Yahoo! Movies
by "Accattone_rof "
25 October, 2003
There is a scene in the middle of the greatest film ever made, where Mr. Kane, his wife, his mistress and Big Jim Gettys are gathered in an apartment. Having discovered the affair, Gettys offers Kane the option of stepping down from the governer's race in exchange for secrecy. Kane refuses. As the governer walks away, Kane shouts out, "You can't do this to me! I'm Charles Foster Kane!" This sums up not only the arrogance and folly of the character, but also the arrogance and folly of his creator, Orson Welles. For the greatest film ever made would be the downfall of Welles.
Nearly everyone is familiar with Citizen Kane, whether by viewing, or simply reading about it. The film is almost universally recognized as the greatest. But a surprising number of people haven't seen the film. So let me attempt to explain why this film is so worth seeing.
The most striking feature of the film for me is the cinematography. This must be equally attributed to Gregg Toland as to Welles. Never before had the camera itself been so integral to the story. There are so many techniques at work here: tracking shots, deep focus, forced perspective, low angle, high angle, trick photography — and all done with careful precision. This was done at a time when the camera was typically stationary in motion pictures. There was really nothing like it.
Consider the use of low angles. During this time period, low angles were not used indoors for a very simple reason: the sets had no ceilings. Thus, this was one of the first films, if not the first, to feature ceilings. Granted, the ceilings were no more than cloth hiding the microphones. But it was still quite revolutionary.
Big deal, you might say. That's common nowadays. Well, so is the inability to hear what the actors are saying over the many layers of foley. But I digress.
A favorite scene of mine involves the young Kane. His mother is signing the papers of ownership to the gold mine they are acquiring. Charles can be seen playing outside, through a window. Inside the house, the camera does a nice little track backwards, from the window to the living room, and on into the kitchen. Then, it tracks back into the living room. The entire time, both the principals in the house and Kane are in focus. This is what is called deep focus, and it looks incredible, especially given the tricky tracking shot done at the same time.
The film is full of these amazing shots. The filmmakers carefully crafted each scene, and there is never any wasted space in the frame, not even in the busiest of shots. The mise en scene is impeccable. Every frame of film is a work of art. The attention to detail is something that is rarely seen much in film these days. Of course, it's known that Orson Welles was a stickler for these details, to the point of annoyance. But it's worth it to the viewer.
As a result of this, the picture jumps out at you, because it's like nothing you've seen. Instead of focusing on some actor's "good" side, the camera is really telling the story.
And that story also endears this film to people. At the time of its release, Citizen Kane was already doomed because of one man: William Randolph Hearst. I won't elucidate on this, as there are plenty of sources available that do it just fine. The story in the film concerns Charles Foster Kane, a newspaper magnate who rose to the top, and fell. In the beginning of the film, he dies, leaving behind just one word: "Rosebud". A reporter is put on the case to find out what this word meant. From there, we move back and forth in time, reliving key moments of Kane's life, as told by his friends and his enemies (of which he has plenty).
What angered Hearst, apparently, was not the thinly-veiled attack on him. He was angered by the portrayal of his second wife as a drunk. Whatever the case, he tried to suppress the film, and mostly succeeded at the time. But in the end, the film became bigger than the man himself.
Yet this film is not just about Hearst, or Kane. It's about power, arrogance, and the corruption of values that they bring. It's about one man's attempt to leave his mark in the history books. And it begs the question; can a man's life be summed up in a single word? For me, the answer is yes.
I say yes because "Rosebud" does seem to sum up his life. What Kane always talked about wanting was love. But it was always love his way. He could never really find it. He was never satisfied. However, there was a time when we saw him truly happy; his youth. At the moment he was taken away from his mother, his life fell apart. In the end, money can't buy anything, and after his second wife left him, he realized that all he wanted was to be back home in Colorado, living his simple life with his mother.
Back to the point I made at the beginning of this review. The cast of Citizen Kane was comprised mainly of Mercury Players, who worked on Orson Welles' hit radio shows. They put in some fine performances, and some, notably Joseph Cotten, went on to long careers. But this film belonged to Orson Welles. He immersed himself into the character as if he was playing himself. And in a sense, he was Charles Foster Kane. Like Kane, he was very gifted in what he did; he was given the keys to the kingdom without really paying his dues, and he stumbled very badly when he got to the top, unable to handle the adulation and attention. He thought he was too big to fall. He was quite wrong. Perhaps he went down screaming, "They can't do this to me! I'm Orson Welles!"
Source: Yahoo! Movies
Edit: Sunday, 13-6-2010
I don't know what's the matter with Yahoo Movies. They have tweaked the dates of the reviews. For e.g. the above review was written in 2003 but now it reads 2008. The reviews that I had written in the year 2005 have been changed to 2007, 2008 or 2009; the dates and months, too, have been changed. Strange.
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