travelling, et le mot gravé sur le bois noirci par le feu apparaît soudain : « Rosebud », révélant peut-être que la seule chose à laquelle Kane restait encore attaché à la toute fin de sa vie était la luge avec laquelle il aimait à jouer lors des hivers neigeux de son enfance.
La séquence de révélation concernant le mot « Rosebud » peut être rapprochée de la dernière scène du film d'Alfred Hitchcock, Rebecca, qui, un an plus tôt, se concluait sur la lettre « R » soigneusement cousue sur le coussin de la chambre de Rebecca, et qui brûlait en conclusion du film[travail inédit ?].
Récompenses
Lieux de tournage
Autour du film
- Il s'agit du premier film du réalisateur, et les acteurs proviennent pour la plupart de son groupe de théâtre : le Mercury Theatre[réf. nécessaire].
- Le titre initial devait être American[réf. nécessaire].
- Pour Kane, Orson Welles s'est inspiré d'un personnage réel : William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951), qui s'était réfugié dans un château, le Hearst Castle, à la fin de sa vie, comme Kane à Xanadu dans le film. Toutefois, d'autres sources, et certains auteurs comme Peter Harry Brown et Pat H. Broeske, ont fait valoir que le film devait être, à l'origine, une biographie plus ou moins fidèle du millionnaire Howard Hughes, alors autant connu pour ses entreprises cinématographiques (Les Anges de l'enfer, Scarface), pour ses records et ses activités dans l'aviation, que pour certaines de ses excentricités : il était victime de troubles obsessionnels compulsifs, lui faisant par exemple répéter plusieurs fois de suite la même phrase, et souffrait d'une phobie des microbes. L'ironie veut que Howard Hughes soit devenu quelques années plus tard le patron de la RKO qui a produit le film.
- Les tentatives d'interdire le film par Hearst ont donné lieu à un documentaire télévisé intitulé The Battle Over Citizen Kane5.
- Rosebud, le fameux mot-clé prononcé par Kane, veut dire littéralement « bouton de rose ». On[Qui ?] dit que ce mot était utilisé par William Randolph Hearst pour désigner le clitoris de sa maîtresse, Marion Davies (ce mot est également employé par La Mettrie pour désigner le clitoris, notamment dans L'Art de jouir). Certains estiment que c'est une des raisons pour lesquelles William Randolph Hearst a essayé d'interdire le film à sa sortie.[travail inédit ?][réf. nécessaire]
- Orson Welles a dit à propos de son film : "Le public est seul juge. Kane est à la fois un idéaliste et un escroc, un très grand homme et un individu médiocre. Tout dépend de celui qui en parle. Il n'est jamais vu à travers l'œil objectif d'un auteur. Le but du film réside d'ailleurs plus dans la présentation du problème que dans sa solution."
Références au film dans la culture populaire
Au cinéma
- Le grand détournement La Classe Américaine :
- Georges Abitbol, l'homme le plus classe du monde, meurt en prononçant ces mots : « Monde de merde »
- Des journalistes, Peter & Steven, enquêtent sur son passé, ce qui donne lieu à des flashbacks. Orson Welles fait même une apparition détournée au début du film, et meurt tué par balle en s'écriant « Ohhhhhhh, Rosebud ! ».
- Peter, un des journalistes enquêtant sur la mort de Georges Abitbol, répond à son patron qui les interroge sur leurs pistes, qu'ils avaient « plutôt pensé à un traîneau ».
- Le patron du journal reprend une réplique de Citizen Kane : « Si c'est une femme, je veux savoir son nom. Si c'est un cheval, je veux savoir dans quelle course. »
- Le film Velvet Goldmine de Todd Haynes est une transposition de "Citizen Kane" à la période glam'rock. On retrouve une construction semblable ainsi que de nombreuses références telles la mort dans la neige, les coupures de journaux, les personnages secondaires. Certaines images et certaines positions du héros sont les mêmes que dans le film.
- Dans Kill Bill : Volume 1 de Quentin Tarantino, l'une des premières scènes où l'on voit dans l'ombre la mariée agonisante sur le sol est une référence au début de Citizen Kane où l'on voit dans l'ombre Charles Foster Kane mourant sur son lit.
- En 1995, Marc Dorcel a réalisé Citizen Shane, parodie pornographique de ce film.
- Dans Rhum Express sorti en 2011, Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) loge dans un hôtel nommé le Xanadu.
- Dans Inception de Christopher Nolan, l'idée implantée par l'équipe de Dom Cobb dans le subconscient du chef d'entreprise richissime est une éolienne en papier ayant appartenue à son fils. Cet objet sans valeur pécuniaire (comme la luge) provoque une grande réaction d'ordre affectif.
- Dans The Dark Knight de Christopher Nolan, le plan qui révèle au spectateur l'entrée de la batcave (dans des entrepôts du port), est un travelling descendant sur une grille qui mentionne " private property no trespassing. Violators will be procecuted " exactement comme la grille de Xanadu.
À la télévision
- L'épisode 43 de l'émission Les Tiny Toons,intitulé "Citizen Max", consiste en une parodie mettant en vedette Montana Max. L'enfant gâté du pays ACME voulait devenir président des élèves de Loonyversité afin de se débarrasser de Buster. La scène d'ouverture le montre dans un manoir qui ressemble à Xanadu. Il détruit ses jouets, puis s'écrie: "ACME!" Hamton, jouant un rôle de journaliste, cherche à savoir pourquoi, du haut de son manoir, Montana Max a crié ACME. Il interroge Buster, Plucky et Elmyra.
- Dans la série Twin Peaks, de David Lynch et Mark Frost, le père de Laura Palmer, la jeune fille assassinée dès l'épisode pilote, s'appelle Leland.
- La série télévisée des Simpsons a, à plusieurs reprises, parodié le film, notamment dans les épisodes suivants :
- Dans le bureau de Monsieur Burns, un portrait le représentant ressemble exactement à un placé dans la bibliothèque que visite Thompson.
- Monsieur Chasse-Neige : à la fin du spot publicitaire pour Monsieur Chasse-Neige, une boule à neige tombe à terre et se brise.
- Rosebud :
- Le portail de la propriété de Burns est surmonté d'un « B » qui fait penser au « K » sur le portail de Xanadu. Sur le grillage se trouvent également des pancartes d'avertissement semblables à celles du film.
- On aperçoit la silhouette de Burns, « mort », à travers des fenêtres ouvragées et grillagées, comme on aperçoit le corps de Kane dans le film.
- Burns a été confié, dans son enfance, à un précepteur aisé, tout comme Kane. Les deux personnages ont eu une enfance modeste mais sont tout de même parvenus au pouvoir.
- L'ours en peluche Bobo remplit exactement le même rôle que le traîneau Rosebud, il est comme ce dernier enseveli sous la neige et son nom est prononcé, dans un râle, à la « mort » de Burns.
- Le sang, c'est de l'argent : Burns est allongé sur son lit, souffrant, et au second plan, le docteur s'entretient avec Smithers. Dans le film, Kane parle avec le docteur au chevet de sa femme.
- Marge a trouvé un boulot : le spectacle de chant et de danse organisé par Smithers est très semblable à celui organisé pour Kane, surtout au niveau des costumes (vestes rayées, chapeau et canne). Dans cette scène, la chanson est également une parodie de celle du film.
- Un tramway nommé Marge : Homer assiste à la comédie musicale dans laquelle joue sa femme et s'ennuie. Il souffle sur un programme déchiré en bandelettes. Jebediah Leland agit de la même façon lorsqu'il assiste à l'opéra chanté par la femme de Kane.
- Le maire est amer et Sous le signe du poisson : la tribune depuis laquelle Tahiti Bob pour le premier épisode et Burns pour le deuxième s'adressent au public est un clin d'œil à celle utilisée par Kane. De plus, derrière eux se trouve une affiche représentant leur photo et leur nom. Bart, qui regarde à la télé le discours de campagne de Burns, demande à Homer : « Est-ce que ton patron est déjà gouverneur ? ». Dans le film, le fils de Kane demande à sa mère : « Est-ce que Papa est déjà gouverneur ? »
- Sous le signe du poisson : Burns, fou de rage en apprenant que sa campagne tombe à l'eau, tente de s'en prendre à son mobilier, ce que fait Kane dans le film en apprenant que sa seconde femme le quitte.
- Sous le signe du poisson : Burns déclare : "Vous ne pouvez pas me faire ça, je suis Charles Mongomery Burns !". Dans le film, apparaît la phrase "Vous ne pouvez pas me faire ca, je suis Charles Foster Kane !".
- Le député Krusty : le maire a déplacé les couloirs aériens pour pouvoir entendre la voix de sa maîtresse, et quand il l'entend parler il dit "C'est ça ta voix ?! Je regrette de t'avoir fait construire un opéra". Dans le film, Kane construit un opéra pour sa femme alors qu'elle n'est pas très bonne chanteuse.
- Homer de Séville : durant le spectacle de Homer, la caméra monte et s'arrête finalement sur Carl et Lenny sur une passerelle. Dans le film, la même scène est présente durant l'opéra de Susan Alexander Kane.
- Dans un épisode de Columbo ("Jeu de mots"), le criminel se sert du mot "Rosebud" pour dresser ses chiens à tuer. Le criminel est également collectionneur d'art et fan de "Citizen Kane". Il possède d'ailleurs la grille d'entrée du domaine de Kane ainsi que sa luge.
- Dans la série Veronica Mars, la jeune détective fait allusion au film dans la saison 2, en disant « Et Rosebud n'était qu'une luge ! Je ne vous ai pas gâché la fin de "Citizen Kane" au moins ? ».
- Dans la série Weeds (saison 4, épisode 3 "The blah thing"), au bout de 3 minutes, Andy Botwin se moque de son père qui refuse d'admettre que sa mère veut mourir : "Kill me... Kill me... What do you think she meant by that? Maybe it was her sled!" (Tue moi...Tue moi... Qu'est-ce qu'elle veut dire ? Peut-être c'était de sa luge !)
- Dans la série Friends (saison 8, épisode 12), Joey demande à Rachel si elle a déjà réussi à regarder Citizen Kane en entier, elle lui répond que certes, c'est ennuyeux, mais qu'apparemment c'est un classique ("Have you ever tried to sit through Citizen Kane ?" "Yeah I know it’s really boring, but it’s like a big deal.").
- Dans l'épisode 2 de la saison 3 de Fringe, Walter parle de "Rosebud" pour trouver le petit détail qui les mènera à découvrir l'énigme de l'épisode.
- Dans La Web - Série "Flander's Company" le mot "Rosebud" est plusieurs fois utilisés lorsque les personnages sont à l'agonie et "Rosebud" est aussi le mot de passe d'un serveur secret de la "Flander's Company".
Dans les jeux vidéo
- Le jeu TimeSplitters: Future Perfect rend également hommage à ce film avec la dernière remarque de Crow : « Rosebud… »
- Dans le jeu Les Sims, « Rosebud » est un code triche qui débloque des fonds illimités.
- Dans le jeu Zoo Tycoon, si l'on renomme un visiteur « Xanadu », on accède à la licorne.
- Dans le jeu vidéo Uplink, le mot de passe du serveur de test est « rosebud ».
- Dans plusieurs jeux vidéo de guerre, comme Call of Duty certains soldats meurent en prononçant « rosebud ».
Dans la bande dessinée
- Un comic strip des Peanuts montre toute l'importance du mystère de « Rosebud » pour le spectateur. Alors que Linus annonce à sa soeur Lucy qu'il regarde Citizen Kane pour la première fois, elle lui révèle la solution de l'énigme.
- Le dessinateur Don Rosa a imité plusieurs fois des scènes du film dans ses aventures de Picsou :
- William Randolph Hearst, qui a inspiré Welles, est cité dans la liste des milliardaires dépassés par Picsou dans le onzième épisode de La Jeunesse, « Le Bâtisseur d'empires du Calisota ». Picsou a donc une fin de vie proche de celle du réel Hearst et du fictif Kane.
- La séquence d'ouverture (« Rosebud » et le reportage) dans le dernier épisode de La Jeunesse de Picsou, « Le Canard le plus riche du monde ». Dans cette histoire, Picsou prononce « Goldie », qui, pour Don Rosa dans la suite de Carl Barks, est la clé pour comprendre la vie du canard de fiction. Dans cet épisode, on voit également Donald sortir la luge « Rosebud » de Kane d'une caisse.
- La consultation des Mémoires du financier Thatcher est reprise dans Sa Majesté Picsou Ier lorsque Picsou va lire les mémoires de Cornélius Écoutum, fondateur de Donaldville.
