This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.
(PG) ★★★★★
Director: Orson Welles
Cast: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloane, Ray Collins, William Alland, George Coulouris, Fortunio Bonanova, Paul Stewart.
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| "Presenting... me!" |
Citizen Kane is the ultimate American film for highlighting the difference between students of cinema and the majority of the general movie-going public.
The film industry players who voted for the American Film Institute lists of 1998 and 2007, as well as the decennial Sight & Sound lists between 1962 and 2002 deemed Citizen Kane the best film ever.
But public-voted lists have been less generous over the years - for example, the IMDb's top 250 has it at #95, while Empire Magazine's most recent reader's vote put the film at #46. This is partly because so much of Citizen Kane's esteem is wrapped up in its film-making wizardry, as opposed to its sheer entertainment value.
As the BBC's Nick Barber wrote "Citizen Kane is an encyclopedia of techniques: a 114-minute film school which provides lesson after lesson in deep focus and rear projection, extreme close-ups and overlapping dialogue".
James Monaco, writing in his 1977 text book How To Read A Film called Citizen Kane "a singular phenomenon" that "Welles never again matched".
"(It's) possibly the most important American movie ever made," Monaco wrote. "Welles - with the aplomb of a master - shapes his narrative in sublimely cinematic terms. It was as if the stranger to Hollywood, child of New York theatre and radio, had viewed objectively all the various strands of film technique of thirties Hollywood and woven them all together."
Your average punter doesn't give two shits about Citizen Kane's use of deep focus, adventurous cross fades, debonair dolly moves, focus-pulling edits, overlapping dialogue, and roaming camera. Most people couldn't care less about the fact Welles was bringing together every trick in the pre-'40s film-making book and applying them to one grand tale of one grandly flawed man.
The film industry players who voted for the American Film Institute lists of 1998 and 2007, as well as the decennial Sight & Sound lists between 1962 and 2002 deemed Citizen Kane the best film ever.
But public-voted lists have been less generous over the years - for example, the IMDb's top 250 has it at #95, while Empire Magazine's most recent reader's vote put the film at #46. This is partly because so much of Citizen Kane's esteem is wrapped up in its film-making wizardry, as opposed to its sheer entertainment value.
As the BBC's Nick Barber wrote "Citizen Kane is an encyclopedia of techniques: a 114-minute film school which provides lesson after lesson in deep focus and rear projection, extreme close-ups and overlapping dialogue".
James Monaco, writing in his 1977 text book How To Read A Film called Citizen Kane "a singular phenomenon" that "Welles never again matched".
"(It's) possibly the most important American movie ever made," Monaco wrote. "Welles - with the aplomb of a master - shapes his narrative in sublimely cinematic terms. It was as if the stranger to Hollywood, child of New York theatre and radio, had viewed objectively all the various strands of film technique of thirties Hollywood and woven them all together."
Your average punter doesn't give two shits about Citizen Kane's use of deep focus, adventurous cross fades, debonair dolly moves, focus-pulling edits, overlapping dialogue, and roaming camera. Most people couldn't care less about the fact Welles was bringing together every trick in the pre-'40s film-making book and applying them to one grand tale of one grandly flawed man.
It's this marriage of cutting edge techniques that earned Kane its perch atop the film tree, but there is so much more to admire, appreciate and, yes, enjoy about this cinematic edifice. Its storytelling is second-to-none, plus it's regularly funny (particularly in the first half), and continually entertaining. The script (pieced together by Welles from versions written by himself and co-credited screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz) tells the story of wealthy newspaper tycoon and presidential-wannabe Charles Foster Kane in a fashion as fascinating as the film-making techniques.
(How great is this trailer by the way? They should make modern trailers like this.)
Opening with a wordless, gothic horror montage of Kane's decaying mansion that culminates with his snowglobe-shattering death, the film then dives into a newsreel epitaph that helps build the myth of Kane before we even meet Kane. But a smoking room filled with reporters could care less about this potted obituary - they want to know why Kane's final dying word was "Rosebud". What does it mean?
From there, we revisit the life and times of Kane via one reporter's interviews with those who knew him best. The journalist's ambitions are singular - what/who is "Rosebud"? - but this steady stream of flashbacks show us the real Kane. It's a neat trick, and although the film was not the first to use extensive flashbacks, it was yet another fledgling technique used to dazzling effect in Welles' overflowing opus. As Slate's Nigel Andrews wrote of Citizen Kane's technical wizardry, "Kane got there first nearly every time (and) when it didn’t, its brilliance destroyed the memory of predecessors".
Welles' and Mankiewicz's script, along with Gregg Toland's cinematography, are rightly lauded, as is Welles' ballsy, freshman auteurship of it all - his incredible camera dive through a neon sign and then through a skylight (via some editing trickery) is outstanding and worthy of attention on its own.
But oft-forgotten in all this is Welles' performance, which is towering. Alongside the also-great Cotten and Welles' talented suite of Mercury Theatre players, Welles makes Kane a human - a deeply flawed, egocentric and eventually megalomaniacal human, but a human no less. He does all this with some of the best hair and make-up work of the time. Indeed, I've seen worse hair and make-up in contemporary films.
"Rosebud" itself is one of the great symbols in cinema, despite being dismissed by some (Welles himself included) as shallow pop-philosophy. But with that single word (and a single item revealed in an all-time-great twist), Citizen Kane drives home its surprisingly anti-capitalist message - that money can't buy love or happiness. That all the worldly possessions can't fill certain holes in one's soul. That money isn't everything. And that, ultimately, maybe the American dream of having it all isn't all it's cracked up to be.
This may be a film for the buffs, but it has more heart and soul than a lot of people give it credit. It's a tale of a fall from grace, told with good humour and a keen eye, that also happens to be one of the best examples of film-making techniques you can find.
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