- Le dessin animé SOS Fantômes y fait explicitement référence. Dans un épisode, les héros se rendent dans un manoir pour chasser un fantôme qui ne cesse d'appeler BOUTON DE ROSE. Après avoir tenté de le capturer en vain, les chasseurs vont être poursuivis par ce fantôme et tenteront de fuir avec le premier moyen qu'ils trouveront dans un débarras : une luge sur laquelle on peut lire bouton de rose, comme dans le film. Ils rendront la luge à son propriétaire (le fantôme) qui disparaîtra avec.
- Dans la BD La Tour de Kyla, Eapon prononce « Rosebud » avant de mourir.
- Batman fut créée par Bob Kane né Kahn et la première apparition du vengeur masqué au cinéma est en 1943 quelques mois après la sortie du film Citizen Kane. Orson Welles prête sa voix pour la bande annonce du film6 et pour celle de The Shadow à la radio7. Le nom Bruce Wayne, choisi par Bill Finger, s'inspire de celui de son créateur. Dans son projet d'adaptation, il voyait Humphrey Bogart en Double-Face, James Cagney en Sphinx, Basil Rathbone en Joker, Marlène Dietrich en Catwoman et lui-même en Batman.
- Dans la BD Pin-Up, de Berthet et Yann, Dorothy Partington répond ironiquement à des soldats qui l'interrogent sur son mystérieux tatouage R. P. H. que « c'était le nom inscrit sur [sa] luge préférée quand [elle] étais en enfant »8.
Dans la presse
Dans la musique
- Le morceau intitulé "The Union Forever" du groupe américain The White Stripes a pour sujet le film. De plus, au milieu du morceau est chantée la chanson en hommage à Kane présente dans le film.
- Jack Black, chanteur du groupe de rock américain Tenacious D fait une référence au film dans une de ses chansons. Dans The Pick of Destiny, chanson promotionnelle du film éponyme, il chante "You know our movie's better than a Citizen Kane" pour montrer avec humour à quel point son film est bon.
Autres
La poste américaine a émis sur timbre-poste une scène du film dans la série Celebrate the Century en 19999,10.
Voir aussi
Bibliographie
- Jean Roy, Citizen Kane - Orson Welles (étude critique), Nathan, 1989, 116p. ISBN 2-09-188622-X
- Sandra Joxe, Citizen Kane - Orson Welles, éd. Hatier, collection Image par image, 1990.
- Jean-Pierre Berthomé & François Thomas, Citizen Kane, éditions Flammarion, collection cinémas, 1992.
- Claude-Jean Philippe, 100 films pour une cinémathèque idéale, Cahiers du cinéma, 2008
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film directed, co-written, produced by, and starring Orson Welles. The picture was Welles' first feature film. The film was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories; it won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Herman Mankiewicz and Welles. Considered by many critics, filmmakers, and fans to be the greatest film ever made, Citizen Kane was voted the greatest film of all time in five consecutive Sight & Sound's polls of critics,[5] until it was displaced by Vertigo in the 2012 poll.[6] It topped the American Film Institute's 100 Years ... 100 Movies list in 1998, as well as AFI's 2007 update. Citizen Kane is particularly praised for its cinematography, music, and narrative structure, which were innovative for its time.
The story is a film à clef that examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a character based in part upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst,[7] Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick,[8] and aspects of Welles' own life.[9] Upon its release, Hearst prohibited mention of the film in any of his newspapers. Kane's career in the publishing world is born of idealistic social service, but gradually evolves into a ruthless pursuit of power. Narrated principally through flashbacks, the story is told through the research of a newsreel reporter seeking to solve the mystery of the newspaper magnate's dying word: "Rosebud".
After his success in the theatre with his Mercury Players, and his controversial 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds on The Mercury Theatre on the Air, Welles was courted by Hollywood. He signed a contract with RKO Pictures in 1939. Unusual for an untried director, he was given the freedom to develop his own story, to use his own cast and crew, and to have final cut privilege. Following two abortive attempts to get a project off the ground, he wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane, collaborating on the effort with Herman Mankiewicz. Principal photography took place in 1940 and the film received its American release in 1941.
While a critical success, Citizen Kane failed to recoup its costs at the box office. The film faded from view after its release but was subsequently returned to the fore when it was praised by such French critics as Jean-Paul Sartre and André Bazin and given an American revival in 1956.
The film was released on Blu-ray Disc on September 13, 2011, for a special 70th anniversary edition.[10]
Plot
Charles Foster Kane, an enormously wealthy newspaper publisher, has been living alone in Florida on his vast palatial estate, Xanadu, for the last years of his life, with a "No Trespassing" sign on the gate. On his deathbed, he holds a snow globe and utters the single word, "Rosebud", before dying; the globe slips from his hand and smashes on the floor. Kane's death becomes sensational news around the world. Newsreel reporter Jerry Thompson becomes intrigued, and decides to learn all he can about Kane's private life to discover the meaning of "Rosebud".
The reporter interviews the great man's friends and associates, and Kane's story unfolds as a series of flashbacks. Thompson approaches Kane's second wife, Susan Alexander, now an alcoholic who runs her own nightclub, but she refuses to tell him anything and demands that he leave. Thompson then goes to the private archive of the late Walter Parks Thatcher, a banker who served as Kane's guardian during his childhood and adolescence. Through Thatcher's written memoirs, Thompson learns about Kane's childhood. Thompson then interviews Kane's personal business manager, Mr. Bernstein; his estranged best friend, Jedediah Leland; Susan, for a second time, successfully this time; and, finally, his butler, Raymond, at the Xanadu estate.
These flashbacks reveal that Kane's childhood was spent in poverty in Colorado (his parents ran a boarding house), until "the world's third largest gold mine" was discovered on the seemingly worthless property his mother had acquired. His mother, Mary, sends him away to the East to live with Thatcher, so that he may be properly educated. After gaining full control over his trust fund at the age of 25, Kane enters the newspaper business and embarks on a career of yellow journalism. He takes control of the newspaper, the New York Inquirer, and hires the best journalists available. He then rises to power by successfully manipulating public opinion regarding the Spanish American War, marrying the niece of a President of the United States, and campaigning for the office of Governor of New York.
Kane's marriage disintegrates over the years, and he begins an affair with Susan Alexander, a singer. Both his wife and his political opponent discover the affair and this brings an abrupt end to both his marriage and his political aspirations. Kane marries Susan, and forces her into a humiliating operatic career for which she has neither the talent nor the ambition. Kane finally allows her to abandon her singing career after she attempts suicide. After years spent in boredom and isolation on the Xanadu estate, constantly under his domination, Susan ultimately leaves Kane.
Kane spends his last years building his vast estate and lives alone, interacting only with his staff. The butler recounts that Kane had said "Rosebud" after Susan left him, right after seeing and pocketing a snow globe.
Back at Xanadu, Kane's vast number of belongings are catalogued: priceless works of art are intermingled with worthless pieces of modern furniture. Thompson finds that he is unable to solve the mystery and concludes that the meaning of "Rosebud" will forever remain an enigma. He theorizes that "Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost." As the film ends, the camera reveals that Rosebud was the name of a sled from Kane's childhood–an allusion to the only time in his life that he was truly happy. The sled, thought to be junk, is burned in a basement furnace by Xanadu's departing staff.
Cast and characters
The cast of Citizen Kane is listed at the American Film Institute Catalog of Feature Films.[4]
- Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane, the titular "Citizen Kane", a wealthy, megalomaniacal newspaper publisher whose life is the film's subject. His name actually appears last in the closing credits.
- Joseph Cotten as Jedediah Leland, Kane's best friend and the first reporter on Kane's paper. Leland continues to work for Kane as his empire grows, although they grow apart over the years. Kane fires Leland after he writes a negative review of Susan Alexander Kane's operatic debut (which, ironically, Kane himself finished when a drunk Leland fell unconscious).
- Dorothy Comingore as Susan Alexander Kane, Kane's mistress, who later becomes his second wife.
- Everett Sloane as Mr. Bernstein, Kane's friend and employee who remains loyal to him to the end. According to RKO records, Sloane was paid $2,400 for shaving his head.[4]
- Ray Collins as Jim W. Gettys, Kane's political rival and the incumbent governor of New York. Kane appears to be the frontrunner in the campaign, but Gettys exposes Kane's relationship with Susan Alexander which leads to his defeat.
- George Coulouris as Walter Parks Thatcher, a miserly banker who becomes Kane's legal guardian.
- Agnes Moorehead as Mary Kane, Kane's mother.
- Paul Stewart as Raymond, Kane's cynical butler who assists him in his later years. Actor-director Stewart got Welles his first job in radio in 1934.[11]:10, 331
- Ruth Warrick as Emily Monroe Norton Kane, Kane's first wife and the niece of the President. She leaves him after discovering his affair with Susan Alexander. She dies in a car accident along with their only child, a son, a few years later. Warrick was the last surviving member of the principal cast at the time of her death in 2005.
- Erskine Sanford as Herbert Carter, editor of the Inquirer.
- William Alland as Jerry Thompson, the reporter in charge of finding out the meaning of Kane's last word, "Rosebud". Thompson is seen only in shadow or with his back turned to the camera.
- Harry Shannon as Jim Kane, Kane's father.
- Georgia Backus as Bertha Anderson, attendant at the library of Walter Parks Thatcher.
- Fortunio Bonanova as Signor Matiste, vocal coach of Susan Alexander Kane.
- Sonny Bupp as Charles Foster Kane III, Kane's young son. He later dies in a car accident with his mother, though only the voiceover narration acknowledges this. Bupp was the last surviving credited cast member of Citizen Kane when he died in 2007.[12]
- Buddy Swan as Young Charles Foster Kane.
- Gus Schilling as John, headwaiter at the Atlantic City nightclub.
- Philip Van Zandt as Mr. Rawlston, News on the March producer.
- Thomas A. Curran, the early American silent film star makes an uncredited bit part for his role in one scene with Welles as Teddy Roosevelt.[13][14]
- Alan Ladd, uncredited, as a reporter at Xanadu.
- Louise Currie, uncredited, as a reporter at Xanadu. When Currie died September 8, 2013, at age 100,[15] she was believed to have been the film's last surviving cast member.[16]
The film's closing credits read, "Most of the principal actors are new to motion pictures. The Mercury Theatre is proud to introduce them."[4] Welles, along with his partner John Houseman, had assembled them into a group known as the Mercury Players to perform his productions in the Mercury Theatre in 1937. After accepting his Hollywood contract in 1939, Welles worked between Los Angeles and New York where the Mercury Theatre continued their weekly radio broadcasts for The Campbell Playhouse.[17] Welles had wanted all the Mercury Players to debut in his first film, but the cancellation of The Heart of Darkness project in December 1939 created a financial crisis for the group and some of the actors worked elsewhere.[17] This caused friction between Welles and Houseman, and their partnership ended.[17]
RKO executives were dismayed that so many of the major roles went to unknowns, but Welles's contract left them with no say in the matter. The film features debuts from William Alland, Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane, Ruth Warrick and Welles himself.
Production
Development
Welles's notoriety following The War of the Worlds broadcast earned him Hollywood's interest, and RKO studio head George J. Schaefer's unusual contract.[18] Welles made a deal with Schaefer on July 21, 1939, to produce, direct, write, and act in two feature films.[19]:1 The studio had to approve the story and the budget if it exceeded $500,000. Welles was allowed to develop the story without interference, cast his own actors and crew members, and have the privilege of final cut – unheard of at the time for a first-time director.[19]:1 He had spent the first five months of his RKO contract trying to get several projects going with no success. The Hollywood Reporter said, "They are laying bets over on the RKO lot that the Orson Welles deal will end up without Orson ever doing a picture there."[19]:15 First, Welles tried to adapt Heart of Darkness, but there was concern over the idea of depicting it entirely with point of view shots. Welles considered adapting Cecil Day-Lewis' novel The Smiler With The Knife, but realized that to challenge himself with a new medium, he had to write an original story.[20]
Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, recuperating from a car accident, was in-between jobs. He had originally been hired by Welles to work on The Campbell Playhouse radio program and was available to work on the screenplay for Welles's film. The writer had only received two screenplay credits between 1935 and when he began work on Citizen Kane, and he needed the job.[19]:16 There is dispute amongst historians regarding whose idea it was to use William Randolph Hearst as the basis for Charles Foster Kane. Welles claimed it was his idea while film critic Pauline Kael (in her 1971 essay "Raising Kane")[21] and Welles's former business partner, John Houseman, claim that it was Mankiewicz's idea.[19]:17 For some time, Mankiewicz had wanted to write a screenplay about a public figure – perhaps a gangster – whose story would be told by the people that knew him.[22]
Mankiewicz had already written an unperformed play about John Dillinger entitled The Tree Will Grow. Welles liked the idea of multiple viewpoints but was not interested in playing Dillinger. Mankiewicz and Welles talked about picking someone else to use as a model. They hit on the idea of using Hearst as their central character.[22] Mankiewicz had frequented Hearst's parties until his alcoholism got him barred. The writer resented this and became obsessed with Hearst and Marion Davies.[22] Hearst had great influence and the power to retaliate within Hollywood, so Welles had Mankiewicz work on the script outside of the city. Because of the writer's drinking problem, Houseman went along to provide assistance and make sure that he stayed focused.[19]:17 Welles also sought inspiration from Howard Hughes and Samuel Insull (who built an opera house for his wife). Although Mankiewicz and Houseman got on well with Welles, they incorporated some of his traits into Kane, such as his temper.[20]
During production, Citizen Kane was referred to as RKO 281. Most of the filming took place between June 29, 1940, and October 23, 1940, in what is now Stage 19 on the Paramount lot in Hollywood.[23] There was some location filming at Balboa Park in San Diego[24] and the San Diego Zoo, and still photographs of Oheka Castle in Huntington, New York, were used in the opening montage, representing Kane's Xanadu estate.[25][26] 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's 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. According to an RKO cost sheet from May 1942, the film cost $839,727 compared to an estimated budget of $723,800.[4]
Screenplay
Development
Mankiewicz as co-writer
Robert Carringer, author of The Making of Citizen Kane (1985), described the early stages of the screenplay:
Welles's first step toward the realization of Citizen Kane was to seek the assistance of a screenwriting professional. Fortunately, help was near at hand. . . . When Welles moved to Hollywood, it happened that a veteran screenwriter, Herman Mankiewicz, was recuperating from an automobile accident and between jobs ... Mankiewicz was an expatriate from Broadway who had been writing for films for almost fifteen years.[19]:16
Mankiewicz met newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst as a result of his friendship with Charles Lederer, another Hollywood screenwriter, who was a close nephew of Marion Davies, Hearst's mistress.[27]:212–213 Pauline Kael wrote that "Mankiewicz found himself on story-swapping terms with the power behind it all, Hearst himself ... through his friendship with Charles Lederer." Mankiewicz eventually saw Hearst as "... a finagling, calculating, Machiavellian figure," noted Kael, "and he and Lederer often wrote and had printed parodies of Hearst newspapers ..."[28]
Mankiewicz, according to film author Harlan Lebo, was also "… one of Hollywood's most notorious personalities."[29]:12 Mankiewicz was the older brother of producer-director Joseph Mankiewicz, was a former writer for The New Yorker and The New York Times before moving to Hollywood in 1926. By the time Welles contacted him he had "... established himself as a brilliant wit, a writer of extraordinary talent, [and] a warm friend to many of the screen world's brightest artists ... [he] produced dialogue of the highest caliber."[29]:12
"Herman Mankiewicz was a legendary figure in Hollywood," wrote Welles's associate John Houseman:
The son of a respected New Jersey schoolteacher, one of a brilliant class at Columbia, he had fought the war as a Marine, worked for the World and the Times, collaborated on two unsuccessful plays with two otherwise infallibly successful playwrights, George Kaufman and Marc Connelly, come to California for six weeks to work on a silent film for Lon Chaney and stayed for sixteen years as one of the highest paid and most troublesome men in the business. His behavior, public and private, was a scandal. A neurotic drinker and a compulsive gambler, he was also one of the most intelligent, informed, witty, humane and charming men I have ever known.[30]:447
Speaking with Peter Bogdanovich in February 1969, Orson Welles said, "Nobody was more miserable, more bitter, and funnier than Mank ... a perfect monument of self-destruction. But, you know, when the bitterness wasn't focused straight at you, he was the best company in the world." When Bogdanovich asked how important Mankiewicz was to the Citizen Kane script, Welles responded, "Mankiewicz's contribution? It was enormous."[11]:52–53
Welles had engaged Mankiewicz to do script work on the stalled film project The Smiler with a Knife. Despite a violent quarrel with Houseman in December 1939, after which Houseman had resigned from the Mercury, Welles arranged a lunch at New York's 21 Club with his former partner, and proposed that he work with Mankiewicz on a new project — "… little more than a notion, but an exciting one …," Houseman wrote:
Mankiewicz was notoriously unreliable: I asked Orson why he didn't take over the idea and write it himself. He said he didn't want to do that. Besides, Mank had asked for me to work with him. In the name of our former association Orson urged me to fly out, talk to Mankiewicz and, if I shared his enthusiasm, stay and work with him as his collaborator and editor till the script was done. It was an absurd venture, and that night Orson and I flew back to California together.[30]:444
In February 1940 Mankiewicz was put on the Mercury payroll to work on a script with Houseman, a screenplay initially called Orson Welles #1, then American, and finally, Citizen Kane. Writing took place from late February or March through early May 1940.[11]:359
After finishing the script for Citizen Kane, Mankiewicz gave a copy to Lederer, which Kael regarded as foolish:
He was so proud of his script that he lent a copy to Charles Lederer. In some crazily naive way, Mankiewicz seems to have imagined that Lederer would be pleased by how good it was. But Lederer, apparently, was deeply upset and took the script to his aunt and Hearst. It went from them to Hearst's lawyers … It was probably as a result of Mankiewicz's idiotic indiscretion that the various forces were set in motion that resulted in the cancellation of the premiere at the Radio City Music Hall [and] the commercial failure of Citizen Kane.[28]
Lederer, however, told director Peter Bogdanovich that Kael was wrong in her conclusion, and that she never bothered to check with him about the facts. Lederer said he did not give Davies the script Mankiewicz loaned him: "I gave it back to him. He asked me if I thought Marion would be offended and I said I didn't think so."[11]:557
Ideas and collaboration
According to film historian Clinton Heylin, "... the idea of Citizen Kane was the original conception of Orson Welles, who in early 1940 first discussed the idea with John Houseman, who then suggested that both he and Welles leave for Los Angeles and discuss the idea with scriptwriter Herman Mankiewicz." He adds that Mankiewicz "... probably believed that Welles had little experience as an original scriptwriter ... [and] may even have felt that John Citizen USA, Welles's working title, was a project he could make his own."[31]:43
When Houseman returned to California, he sat by the bedside of Mankiewicz — who was convalescing with a triple fracture of his left leg — and heard the basic outline of the story. "It was something he had been thinking about for years," Houseman wrote, "the idea of telling a man's private life (preferably one that suggested a recognizable American figure), immediately following his death, through the intimate and often incompatible testimony of those who had known him at different times and in different circumstances."[30]:448–449
Welles himself had ideas that meshed with that concept, as he described in a 1969 interview in the book, This is Orson Welles:
I'd been nursing an old notion – the idea of telling the same thing several times – and showing exactly the same thing from wholly different points of view. Basically, the idea Rashomon used later on. Mank liked it, so we started searching for the man it was going to be about. Some big American figure – couldn't be a politician, because you'd have to pinpoint him. Howard Hughes was the first idea. But we got pretty quickly to the press lords.[11]:53
Hearst as story model
According to film critic and author Pauline Kael, Mankiewicz "... was already caught up in the idea of a movie about Hearst ..." when he was still working at The New York Times in 1925. She learned from his family's babysitter, Marion Fisher, that she once typed as "... he dictated a screenplay, organized in flashbacks. She recalls that he had barely started on the dictation, which went on for several weeks, when she remarked that it seemed to be about William Randolph Hearst, and he said, 'You're a smart girl.'"[21]:35
In Hollywood, Mankiewicz had frequented Hearst's parties until his alcoholism got him barred.[22] Hearst was also a person known to Welles. "Once that was decided", wrote author Don Kilbourne, "Mankiewicz, Welles, and John Houseman, a cofounder of the Mercury Theatre, rented a place in the desert, and the task of creating Citizen Kane began."[32]:221 This "place in the desert" was on the historic Verde ranch on the Mojave River in Victorville. In later years, Houseman gave Mankiewicz "total" credit for "the creation of Citizen Kane's script" and credited Welles with "the visual presentation of the picture."[29]:32
Mankiewicz was put under contract by Mercury Productions and was to receive no credit for his work as he was hired as a script doctor. According to his contract with RKO, Welles would be given sole screenplay credit, and had already written a rough script consisting of 300 pages of dialogue with occasional stage directions under the title of John Citizen, USA.[22]
In an interview with Huw Weldon on March 13, 1960, Orson Welles said: "Mr. Hearst was quite a bit like Kane, although Kane isn't really founded on Hearst in particular, many people sat for it so to speak".[33]
Authorship
Welles visiting Mankiewicz (center) in the California desert while in the process of writing Citizen Kane. John Houseman (right) is holding a copy of the screenplay.
One of the long standing debates of Citizen Kane has been the proper accreditation of the authorship of the screenplay, which the credits attribute to both Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles. Mankiewicz biographer Richard Meryman notes that the dispute had various causes, including the way the film was promoted. For instance, when RKO opened the film in New York City on May 1, 1941, followed by showings at theaters in other large cities, the publicity programs that were printed included photographs of Welles as "... the one-man band, directing, acting, and writing." In a letter to his father afterward, Mankiewicz wrote, "I'm particularly furious at the incredibly insolent description of how Orson wrote his masterpiece. The fact is that there isn't one single line in the picture that wasn't in writing – writing from and by me – before ever a camera turned."[27]:270
Film historian Otto Friedrich wrote, "... it made [Mankiewicz] unhappy to hear Welles quoted in Louella Parsons's column, before the question of screen credits was officially settled, as saying, 'So I wrote Citizen Kane. ... Welles later claimed that he planned on a joint credit all along, but Mankiewicz claimed that Welles offered him a bonus of ten thousand dollars if he would let Welles take full credit."[34]:91–92
Controversy over the authorship of the Citizen Kane screenplay was revived in 1971 by film critic Pauline Kael, whose essay, "Raising Kane," was printed in two installments in The New Yorker (February 20 and 27, 1971), and subsequently collected in The Citizen Kane Book (1971). According to Kael, Rita Alexander, Mankiewicz's personal secretary, stated that she "... took the dictation from Mankiewicz from the first paragraph to the last ... and later did the final rewriting and the cuts, and handled the script at the studio until after the film was shot. ... [and said] Welles didn't write (or dictate) one line of the shooting script of Citizen Kane." She added that "Welles himself came to dinner once or twice ... [and] she didn't meet him until after Mankiewicz had finished dictating the long first draft."[21]:38 However, Welles had his own secretary, Kathryn Trosper, who typed up Welles's suggestions and corrections, which were incorporated into the final script; Kael did not interview Trosper before producing her article.[35]
Nevertheless, Kael maintained that Mankiewicz went to the Writers Guild and declared that he was the original author. According to Kael, "... he had ample proof of his authorship, and when he took his evidence to the Screen Writers Guild ... Welles was forced to split the credit and take second place in the listing."[21]:38 Charles Lederer, a screenwriter and a source for Kael's article, insisted that the credit never came to the Screen Writers Guild for arbitration.[36]
Kael argued that Mankiewicz was the true author of the screenplay and therefore responsible for much of what made the film great. This angered many critics of the day, most notably critic-turned-filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, a close friend of Welles who rebutted Kael's claims in an October 1972 article for Esquire titled "The Kane Mutiny." Other rebuttals included articles by Joseph McBride (Film Heritage, Fall 1971) and Jonathan Rosenbaum (Film Comment, Spring 1972 and Summer 1972), interviews with George Coulouris and Bernard Herrmann that appeared in Sight & Sound (Spring 1972), and remarks in Welles biographies by Barbara Leaming and Frank Brady. Rosenbaum also reviewed the controversy in his editor's notes to This is Orson Welles (1992).[11]:494–501
"I happen to disagree with the premise of the whole book, because she tries to pretend that Welles is nothing and that a mediocre writer by the name of Mankiewicz was a hidden Voltaire," Bernard Herrmann said during a question-and-answer session following an October 1973 lecture at the George Eastman House Museum in Rochester, New York. "I'm not saying that Mankiewicz made no contribution. The titles clearly credit him. Orson says that he did make a valuable contribution. But really, without Orson, all of Mankiewicz's other pictures were nothing, before and after. With Orson, however, something happened to this wonderful man, but he could not have created Citizen Kane."[37]
Robert L. Carringer likewise rebutted Kael's conclusions in an article titled "The Scripts of Citizen Kane" for the Winter 1978 edition of Critical Enquiry. Carringer refers to early script drafts with Welles's incorporated handwritten contributions, and mentions the issues raised by Kael rested on the evidence of an early draft which was mostly written by Mankiewicz. However Carringer points out that subsequent drafts clarified Welles's contribution to the script:
Fortunately enough evidence to settle the matter has survived. A virtually complete set of script records for Citizen Kane has been preserved in the archives of RKO General Pictures in Hollywood, and these provide almost a day-to-day record of the history of the scripting ... The full evidence reveals that Welles's contribution to the Citizen Kane script was not only substantial but definitive.[38]:80
Carringer notes that Mankiewicz' principal contribution was on the first two drafts of the screenplay, which he characterizes as being more like "rough gatherings" than actual drafts. Houseman accompanied Mankiewicz so as to ensure that the latter's drinking problem did not affect the screenplay. The early drafts established "... the plot logic and laid down the overall story contours, established the main characters, and provided numerous scenes and lines that would eventually appear in one form or another in the film."[38]:115 However he also noted that Kane in the early draft remained a caricature of Hearst rather than the fully developed character of the final film. The main quality missing in the early drafts but present in the final film is "... the stylistic wit and fluidity that is the most engaging trait of the film itself."[38]:116
According to film critic David Thomson, "No one can now deny Herman Mankiewicz credit for the germ, shape, and pointed language of the screenplay, but no one who has seen the film as often as it deserves to be seen would dream that Welles is not its only begetter."[39] Carringer considered that at least three scenes were solely Welles's work and, after weighing both sides of the argument, including sworn testimony from Mercury assistant Richard Baer, concluded, "We will probably never know for sure, but in any case Welles had at last found a subject with the right combination of monumentality, timeliness, and audacity."[19]:11 Harlan Lebo agrees, and adds, "... of far greater relevance is reaffirming the importance of the efforts that both men contributed to the creation of Hollywood's greatest motion picture."[29]:32
Carringer notes that Citizen Kane was unusual in relation to his later films in that it was original material rather than adaptations of existing sources. He cites that Mankiewicz's main contribution was providing him with "... what any good first writer ought to be able to provide in such a case: a solid, durable story structure on which to build."[38]:117
For his part, Welles stated the process of collaborating with Mankiewicz on the Citizen Kane screenplay in a letter to The Times (London), November 17, 1971:
The initial ideas for this film and its basic structure were the result of direct collaboration between us; after this we separated and there were two screenplays: one written by Mr. Mankiewicz, in Victorville, and the other, in Beverly Hills, by myself. ... The final version of the screenplay ... was drawn from both sources.[11]:500
In his 1982 chronicle of the studio, The RKO Story, scholar Richard B. Jewell concluded the following:
Besides producing, directing and playing the role of Kane, Welles deserved his co-authorship credit (with Herman J. Mankiewicz) on the screenplay. Film critic Pauline Kael argues otherwise in a 50,000 word essay on the subject, but her case against Welles is one-sided and unsupported by the facts.[40]
Sources
Charles Foster Kane
Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane
William Randolph Hearst was born rich. He was the pampered son of an adoring mother. That is the decisive fact about him. Charles Foster Kane was born poor and was raised by a bank.
— Orson Welles[41]
Orson Welles never confirmed a principal source for the character of Charles Foster Kane. John Houseman, who edited and collaborated on the draft of the script written by Herman Mankiewicz, wrote that Kane is a synthesis of different personalities:
For the basic concept of Charles Foster Kane and for the main lines and significant events of his public life, Mankiewicz used as his model the figure of William Randolph Hearst. To this were added incidents and details invented or derived from other sources.[30]:444
Houseman set out the obvious parallels, "... to which were grafted anecdotes from other giants of journalism, including Pulitzer, Northcliffe and Mank's first boss, Herbert Bayard Swope."[30]:444
The film is commonly regarded as a fictionalized, unrelentingly hostile parody of William Randolph Hearst, in spite of Welles's statement that "Citizen Kane is the story of a wholly fictitious character."[21]:42 According to film historian Don Kilbourne, "... much of the information for Citizen Kane came from already-published material about Hearst ... [and] some of Kane's speeches are almost verbatim copies of Hearst's. When Welles denied that the film was about the still-influential publisher, he did not convince many people."[32]:222
Hearst biographer David Nasaw finds the film's depiction of Hearst unfair:
Welles' Kane is a cartoon-like caricature of a man who is hollowed out on the inside, forlorn, defeated, solitary because he cannot command the total obedience, loyalty, devotion, and love of those around him. Hearst, to the contrary, never regarded himself as a failure, never recognized defeat, never stopped loving Marion [Davies] or his wife. He did not, at the end of his life, run away from the world to entomb himself in a vast, gloomy art-choked hermitage. Orson Welles may have been a great filmmaker, but he was neither a biographer nor a historian.[42]:574
Arguing for the release of Citizen Kane before the RKO board, Welles pointed out the irony that it was Hearst himself who had brought so much attention to the film being about him, and that it was his own columnist, Louella Parsons, who was doing the most to publicize Kane's identification with Hearst. Public denials aside, Welles held the view that Hearst was a public figure and that the facts of a public figure's life were available for writers to reshape and restructure into works of fiction. Welles's legal advisor, Arnold Weissberger, put the issue in the form of a rhetorical question: "Will a man be allowed in effect to copyright the story of his life?"[43]:210–211
In an interview in the 1992 book This is Orson Welles, Welles said that he had excised one scene from Mankiewicz's first draft that had certainly been based on Hearst. "In the original script we had a scene based on a notorious thing Hearst had done, which I still cannot repeat for publication. And I cut it out because I thought it hurt the film and wasn't in keeping with Kane's character. If I'd kept it in, I would have had no trouble with Hearst. He wouldn't have dared admit it was him.[11]:85
Pauline Kael wrote that a vestige of this abandoned subplot survives in a remark made by Susan Alexander to the reporter interviewing her: "Look, if you're smart, you'll get in touch with Raymond. He's the butler. You'll learn a lot from him. He knows where all the bodies are buried." Kael observed, "It's an odd, cryptic speech. In the first draft, Raymond literally knew where the bodies were buried: Mankiewicz had dished up a nasty version of the scandal sometimes referred to as the Strange Death of Thomas Ince."[21] Referring to the suspicious 1924 death of the American film mogul after being a guest on Hearst's yacht, and noting that Kael's principal source was John Houseman, film scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote that "it seems safe to conclude, even without her prodding, that some version of the story must have cropped up in Mankiewicz's first draft of the script, which Welles subsequently edited and added to."[44]
One particular aspect of the character, Kane's profligate collecting of possessions, was directly taken from Hearst. "And it's very curious – a man who spends his entire life paying cash for objects he never looked at," Welles said. "He just acquired things, most of which were never opened, remained in boxes. It's really a quite accurate picture of Hearst to that extent."[11]:50 But Welles himself insisted that there were marked differences between his fictional creation and Hearst. He acknowledged that aspects of Kane were drawn from the lives of two business tycoons familiar from Welles's youth in Chicago — Samuel Insull and Harold Fowler McCormick.[8]
A financier closely associated with Thomas Edison, Samuel Insull (1859–1938) was a man of humble origins who became the most powerful figure in the utilities field.[45] He was married to a Broadway ingenue nearly 20 years his junior, and built the Chicago Civic Opera House. In 1925, after a 26-year absence, Gladys Wallis Insull returned to the stage in a charity revival of The School for Scandal that ran two weeks in Chicago.[46] When the performance was repeated on Broadway in October 1925, Herman Mankiewicz — then the third-string theatre critic for The New York Times — was assigned to review the production. In an incident that became infamous, Mankiewicz returned to the press room drunk and wrote only the first sentence of a negative review before passing out on his typewriter. Mankiewicz resurrected the experience in writing the screenplay for Citizen Kane, incorporating it into the narrative of Jedediah Leland.[27]:77–78
In 1926 Insull took a six-year lease on Chicago's Studebaker Theatre and financed a repertory company in which his wife starred. Gladys Insull's nerves broke when her company failed to find success, and the lease expired at the same time Insull's $3 billion financial empire collapsed in the Depression.[47][48] Like that of Charles Foster Kane, the life of Samuel Insull ended in bankruptcy and disgrace.
Like Kane, Harold McCormick was divorced by his aristocratic first wife, Edith Rockefeller, and lavishly promoted the opera career of his only modestly talented second wife, Ganna Walska.[11]:497
According to composer David Raksin, Bernard Herrmann used to say that much of Kane's story was based on McCormick, but that there was also a good deal of Orson Welles himself in the flamboyant character.[9] Welles lost his mother when he was nine years old and his father when he was 15. After this, he became the ward of Chicago's Dr. Maurice Bernstein. Bernstein is the last name of the only major character in Citizen Kane who receives a generally positive portrayal. Although Dr. Bernstein was nothing like the character in the film, Welles said, the use of the name "Bernstein" was a family joke. "I used to call people 'Bernstein' on the radio, all the time, too – just to make him laugh. ... Mank did all the best writing for Bernstein. I'd call that the most valuable thing he gave us."[11]:65–66
Welles cited financier Basil Zaharoff as another inspiration for Kane. "I got the idea for the hidden-camera sequence in the Kane 'news digest' from a scene I did on March of Time in which Zaharoff, this great munitions-maker, was being moved around in his rose garden, just talking about the roses, in the last days before he died," Welles said.[11]:75 Robert L. Carringer reviewed the December 3, 1936, script of the radio obituary in which Welles played Zaharoff, and found other similarities. In the opening scene, Zaharoff's secretaries are burning masses of secret papers in the enormous fireplace of his castle. A succession of witnesses testify about the tycoon's ruthless practices. "Finally, Zaharoff himself appears — an old man nearing death, alone except for his servants in the gigantic palace in Monte Carlo that he had acquired for his longtime mistress. His dying wish is to be wheeled out 'in the sun by that rosebush.'"[19]:18
Jedediah Leland
In Hollywood in 1940, Orson Welles invited longtime friend and Mercury Theatre colleague Joseph Cotten to join a small group reading the script aloud for the first time. They got together around the pool at the Beverly Hills home of Herman Mankiewicz, Cotten wrote:
"I think I'll just listen," Welles said. "The title of this movie is Citizen Kane, and I play guess who." He turned to me. "Why don't you think of yourself as Jedediah Leland? His name, by the way, is a combination of Jed Harris and your agent, Leland Hayward." "There all resemblance ceases," Herman reassured me. These afternoon garden readings continued, and as the Mercury actors began arriving, the story started to breathe.[49]
"I regard Leland with enormous affection," Orson Welles told filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich.[11]:84 He explained to Bogdanovich that the character of Jed Leland was based on drama critic Ashton Stevens, George Stevens's uncle and a close boyhood friend of Welles:
What I knew about Hearst came more from him than from my father – though my father did know him well ... But Ashton had taught Hearst to play the banjo, which is how he first got to be a drama critic, and, you know, Ashton was really one of the great ones. The last of the dandies – he worked for Hearst for some 50 years or so, and adored him. A gentleman ... very much like Jed.[11]:66
Regarded as the dean of American drama critics, Ashton Stevens (1872–1951) began his journalism career in 1894 in San Francisco and started working for the Hearst newspapers three years later. In 1910 he moved to Chicago, where he covered the theatre for 40 years and became a close friend of Orson Welles's guardian, Dr. Maurice Bernstein.[50]
Screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz incorporated an incident from his own early career as a theatre critic for The New York Times into the narrative of Jed Leland. Mankiewicz was assigned to review the October 1925 opening of The School for Scandal[51] — a production that marked the return of Gladys Wallis to the Broadway stage. A famous ingenue of the 1890s, Wallis had retired upon her marriage to Chicago utilities magnate Samuel Insull but now, 26 years later, used her husband's fortune to form her own repertory company. After her opening-night performance in the role of Lady Teazle, drama critic Mankiewicz returned to the press room "... full of fury and too many drinks ...," wrote biographer Richard Meryman:
He was outraged by the spectacle of a 56-year-old millionairess playing a gleeful 18-year-old, the whole production bought for her like a trinket by a man Herman knew to be an unscrupulous manipulator. Herman began to write: "Miss Gladys Wallis, an aging, hopelessly incompetent amateur, opened last night in ..." Then Herman passed out, slumped over the top of his typewriter.[27]:77–78
The unconscious Mankiewicz was discovered by his boss, George S. Kaufman, who composed a terse announcement that the Times review would appear the following day.[52]
Mankiewicz resurrected the incident for Citizen Kane. After Kane's second wife makes her opera debut, critic Jed Leland returns to the press room drunk. He passes out over the top of his typewriter after writing the first sentence of his review: "Miss Susan Alexander, a pretty but hopelessly incompetent amateur ..."
Susan Alexander
It was a real man who built an opera house for the soprano of his choice, and much in the movie was borrowed from that story, but the man was not Hearst. Susan, Kane's second wife, is not even based on the real-life soprano. Like most fictional characters, Susan's resemblance to other fictional characters is quite startling. To Marion Davies she bears no resemblance at all.
— Orson Welles[41]
The common assumption that the character of Susan Alexander was based on Marion Davies was a major reason William Randolph Hearst tried to destroy Citizen Kane.[53] In his foreword to Davies's autobiography, published posthumously in 1975, Orson Welles draws a sharp distinction between the real-life actress and his fictional creation:
That Susan was Kane's wife and Marion was Hearst's mistress is a difference more important than might be guessed in today's changed climate of opinion. The wife was a puppet and a prisoner; the mistress was never less than a princess. Hearst built more than one castle, and Marion was the hostess in all of them: they were pleasure domes indeed, and the Beautiful People of the day fought for invitations. Xanadu was a lonely fortress, and Susan was quite right to escape from it. The mistress was never one of Hearst's possessions: he was always her suitor, and she was the precious treasure of his heart for more than 30 years, until his last breath of life. Theirs is truly a love story. Love is not the subject of Citizen Kane.[41]
Welles cited Samuel Insull's building of the Chicago Opera House, and business tycoon Harold Fowler McCormick's lavish promotion of the opera career of his second wife, as direct influences on the screenplay.[54] McCormick divorced Edith Rockefeller and married aspiring opera singer Ganna Walska as her fourth husband. He spent thousands of dollars on voice lessons for her and even arranged for Walska to take the lead in a production of Zaza at the Chicago Opera in 1920. Contemporaries said Walska had a terrible voice; The New York Times headlines of the day read, "Ganna Walska Fails as Butterfly: Voice Deserts Her Again When She Essays Role of Puccini's Heroine" (January 29, 1925), and "Mme. Walska Clings to Ambition to Sing" (July 14, 1927).
"According to her 1943 memoirs, Always Room at the Top, Walska had tried every sort of fashionable mumbo jumbo to conquer her nerves and salvage her voice," reported The New York Times in 1996. "Nothing worked. During a performance of Giordano's Fedora in Havana she veered so persistently off key that the audience pelted her with rotten vegetables. It was an event that Orson Welles remembered when he began concocting the character of the newspaper publisher's second wife for Citizen Kane."[55]
Charles Lederer, Marion Davies's nephew, read a draft of the script before filming began on Citizen Kane. "The script I read didn't have any flavor of Marion and Hearst," Lederer said. "Robert McCormick was the man it was about."[56] (Lederer confuses Walska's husband Harold F. McCormick with another member of the powerful Chicago family, one who may also have inspired Welles – crusading publisher Robert R. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune.) Although there were things based on Marion Davies – jigsaw puzzles and drinking – Lederer noted that they were exaggerated in the film to help define the characterization of Susan Alexander.[11]:497–498
"As for Marion," Orson Welles said, "she was an extraordinary woman – nothing like the character Dorothy Comingore played in the movie."[11]:49
Film tycoon Jules Brulatour's second and third wives, Dorothy Gibson and Hope Hampton, both fleeting stars of the silent screen who later had marginal careers in opera, are also believed to have provided inspiration for the Susan Alexander character. [57] The interview with Susan Alexander Kane in the Atlantic City nightclub was based on a contemporary interview with Evelyn Nesbit Thaw in the run-down club where she was performing.[30]:452–453
Jim Gettys
The character of political boss Jim Gettys (Ray Collins) is based on Charles F. Murphy, a leader in New York City's infamous Tammany Hall political machine.[21]:61 William Randolph Hearst and Murphy were political allies in 1902, when Hearst was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but the two fell out in 1905 when Hearst ran for mayor of New York. Hearst turned his muckraking newspapers on Tammany Hall in the person of Murphy, who was called "... the most hungry, selfish and extortionate boss Tammany has ever known." Murphy ordered that under no condition was Hearst to be elected. Hearst ballots were dumped into the East River, and new ballots were printed favoring his opponent. Hearst was defeated by some 3,000 votes and his newspapers bellowed against the election fraud. A historic cartoon of Murphy in convict stripes appeared November 10, 1905, three days after the vote.[58] The caption read, "Look out, Murphy! It's a Short Lockstep from Delmonico's to Sing Sing ... Every honest voter in New York wants to see you in this costume."[59]
In Citizen Kane, Boss Jim Gettys (named Edward Rogers in the shooting script) admonishes Kane for printing a cartoon showing him in prison stripes:
If I owned a newspaper and if I didn't like the way somebody else was doing things – some politician, say – I'd fight them with everything I had. Only I wouldn't show him in a convict suit with stripes — so his children could see the picture in the paper. Or his mother.
As he pursues Gettys down the stairs, Kane threatens to send him to Sing Sing.[60]
As an inside joke, Welles named Gettys after the father-in-law of Roger Hill, his headmaster at the Todd School and a lifelong friend.[11]:63
"Rosebud"
In This is Orson Welles, Welles credits the "Rosebud" device – the journalist's search for the enigmatic meaning of Kane's last word, the device that frames the film – to screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. "Rosebud remained, because it was the only way we could find to get off, as they used to say in vaudeville," Welles said. "It manages to work, but I'm still not too keen about it, and I don't think that he was, either." The dialogue eventually reflects the screenwriters' desire to diminish the importance of the word's meaning; "We did everything we could to take the mickey out of it," Welles said.[11]:53
As he began his first draft of the Citizen Kane screenplay in early 1940, Mankiewicz mentioned "Rosebud" to his secretary. When she asked, "Who is rosebud?" he replied, "It isn't a who, it's an it." The symbol of Mankiewicz's own damaged childhood was a treasured bicycle, stolen while he visited the public library and, in punishment, never replaced.[61] "He mourned that all his life," wrote Pauline Kael, who believed Mankiewicz put the emotion of that boyhood loss into the loss that haunted Kane.[21]:60
In his 2002 book Hearst Over Hollywood, Louis Pizzitola reports one historian's statement that "Rosebud" was a nickname given to William Randolph Hearst's mother by portrait and landscape painter Orrin Peck. The Peck family were intimates of the Hearsts, and Orrin Peck was said to be nearer to Phoebe Apperson Hearst than her own son.[62][63] Another theory of the origin of "Rosebud" is the similarity with the dying wish of Basil Zaharoff (who is one of the inspirations for the central character), to be wheeled "by the rosebush".[64]
In 1989 author Gore Vidal stated that "Rosebud" was a nickname which Hearst had used for the clitoris of his mistress, Marion Davies. Vidal said that Davies had told this intimate detail to his close nephew, Charles Lederer, who had mentioned it to him years later.[65][66] The claim was repeated in the 1996 documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane and again in the 1999 dramatic film RKO 281. Film critic Roger Ebert said, "Some people have fallen in love with the story that Herman Mankiewicz, the co-author with Welles of the screenplay, happened to know that 'Rosebud' was William Randolph Hearst's pet name for an intimate part of Marion Davies' anatomy."[67][68]
Welles biographer Frank Brady traces the story to the popular press in the late 1970s:
How Orson (or Mankiewicz) could have ever discovered this most private utterance is unexplained and why it took over 35 years for such a suggestive rationale to emerge, although the origins of everything to do with Citizen Kane had continually been placed under literary and cinematic microscopes for decades, is also unknown. If this highly unlikely story is even partially true ... Hearst may have become upset at the implied connotation, although any such connection seems to have been innocent on Welles's part. In any event, this bizarre explanation for the origin of one of the most famous words ever spoken on the screen has now made its way into serious studies of Welles and Citizen Kane.[69]
British film critic Philip French asked Welles's associate John Houseman, who worked on the Citizen Kane script with Mankiewicz, whether there was any truth to the story:
"Absolutely none," he said, pointing out that it was inconceivable that he would not have heard of something so provocative at the time, or that Welles could have kept such a secret for over 40 years.[70]
In 1991, Edward Castle, a reporter for The Las Vegas Sun, contended that Welles may have borrowed the name of Native American folklorist, educator and author Rosebud Yellow Robe for "Rosebud". Castle claimed to have found both of their signatures on the same sign-in sheets at CBS Radio studios in New York, where they both worked on different shows in the late 1930s.[71] The word "Rosebud" appears, however, in the first draft script written by Herman Mankiewicz, not Welles.[72]:82
"Rosebud is the emblem of the security, hope and innocence of childhood, which a man can spend his life seeking to regain," summarized Roger Ebert. "It is the green light at the end of Gatsby's pier; the leopard atop Kilimanjaro, seeking nobody knows what; the bone tossed into the air in 2001."[73]
Filmmaking innovations
Orson Welles said that his preparation before making Citizen Kane was to watch John Ford's Stagecoach 40 times.[74]
A lot of people ought to study Stagecoach. I wanted to learn how to make movies, and that's such a classically perfect one — don't you think so? ... As it turned out, the first day I ever walked onto a set was my first day as a director. I'd learned whatever I knew in the projection room — from Ford. After dinner every night for about a month, I'd run Stagecoach, often with some different technician or department head from the studio, and ask questions. "How was this done?" "Why was this done?" It was like going to school.[11]:28–29
Cinematography
A deep focus shot: everything, including the hat in the foreground and the boy (young Kane) in the distance, is in sharp focus.
Film scholars and historians view Citizen Kane as Welles's attempt to create a new style of filmmaking by studying various forms of film making, and combining them all into one. However, in an interview in March 1960 with the BBC's Huw Wheldon, Welles stated that his love for cinema began only when he started the work on Citizen Kane, and when asked where he got the confidence as a first-time director to direct a film so radically different from contemporary cinema, he responded, "[From] ignorance ... sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful."[75][76]
The most innovative technical aspect of Citizen Kane is the extended use of deep focus.[77] In nearly every scene in the film, the foreground, background and everything in between are all in sharp focus. This was done by cinematographer Gregg Toland through his experimentation with lenses and lighting. Toland described the achievement, made possible by the sensitivity of modern speed film, in an article for Theatre Arts magazine:
New developments in the science of motion picture photography are not abundant at this advanced stage of the game but periodically one is perfected to make this a greater art. Of these I am in an excellent position to discuss what is termed “Pan-focus”, as I have been active for two years in its development and used it for the first time in Citizen Kane. Through its use, it is possible to photograph action from a range of eighteen inches from the camera lens to over two hundred feet away, with extreme foreground and background figures and action both recorded in sharp relief. Hitherto, the camera had to be focused either for a close or a distant shot, all efforts to encompass both at the same time resulting in one or the other being out of focus. This handicap necessitated the breaking up of a scene into long and short angles, with much consequent loss of realism. With pan-focus, the camera, like the human eye, sees an entire panorama at once, with everything clear and lifelike.[78]
Any time deep focus was impossible – for example in the scene when Kane finishes a bad review of Alexander's opera while at the same time firing the person who started the review – an optical printer was used to make the whole screen appear in focus (visually layering one piece of film onto another). However, some apparently deep-focus shots were the result of in-camera effects, as in the famous scene where Kane breaks into Susan Alexander's room after her suicide attempt. In the background, Kane and another man break into the room, while simultaneously the medicine bottle and a glass with a spoon in it are in closeup in the foreground. The shot was an in-camera matte shot. The foreground was shot first, with the background dark. Then the background was lit, the foreground darkened, the film rewound, and the scene re-shot with the background action.
Another unorthodox method used in the film was the way low-angle shots were used to display a point of view facing upwards, thus allowing ceilings to be shown in the background of several scenes.[79] Since films 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 the stages had none. In some instances, Welles's crew used muslin draped above the set to produce the illusion of a regular room with a ceiling. The boom microphones were hidden above the cloth, or in a trench dug into the floor, as in the scene where Kane meets Leland after his election loss.[80]
Toland had approached Welles in 1940 to work on Citizen Kane. Welles's reputation for experimentation in the theatre appealed to Toland and he found a sympathetic partner to "... test and prove several ideas generally being accepted as radical in Hollywood".[4] Welles credited Toland on the same card as himself. "It's impossible to say how much I owe to Gregg. He was superb," Welles said.[81]
Storytelling techniques
Citizen Kane eschews the traditional linear, chronological narrative, and tells Kane's story entirely in flashback using different points of view, many of them from Kane's aged and forgetful associates, the cinematic equivalent of the unreliable narrator in literature.[82] Welles also dispenses with the idea of a single storyteller and uses multiple narrators to recount Kane's life. The use of multiple narrators was unheard of in Hollywood films.[82] Each narrator recounts a different part of Kane's life, with each story partly overlapping.[83] The film depicts Kane as an enigma, a complicated man who, in the end, leaves viewers with more questions than answers as to his character, such as the newsreel footage where he is attacked for being both a communist and a fascist.[82] The technique of using flashbacks had been used in earlier films such as Wuthering Heights in 1939 and The Power and the Glory in 1933, but no film was as immersed in this technique as Citizen Kane. The use of the reporter Thompson acts as a surrogate for the audience, questioning Kane's associates and piecing together his life.[83]
One of the narrative voices is the News on the March segment.[82] Its stilted dialogue and portentous voiceover is a parody of The March of Time newsreel series[84] which itself references an earlier newsreel which showed the 85-year-old arms czar Sir Basil Zaharoff getting wheeled to his train. Welles had earlier provided voiceovers for the March of Time radio show. Citizen Kane makes extensive use of stock footage to create the newsreel.
One of the story-telling techniques used in Citizen Kane was the use of montage to collapse time and space, using an episodic sequence on the same set while the characters changed costume and make-up between cuts so that the scene following each cut would look as if it took place in the same location, but at a time long after the previous cut. In the breakfast montage, Welles chronicles the breakdown of Kane's first marriage in five vignettes that condense 16 years of story time into two minutes of screen time.[85] Welles said that the idea for the breakfast scene "... was stolen from The Long Christmas Dinner of Thornton Wilder ... a one-act play, which is a long Christmas dinner that takes you through something like 60 years of a family's life."[11]:51
Special effects
Welles also pioneered several visual effects in order to cheaply shoot things like crowd scenes and large interior spaces. For example, the scene where the camera in the opera house rises dramatically to the rafters to show the workmen showing a lack of appreciation for Susan Alexander Kane's performance, was shot by a camera craning upwards over the performance scene, then a curtain wipe to a miniature of the upper regions of the house, and then another curtain wipe matching it again with the scene of the workmen. Other scenes effectively employed miniatures to make the film look much more expensive than it truly was, such as various shots of Xanadu. A loud, full-screen closeup of a typewriter typing a single word (weak), magnifies the review for the Chicago Inquirer.[86]
Makeup
The make-up artist Maurice Seiderman created the make-up for the film.[18] RKO wanted the young Kane to look handsome and dashing, and Seiderman transformed the overweight Welles, beginning with his nose, which Welles always disliked. For the old Kane, Seiderman created a red plastic compound which he applied to Welles, allowing the wrinkles to move naturally.[18] Kane's mustache was made of several hair tufts. Transforming Welles into the old Kane required six to seven hours, meaning he had to start at two in the morning to begin filming at nine. He would hold conferences while sitting in the make-up chair; sometimes working 16 hours a day. Even breaking a leg during filming could not stop him from directing around the clock, and he quickly returned to acting, using a steel leg brace.[18]
Soundtrack
"Before Kane, nobody in Hollywood knew how to set music properly in movies," wrote filmmaker François Truffaut in a 1967 essay. "Kane was the first, in fact the only, great film that uses radio techniques."
Behind each scene, there is a resonance which gives it its color: the rain on the windows of the cabaret, "El Rancho," when the investigator goes to visit the down-and-out female singer who can only "work" Atlantic City; the echoes in the marble-lined Thatcher library; the overlapping voices whenever there are several characters. A lot of filmmakers know enough to follow Auguste Renoir's advice to fill the eyes with images at all costs, but only Orson Welles understood that the sound track had to be filled in the same way.[87]
In addition to expanding on the potential of sound as a creator of moods and emotions, Welles pioneered a new aural technique, known as the "lightning-mix". Welles used this technique to link complex montage sequences via a series of related sounds or phrases. In offering a continuous sound track, Welles was able to join what would otherwise be extremely rough cuts together into a smooth narrative. For example, the audience witnesses Kane grow from a child into a young man in just two shots. As Kane's guardian hands him his sled, Kane begrudgingly wishes him a "Merry Christmas". Suddenly we are taken to a shot of his guardian fifteen years later, only to have the phrase completed for us: "and a Happy New Year". In this case, the continuity of the soundtrack, not the image, is what makes for a seamless narrative structure.[88]
Welles also carried over techniques from radio not yet popular in films (though they would become staples). Using a number of voices, each saying a sentence or sometimes merely a fragment of a sentence, and splicing the dialogue together in quick succession, the result gave the impression of a whole town talking – and, equally important, what the town was talking about. Welles also favored the overlapping of dialogue, considering it more realistic than the stage and film tradition of characters not stepping on each other's sentences. He also pioneered the technique of putting the audio ahead of the visual in scene transitions (a J-cut); as a scene would come to a close, the audio would transition to the next scene before the visuals did.
Music
In common with using personnel he had previously worked with in the Mercury Theatre, Welles recruited his close friend Bernard Herrmann to score Citizen Kane.[89] Herrmann was a longtime collaborator with Welles, providing music for almost all his radio broadcasts, including The Fall of the City (1937) and the War of the Worlds (1938) broadcast.[90] The film was Herrmann's first motion picture score,[89] and would be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score, but would lose out to his own score for the film All That Money Can Buy.[89]
Herrmann's score for Citizen Kane was a watershed in film soundtrack composition and proved as influential as any of the film's other innovations, establishing him as an important voice in film soundtrack composition.[9][90] The score eschewed the typical Hollywood practice of scoring a film with virtually non-stop music. Instead Herrmann used what he later described as '"radio scoring", musical cues which typically lasted between five and fifteen seconds to bridge the action or suggest a different emotional response. One of the most effective musical cues was the "Breakfast Montage." The scene begins with a graceful waltz theme and gets darker with each variation on that theme as the passage of time leads to the hardening of Kane's personality and the breakup of his marriage to Emily.[91]
Herrmann realized that musicians slated to play his music were hired for individual unique sessions; there was no need to write for existing ensembles. This meant that he was free to score for unusual combinations of instruments, even instruments that are not commonly heard. In the opening sequence, for example, the tour of Kane's estate Xanadu, Herrmann introduces a recurring leitmotiv played by low woodwinds, including a quartet of alto flutes.[92] Much of the music used in the newsreel was taken from other sources; examples include the News on the March music which was taken from RKO's music library, Belgian March by Anthony Collins, and accompanies the newsreel titles; and an excerpt from Alfred Newman's score for Gunga Din which is used as the background for the exploration of Xanadu.[90] In the final sequence of the film, which shows the destruction of Rosebud in the fireplace of Kane's castle, Welles choreographed the scene while he had Herrmann's cue playing on the set.[93]
For the operatic sequence which exposed Kane's protege Susan Alexander for the amateur she was, Herrmann composed a quasi-romantic scene, Aria from Salammbô.[9] There did exist two treatments of this 1862 novel by Gustave Flaubert: an opera by Ernest Reyer and an incomplete treatment by Modeste Mussorgsky. However, Herrmann made no reference to existing music. Herrmann put the aria in a key that would force the singer to strain to reach the high notes, culminating in a high D, well outside the range of Susan Alexander.[9][90] Herrmann said he wanted to convey the impression of "... a terrified girl floundering in the quicksand of a powerful orchestra".[9] On the soundtrack it was soprano Jean Forward who actually sang the vocal part for actress Dorothy Comingore.[9]
In 1972 Herrmann said "I was fortunate to start my career with a film like Citizen Kane, it's been a downhill run ever since!"[90] Shortly before his death in 1985, Welles told director Henry Jaglom that the score was fifty percent responsible for the film's artistic success.[90]
Herrmann was vocal in his criticism of Pauline Kael's claim that it was Mankiewicz, not Welles, who made the main thrust of the film, and also her assertions about the use of music in the film without consulting him:
Pauline Kael has written in The Citizen Kane Book (1971), that the production wanted to use Massenet's "Thais" but could not afford the fee. But Miss Kael never wrote or approached me to ask about the music. We could easily have afforded the fee. The point is that its lovely little strings would not have served the emotional purpose of the film.[94]
Opera lovers are frequently amused by the parody of vocal coaching that appears in a singing lesson given to Susan Alexander by Signor Matiste. The character attempts to sing the famous cavatina "Una voce poco fa" from Il barbiere di Siviglia by Gioachino Rossini, but the lesson is interrupted when Alexander sings a high note flat.
At the beginning of Thompson's second interview of Susan Kane at her nightclub, the tune heard in the background is "In a Mizz", a 1939 jazz song by Charlie Barnet and Haven Johnson.[19]:108 "I kind of based the whole scene around that song," Orson Welles said. "The music is by Nat Cole — it's his trio."[11]:56 Later — beginning with the lyrics, "It can't be love" — "In a Mizz" is performed at the Everglades picnic, framing the fight in the tent between Susan and Kane.[19]:108 Musicians including bandleader Cee Pee Johnson (drums), Alton Redd (vocals), Raymond Tate (trumpet), Buddy Collette (alto sax) and Buddy Banks (tenor sax) are featured.[95]
Reception
Pre-release controversy
Welles ran a closed set, limited access to dailies, and managed the publicity of Kane, to ensure that its influence from Hearst's life was a secret.[19]:111 Publicity materials stated the film's inspiration was Faust.[20] RKO hoped to release the film in mid-February 1941. Writers for national magazines had early deadlines and so a rough cut was previewed for a select few on January 3, 1941. Friday magazine ran an article drawing point-by-point comparisons between Kane and Hearst and documented how Welles had led on Louella Parsons, Hollywood correspondent for Hearst papers, and made a fool of her in public. Reportedly, she was furious and demanded an immediate preview of the film. James G. Stewart, who was present at the screening, said that she walked out of the film. Soon after, Parsons called George Schaefer and threatened RKO with a lawsuit if they released Kane.[19]:111 The next day, the front page headline in Daily Variety read, "HEARST BANS RKO FROM PAPERS."[96] In two weeks, the ban was lifted for everything except Kane.[19]:111
The Hollywood Reporter ran a front-page story on January 13 that Hearst papers were about to run a series of editorials attacking Hollywood's practice of hiring refugees and immigrants for jobs that could be done by Americans. The goal was to put pressure on the other studios in order to force RKO to shelve Kane.[19]:111 Soon afterwards, Schaefer was approached by Nicholas Schenck, head of MGM's parent company, with an offer on the behalf of Louis B. Mayer and other Hollywood executives to reimburse RKO if it would destroy the film.[19]:111–112 Once RKO's legal team reassured Schaefer, the studio announced on January 21 that Kane would be released as scheduled, and with one of the largest promotional campaigns in the studio's history. Schaefer brought Welles to New York City for a private screening of the film with the New York corporate heads of the studios and their lawyers.[19]:112 There was no objection to its release provided that certain changes, including the removal or softening of specific references that might offend Hearst, were made.[19]:112–113 Welles agreed, and editor Robert Wise (who became a celebrated film director in the 1950s and 60s) was brought in to cut the running time from two hours, two minutes, and 40 seconds to one hour, 59 minutes, and 16 seconds. That cut satisfied the corporate lawyers.[19]:113
Hearst's response
Hearing about the film enraged Hearst so much that he banned any advertising, reviewing, or mentioning of it in his papers, and had his journalists libel Welles. Following lobbying from Hearst, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Louis B. Mayer, acting on behalf of the whole film industry, made an offer to RKO Pictures of $805,000 to destroy all prints of the film and burn the negative.[97] Welles used Hearst's opposition to Citizen Kane as a pretext for previewing the film in several opinion-making screenings in Los Angeles, lobbying for its artistic worth against the hostile campaign that Hearst was waging.[97]
When George Schaefer of RKO rejected Hearst's offer to suppress the film, Hearst banned every newspaper and station in his media conglomerate from reviewing – or even mentioning – the film. He also had many movie theaters ban it, and many did not show it through fear of being socially exposed by his massive newspaper empire.[98] The documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane lays the blame for Citizen Kane's relative failure squarely at the feet of Hearst. The film did decent business at the box office; it went on to be the sixth highest grossing film in its year of release, a modest success its backers found acceptable. Nevertheless, the film's commercial performance fell short of its creators' expectations. In The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, David Nasaw points out that Hearst's actions were not the only reason Kane failed, however: the innovations Welles made with narrative, as well as the dark message at the heart of the film (that the pursuit of success is ultimately futile) meant that a popular audience could not appreciate its merits.[42]:572–573
In a pair of Arena documentaries about Welles's career produced and broadcast domestically by the BBC in 1982, Welles claimed that during opening week, a policeman approached him one night and told him: "Do not go to your hotel room tonight; Hearst has set up an undressed, underage girl to leap into your arms when you enter and a photographer to take pictures of you. Hearst is planning to publish it in all of his papers." Welles thanked the man and stayed out all night. However, it is not confirmed whether this was true. Welles also described how he accidentally bumped into Hearst in an elevator at the Fairmont Hotel when Kane was opening in San Francisco. Welles's father had been friends with Hearst, so Welles tried to comfortably ask if Hearst would see the film. Hearst ignored him. "As he was getting off at his floor, I said 'Charles Foster Kane would have accepted.' No reply", recalled the director. "And Kane would have you know. That was his style."[20]
Although Hearst tried to suppress the film and limit its success, his efforts backfired in the long run, for now almost every reference to Hearst's life and career includes a reference to the parallels in the film. The irony of Hearst's attempts is that the film is now inexorably connected to him. This connection is reinforced by W. A. Swanberg's extensive biography entitled Citizen Hearst.
Release and contemporary responses
Citizen Kane was to open at RKO's flagship theatre, Radio City Music Hall, but did not; a possible factor was Louella Parsons's threat that The American Weekly would run a defamatory story on the grandfather of major RKO stockholder Nelson Rockefeller.[19]:115 Other exhibitors feared retaliation and refused to handle the film. Schaefer lined up a few theaters but Welles grew impatient and threatened RKO with a lawsuit. Hearst papers refused to accept advertising for the film. Kane opened at the RKO Palace on Broadway in New York on May 1, 1941, in Chicago on May 6, and in Los Angeles on May 8.[19]:115 Kane did well in cities and larger towns but fared poorly in more remote areas. RKO still had problems getting exhibitors to show the film. For example, one chain controlling more than 500 theaters got Welles's film as part of a package but refused to play it, reportedly out of fear of Hearst.[19]:117 The Hearst newspapers's disruption of the film's release damaged its box office performance and, as a result, Citizen Kane lost $160,000 during its initial run.[99]:164[100]
The reviews for the film were overwhelmingly positive, although some reviewers were challenged by Welles's break with Hollywood traditions.[101] Kate Cameron, in her review for the New York Daily-News, said that Kane was "... one of the most interesting and technically superior films that has ever come out of a Hollywood studio".[102] In his review for the New World Telegram, William Boehnel said that the film was "... staggering and belongs at once among the greatest screen achievements".[103] Otis Ferguson, in his review for The New Republic, said that Kane was "... the boldest free-hand stroke in major screen production since Griffith and Bitzer were running wild to unshackle the camera".[104] John O'Hara, in Newsweek, called it "... the best picture he'd ever seen"[97]
The day following the premiere of Citizen Kane, The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote that "... it comes close to being the most sensational film ever made in Hollywood."
Count on Mr. Welles: he doesn't do things by halves. ... Upon the screen he discovered an area large enough for his expansive whims to have free play. And the consequence is that he has made a picture of tremendous and overpowering scope, not in physical extent so much as in its rapid and graphic rotation of thoughts. Mr. Welles has put upon the screen a motion picture that really moves.[105]
Critic James Agate was decidedly negative in an October 1941 review, countering the superlatives given Citizen Kane by critics C. A. Lejeune and Dilys Powell. "Now imagine my horror, which includes self-distrust, at seeing no more in this film than the well-intentioned, muddled, amateurish thing one expects from high-brows. (Mr. Orson Welles's height of brow is enormous.) ... I thought the photography quite good, but nothing to write to Moscow about, the acting middling, and the whole thing a little dull."[106]
Agate continued his review two weeks later:
Citizen Kane has entirely ousted the war as conversation fodder. Waiters ask me what I think of it, and the post is full of it. ... You know now that all the vulgar beef, beer and tobacco barons are vulgar because when they were about seven years of age somebody came and took away their skates. That is one explanation of this alleged world-shaking masterpiece, Citizen Kane. Another point of view is that Citizen Kane is so great a masterpiece that it doesn't need explaining. ... In the meantime I continue to steer a middle course. I regard Citizen Kane as a quite good film which tries to run the psychological essay in harness with your detective thriller, and doesn't quite succeed.[107]
In a 1941 review, Jorge Luis Borges called Citizen Kane a "metaphysical detective story", in that "... [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 ...." Borges noted that "Overwhelmingly, endlessly, Orson Welles shows fragments of the life of the man, Charles Foster Kane, and invites us to combine them and reconstruct him." As well, "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." Borges points out, "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."[108]
Accolades
Citizen Kane, with nine nominations, was the sixteenth film to get more than six Academy Award nominations.[109][110] It was nominated for the following awards:[111]
It was widely thought the film would win most of the awards it was nominated for, but it only won the Best Writing (Original Screenplay) Oscar.[19]:117
Film editor Robert Wise recalled each time Citizen Kane's name was called out as a nominee, the crowd booed.[7] Most of Hollywood did not want the film to see the light of day, considering the threats that William Randolph Hearst had made if it did. According to Variety, bloc voting against Welles by screen extras denied him Best Picture and Actor awards.[112] British film critic Barry Norman attributed this to Hearst's wrath.[18]
Other awards
The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures gave 1941 "Best Acting" awards to Orson Welles and George Coulouris, and the film itself "Best Picture." That same year, The New York Times named it one of the Ten Best Films of the year, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for "Best Picture" also went to Citizen Kane.[113]
Subsequent re-evaluation and recognition
By 1942 Citizen Kane had run its course theatrically and, apart from a few showings at big city arthouse cinemas, it largely vanished from America until 1956. In that period, Kane's and Welles' reputation fell among American critics. In 1949 critic Richard Griffith in his overview of cinema, The Film Till Now, dismissed Kane as "... tinpot if not crackpot Freud."[19]:117–118
Due to World War II, Citizen Kane was little seen in Europe. It was not until 1946 that it was shown in France, where it gained considerable acclaim, particularly from film critics such as André Bazin and from Cahiers du cinéma writers, including future film directors François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. In his 1950 essay "The Evolution of the Language of Cinema", Bazin placed Citizen Kane centre stage as a work which ushered in a new period in cinema.[114]
In the United States, it was neglected and forgotten until its revival on television in the mid-1950s. Three key events in 1956 led to its re-evaluation in the United States: first, RKO was one of the first studios to sell its library to television, and early that year Citizen Kane started to appear on television; second, the film was re-released theatrically to coincide with Welles's return to the New York stage, where he played King Lear; and third, American film critic Andrew Sarris wrote "Citizen Kane: The American Baroque" for Film Culture, and described it as "the great American film."[115] During Expo 58, a poll of over 100 film historians named Kane one of the top ten greatest films ever made (the group gave first-place honors to The Battleship Potemkin). When a group of young film directors announced their vote for the top six, they were booed for not including the film.[20]
In the decades since, its critical status as one of the greatest films ever made has grown, with numerous essays and books on it including Peter Cowie's The Cinema of Orson Welles, Ronald Gottesman's Focus on Citizen Kane, a collection of significant reviews and background pieces, and most notably Kael's essay, "Raising Kane", which promoted the value of the film to a much wider audience than it had reached before.[19]:120 Despite its criticism of Welles, it further popularized the notion of Citizen Kane as the great American film. The rise of art house and film society circuits also aided in the film's rediscovery.[19]:119
The British magazine Sight & Sound has produced a Top Ten list surveying film critics every decade since 1952, and is regarded as one of the most respected barometers of critical taste.[116] Citizen Kane was a runner up to the top 10 in its 1952 poll but was voted as the greatest film ever made in its 1962 poll,[117] retaining the top spot in every subsequent poll[118][119] until 2012, when Vertigo displaced it.
The film has also ranked number one in the following film "best of" lists: Editorial Jaguar, FIAF Centenary List, France Critics Top 10, Cahiers du cinéma 100 films pour une cinémathèque idéale,[120] Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, Russia Top 10, Romanian Critics Top 10, Time Out Magazine Greatest Films, and Village Voice 100 Greatest Films. Roger Ebert called Citizen Kane the greatest film ever made: "But people don't always ask about the greatest film. They ask, 'What's your favorite movie?' Again, I always answer with Citizen Kane."[121]
In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.[122] Citizen Kane was one of the first 25 movies designated as national treasures. The legislation creating the registry was enacted in 1988, growing out of the debate over a movie director's right to block film colorization.[123]
On February 18, 1999, the United States Postal Service honored Citizen Kane by including it in its Celebrate the Century series.[124] The film was honored again February 25, 2003, in a series of U.S. postage stamps marking the 75th anniversary of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Art director Perry Ferguson represents the behind-the-scenes craftsmen of filmmaking in the series; he is depicted completing a sketch for Citizen Kane.[125]
Citizen Kane was ranked number one in the American Film Institute's polls of film industry artists and leaders in 1998[126] and 2007.[127] "Rosebud" was chosen the 17th most memorable movie quotation in a 2005 AFI poll.[128] The film's score was one of 250 nominees for the top 25 film scores in American cinema in another 2005 AFI poll.[129]
The film currently has a 100% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 66 reviews by approved critics.[130]
Legacy
Despite the critical success of Citizen Kane it nevertheless marked a decline in Welles's fortunes. In the book Whatever Happened to Orson Welles?, Joseph McBride argues that the problems in making Citizen Kane caused lasting damage to his career. The damage started with RKO violating its contract with him by taking his next film, The Magnificent Ambersons, away from him and adding a happy ending against his will.[20] Hollywood's treatment of Welles and his work ultimately led to his self-imposed exile in Europe for much of the rest of his career, where he found a more sympathetic audience.
The documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane posits that Welles's own life story resembled that of Kane far more than Hearst's: an overreaching wunderkind who ended up mournful and lonely in his old age. Citizen Kane's editor, Robert Wise, summarized: "Well, I thought often afterwards, only in recent years when I saw the film again two or three years ago when they had the fiftieth anniversary, and I suddenly thought to myself, well, Orson was doing an autobiographical film and didn't realize it, because it's rather much the same, you know. You start here, and you have a big rise and tremendous prominence and fame and success and whatnot, and then tail off and tail off and tail off. And at least the arc of the two lives were very much the same ...."[7]
Peter Bogdanovich, who was friends with Welles in his later years, disagreed with this on his own commentary on the Citizen Kane DVD, saying that Kane was nothing like Welles. Kane, he said, "... had none of the qualities of an artist, Orson had all the qualities of an artist." Bogdanovich also noted that Welles was never bitter "... about all the bad things that happened to him ...," and was a man who enjoyed life in his final years. In addition, critics have reassessed Welles' career after his death, saying that he wasn't a failed Hollywood filmmaker, but a successful independent filmmaker.[131]
Film critic Kim Newman believed the film's influence was visible in the film noir that followed, as well as the 1942 Hepburn-Tracy film Keeper of the Flame. Martin Scorsese ranks it as one of his favorite films of all time.[132]
The film's structure influenced the biographical films Lawrence of Arabia and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters – which begin with the subject's death and show their life in flashbacks – as well as Welles's thriller Mr. Arkadin.[20]
The film, for its topic of mass media manipulation of public opinion, is also famous for having been frequently presented as the perfect example to demonstrate the power that media has on influencing the democratic process. This exemplary citation of the film lasted till the end of the 20th century, when the paradigm of mass media depicted in Citizen Kane needed to be updated to take into account more globalized and more internet-based media scenarios. Since the film was based on William Randolph Hearst's actions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that model of media influence lasted for almost a century.[133] Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is sometimes labeled as a latter-day Citizen Kane.[134][135]
Film memorabilia
Pine sled used in Citizen Kane, won by a 12-year-old boy in an RKO Pictures publicity contest in 1942, sold at auction through Christie's for $233,500 in 1996
In June 1982, Steven Spielberg spent $60,500 to buy a Rosebud sled, one of three balsa sleds used in the closing scenes and the only one that was not burned.[136][137] Spielberg had paid homage to Citizen Kane in the final shot of the government warehouse in his 1981 film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg commented, "Rosebud will go over my typewriter to remind me that quality in movies comes first."[138][139]
After the Spielberg purchase, news outlets began reporting the claim of Arthur Bauer, a retired helicopter pilot in New York, that he owned another Rosebud, the hardwood sled used in Buddy Swan's scenes as the young Charles Foster Kane at the beginning of Citizen Kane. "I'm sure it could be true," Welles said when asked for comment.[140] In early 1942, Bauer was a 12-year-old student in Brooklyn and a member of his school's film club. He entered and won an RKO Pictures publicity contest and selected Rosebud as his prize. In 1996, Bauer's estate offered the painted pine sled at auction through Christie's.[141] Bauer's son told CBS News that his mother had once wanted to paint the sled and use it as a plant stand; "Instead, my dad said, 'No, just save it and put it in the closet.'"[142] On December 15, 1996, the hardwood sled was sold to an anonymous bidder in Los Angeles for $233,500.[143]
In December 2007, Welles's personal copy of the last revised draft of Citizen Kane before the shooting script was sold at Sotheby's in New York for $97,000.[144] Welles's Oscar for best original screenplay was offered for sale at the same auction, but failed to reach its estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million.[144] The Oscar, believed to have been lost by Welles, was rediscovered in 1994. Owned by the Dax Foundation, a Los Angeles based charity,[144] it was sold at auction in 2011 by an anonymous seller to an anonymous buyer for $861,542.[145]
A working draft script for Citizen Kane — with its original title, American — was sold at auction by Sotheby's, March 5–6, 2014. A second-draft script marked "Mr. Welles' working copy" in pencil on the manilla cover, it was expected to bring between $25,080 and $33,440; it sold for $164,692.[146] The same item had been sold by Christie's in December 1991, together with a working script from The Magnificent Ambersons, for $11,000.[147]
A collection of 24 pages from a script of Citizen Kane was sold at auction April 26, 2014, for $15,000.[148] A collection of approximately 235 stills and production photos sold for $7,812.[149]The materials were among those found in boxes and trunks of Welles's personal possessions by his daughter Beatrice Welles.[150]
Distribution rights
In 1955, RKO sold the American television rights to its film library, including Citizen Kane, to C&C Television Corp.[151] Television rights to the pre-1956 RKO library were acquired by United Artists in 1960. RKO kept the non-broadcast television rights to its library and formed RKO Home Video in 1984.[152] RKO, which had licensed the film to other home video companies, reissued the film in 1985 on VHS and Beta,[153] while the laserdisc video rights to Citizen Kane were carried over to The Criterion Collection for its inaugural release in 1984. Turner Broadcasting System acquired broadcast television rights to the library when it acquired MGM/UA in 1986.[154] Unable to sustain the debt load, Turner split up MGM/UA and kept the MGM film library, including American television rights to the RKO library.[155] Turner acquired full worldwide rights to the RKO library in 1987.[156] The RKO Home Video unit was reorganized into Turner Home Entertainment that year.[157] For the film's 50th anniversary in 1991, Turner Entertainment utilized Paramount Pictures as its distributor for the film's re-release to theaters.[158] In 1996, Time Warner acquired Turner and Warner Home Video absorbed Turner Home Entertainment.[159] Today, Time Warner's Warner Bros. unit has distribution rights for Citizen Kane.[1]
Prints
The composited camera negative of Citizen Kane was destroyed in a New Jersey film laboratory fire in the 1970s. Subsequent prints were ultimately derived from a master positive (a fine-grain preservation element) made in the 1940s and originally intended for use in overseas distribution.[160] The soundtrack had not been lost.
Modern techniques were used to produce a pristine print for a 50th Anniversary theatrical revival reissue in 1991 (released by Paramount Pictures). The 2003 British DVD edition is taken from a master positive held by the British Film Institute. The current US DVD version (released by Warner Home Video) is taken from another digital restoration, supervised by Turner's company. The transfer to Region 1 DVD has been criticized by some film experts for being too bright. Also, in the scene in Bernstein's office (chapter 10), rain falling outside the window has been digitally erased, probably because it was thought to be excessive film grain. These alterations are not present in the UK Region 2, which is also considered to be more accurate in terms of contrast and brightness.
In 2003, Welles's daughter Beatrice sued Turner Entertainment and RKO Pictures, claiming the Welles estate is the legal copyright holder of the film. Her attorney said Orson Welles had left RKO with an exit deal terminating his contracts with the studio, meaning Welles still had an interest in the film, and his previous contract giving the studio the copyright of the film was null and void. Beatrice Welles also claimed, if the courts did not uphold her claim of copyright, RKO nevertheless owed the estate 20% of the profits, from a previous contract which has not been lived up to. On May 30, 2007, the appeals panel agreed Welles could proceed with the lawsuit against Turner Entertainment; the opinion partially overturning the 2004 decision by a lower court judge who had found in favor of Turner Entertainment on the issue of video rights.[161]
Colorization controversy
In the 1980s, Citizen Kane became a catalyst in the controversy over the colorization of black-and-white films. In November 1986, New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote, "It's something of an irony that at a time when concerned movie makers are trying to raise funds for the preservation of films originally shot in color (and which are now fading fast), other people have come along with grandiose plans to 'colorize' all black-and-white films, including, so help me, Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons."[162]
One high-profile proponent of film colorization was Ted Turner,[163] whose Turner Entertainment Co. acquired exclusive rights for the RKO library.[164] A Turner Entertainment spokesperson initially stated that Citizen Kane would not be colorized: "We don't think it's appropriate. We think it's fine as it is".[165] But at a July 1988 news conference called to unveil the newly colored Casablanca, Ted Turner said, "Citizen Kane? I'm thinking of colorizing it."[166]
In January 1989 the Associated Press reported that two companies were producing color tests of Citizen Kane for Turner Entertainment. Criticism increased with the AP's report that filmmaker Henry Jaglom remembered that shortly before his death Orson Welles had implored him to protect Kane from being colorized.[167]
On February 14, 1989, Turner Entertainment president Roger Mayer announced that work to colorize Citizen Kane had been stopped:
Our attorneys looked at the contract between RKO Pictures Inc. and Orson Welles and his production company, Mercury Productions Inc., and, on the basis of their review, we have decided not to proceed with colorization of the movie. … While a court test might uphold our legal right to colorize the film, provisions of the contract could be read to prohibit colorization without permission of the Welles estate. We have completed restoration of a printing negative which now enables us to show first-rate black-and-white prints of this masterpiece.[168]
"It was rather well known that Welles had very, very complete controls. His contract is quite unusual," Mayer said. "What we are saying is that when a director has final cut, it is the ultimate in creative control. The other contracts we have checked out are not like this at all."[169]
One minute of the colorized test footage of Citizen Kane was included in a special Arena documentary, The Complete Citizen Kane, produced by the BBC in 1991.[170][171]
In December 1989, Turner Home Entertainment released a colorized version of The Magnificent Ambersons on VHS.[172]
The colorization controversy was a factor in the passage of the National Film Preservation Act of 1988. The legislation created the National Film Registry that in September 1989 inducted its first 25 films, including Citizen Kane and Casablanca. "One major reason for doing this is to require people like the broadcaster Ted Turner who've been adding color to some movies and reediting others for television to put notices on those versions saying that the movies have been altered," reported ABC News anchor Peter Jennings.[173]
Home media
Blu-ray
On September 13, 2011, Citizen Kane was released on Blu-ray disc and DVD in a 70th anniversary box set called The Ultimate Collectors Edition. "This, quite simply, is the Blu-ray release of the year," wrote the San Francisco Chronicle. "Anyone who thinks Blu-ray doesn't make much of a difference to an older, B&W movie hasn't seen this reference-quality work by Warner Home Video."[174] "Citizen Kane is a film whose visual scintillation is ageless, and you have never seen it look as good as it does here, in Warner's newly restored, 1080p, AVC/MPEG-4 transfer," wrote DVD Talk. Supplements include separate commentary tracks by Roger Ebert and Peter Bogdanovich, carried forward from Warner's 60th anniversary edition DVD release; two additional films, The Battle Over Citizen Kane and RKO 281; and packaging extras that include a hardcover booklet and a folio containing a reproduction of the original souvenir program, miniature lobby cards and other memorabilia.[175]
- 2011: Warner Home Video, September 13, 2011, Blu-ray and DVD. 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collectors Edition, UPC 883929184804 (Blu-ray), 883929184811 (DVD)
Other home video releases
- 1978: The Nostalgia Merchant, Media Home Entertainment, VHS and Beta. In 1976, when home video was in its infancy, entrepreneur Snuff Garrett bought cassette rights to the old RKO and Republic films for what United Press International termed "a pittance." By 1980, the 800-title library of The Nostalgia Merchant was earning $2.3 million a year. "Nobody wanted cassettes four years ago," Garrett told UPI. "It wasn't the first time people called me crazy. It was a hobby with me which became big business."[176]
- 1982: VidAmerica, Inc., VHS and Beta. UPC 082087109036
- 1984: The Criterion Collection, December 1, videodisc, spine 001. The Criterion Collection began with the laserdisc release of Citizen Kane, from a fine grain master positive provided by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.[177]
- 1985: RKO Home Video, VHS and Beta
- 1991: Turner Home Entertainment, August, VHS. 50th Anniversary Edition. Also available in gift pack with film, documentary Reflections On Citizen Kane and Harlan Lebo's 50th anniversary album; and in a collector's edition that includes the film, documentary, album, poster and a copy of the original script.[178]
- 1992: The Criterion Collection, February 26, videodisc, spine 142. 50th Anniversary Edition. This version had an improved transfer and several special features not on the original 1984 laserdisc, including the documentary The Legacy of Citizen Kane (incorporating interviews with 35 filmmakers) and Welles's early short The Hearts of Age.[179]
- 2001: Warner Home Video, September 25, DVD. 60th Anniversary Collectors Edition. Two-disc special edition DVD including feature-length commentaries by film critic Roger Ebert and director Peter Bogdanovich and the PBS documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane. ISBN 0-7806-3520-5
- 2001: Warner Home Video, September 25, VHS. 60th Anniversary Collectors Edition.
See also
Bibliography
- Bogdanovich, Peter and Welles, Orson. This is Orson Welles, HarperPerennial 1992, ISBN 0-06-092439-X
- Bogdanovich, Peter "The Kane Mutiny", in Esquire, October 1972. – This piece, which demolishes Pauline Kael's claim that Welles did not write Citizen Kane, was credited to Bogdanovich. While Bogdanovich extensively helped with the background research, it was actually written by Welles himself.[180]
- Callow, Simon. Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu London: Johnathon Cape, 1995. ISBN 0-224-03852-4
- Carringer, Robert L., The Making of Citizen Kane. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985 ISBN 0-520-05367-2 hardcover; 1996 revised and updated edition ISBN 0-520-20567-7 paperback
- Carringer, Robert L., "The Scripts of Citizen Kane", in Critical Inquiry No. 5 (1978), subsequently reprinted in the below 1996 volume by Gottesman.
- Cook, David A. Orson Welles and the modern sound film. A History of Narrative Film. W.W. Norton Company, Inc, 2004, ISBN 0-393-97868-0
- Gottesman, Ronald, ed. Focus on Citizen Kane. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971, ISBN 0-13-134742-X
- Gottesman, Ronald. Perspectives on Citizen Kane. G.K. Hall & Co., New York, 1996, ISBN 978-0-8161-1616-4
- Heylin, Clinton. Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios, Chicago Review Press, 2005, ISBN 1-55652-547-8
- Kael, Pauline (ed.). The Citizen Kane Book Little and Brown, Boston, 1971 – contains Kael's controversial and much-derided article Raising Kane, as well as the full script by Mankiewicz and Welles.
- Mulvey, Laura. Citizen Kane British Film Institute, London, 1992, ISBN 0-85170-339-9
- Naremore, James (ed.). Orson Welles's Citizen Kane: A Casebook in Criticism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004, ISBN 978-0-19-515892-2
- Nasaw, David. The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst.New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000, ISBN 978-0-618-15446-3
- Rippy, Marguerite H. Orson Welles and the Unfinished RKO Projects: A Postmodern Perspective, Southern Illinois University Press, Illinois, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8093-2912-0
- Rosenbaum, Jonathan. "I missed it at the movies: objections to Raising Kane" (1971), in Rosenbaum, Jonathan (ed.). Discovering Orson Welles, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2007, ISBN 978-0-520-25123-6
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