The fresh, sophisticated, and classic masterpiece, Citizen Kane (1941), is probably the world's most famous and highly-rated film, with its many remarkable scenes and performances, cinematic and narrative techniques and experimental innovations (in photography, editing, and sound). Its director, star, and producer were all the same genius individual - Orson Welles (in his film debut at age 25!), who collaborated with Herman J. Mankiewicz on the script (and also with an uncredited John Houseman), and with Gregg Toland as his talented cinematographer. [The amount of each person's contributions to the screenplay has been the subject of great debate over many decades.] Toland's camera work on Karl Freund's expressionistic horror film Mad Love (1935)exerted a profound influence on this film.
The film, budgeted at $800,000, received unanimous critical praise even at the time of its release, although it was not a commercial success (partly due to its limited distribution and delayed release by RKO due to pressure exerted by famous publisher W.R. Hearst) - until it was re-released after World War II, found well-deserved (but delayed) recognition in Europe, and then played on television.
The film engendered controversy (and efforts at suppression in early 1941 and efforts at suppression in early 1941 through intimidation, blackmail, newspaper smears, discrediting and FBI investigations) before it premiered in New York City on May 1, 1941, because it appeared to fictionalize and caricaturize certain events and individuals in the life of William Randolph Hearst - a powerful newspaper magnate and publisher. The film was accused of drawing remarkable, unflattering, and uncomplimentary parallels (especially in regards to the Susan Alexander Kane character) to real-life. The notorious battle was detailed in Thomas Lennon's and Michael Epstein's Oscar-nominated documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996), and it was retold in HBO's cable-TV film RKO 281 (1999) (the film's title refers to the project numbering for the film by the studio, before the film was formally titled).
The gossip columnist Louella Parsons persuaded her newspaper boss Hearst that he was being slandered by RKO and Orson Welles' film when it was first previewed, so the Hearst-owned newspapers (and other media outlets) pressured theatres to boycott the film and also threatened libel lawsuits. Hearst also ordered his publications to completely ignore the film, and not accept advertising for other RKO projects. However, the title character Charles Foster Kane is mostly a composite of any number of powerful, colorful, and influential American individualists and financial barons in the early 20th century (e.g., Time Magazine's founder and mogul Henry Luce, Chicago newspaper head Harold McCormick, and other magnates of the time). By contrast, the real-life Hearst was born into wealth, whereas Kane was of humble birth - the son of poor boarding-house proprietors. And Kane also was separated from both his mother and his mistress, unlike Hearst.
[Footnote: In early March of 2012, California's Hearst Castle hosted a screening of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941), 71 years after its original release. It was part of the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival. One of Hollywood's most famous behind-the-scenes battles occurred over the making of the film, when William Randolph Hearst banned coverage of the film in his newspapers, and tried to curtail its success. He accused the film of wrongly portraying him as a ruthless, publishing tycoon who died alone in the castle. Steve Hearst, VP of the Hearst Corporation, who allowed the screening, believed that it would highlight the fictional elements in the movie, and "correct the record." Proceeds from the screening raised money for upkeep of the estate's extensive art collection.]
Welles' film was the recipient of nine Oscar nominations with only one win - Best Original Screenplay (Mankiewicz and Welles). The other eight nominations included Best Picture (Orson Welles, producer), Best Actor and Best Director (Welles), Best B/W Cinematography (Toland), Best Art Direction (Perry Ferguson and Van Nest Polglase), Best Sound Recording (John Aalberg), Best Dramatic Picture Score (Bernard Herrmann with his first brilliant musical score), and Best Film Editing (Robert Wise). With his four Academy Awards nominations, Welles became the first individual to receive simultaneous nominations in those four categories. The less-lauded John Ford picture How Green was My Valley (1941) won the Best Picture honor.
Many of the performers from Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre group made their screen debuts in the film, among them Joseph Cotten (Kane's oldest and best friend, and his newspaper's drama critic), Dorothy Comingore (Kane's second wife), Ruth Warrick (Kane's first wife), Ray Collins (Kane's political opponent), Agnes Moorehead (Kane's mother), Everett Sloane (Kane's devoted and loyal employee and business manager), Erskine Sanford (the newspaper's editor-in-chief), Paul Stewart (Kane's butler), George Couloris (Kane's legal guardian and bank manager), and William Alland (the chief investigative reporter).
More importantly, the innovative, bold film is an acknowledged milestone in the development of cinematic technique, although it 'shared' some of its techniques from Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) and other earlier films. It uses film as an art form to energetically communicate and display a non-static view of life. Its components brought together the following aspects:
- use of a subjective camera
- unconventional lighting, including chiaroscuro, backlighting and high-contrast lighting, prefiguring the darkness and low-key lighting of future film noirs
- inventive use of shadows and strange camera angles, following in the tradition of German Expressionists
- deep-focus shots with incredible depth-of field and focus from extreme foreground to extreme background (also found in Toland's earlier work in Dead End (1937), John Ford's The Long Voyage Home (1940), and Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940)) that emphasize mise-en-scene; also in-camera matte shots
- low-angled shots revealing ceilings in sets (a technique possibly borrowed from John Ford's Stagecoach which Welles screened numerous times)
- sparse use of revealing facial close-ups
- elaborate camera movements
- over-lapping, talk-over dialogue (exhibited earlier in Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940)) and layered sound
- the sound technique termed "lightning-mix" in which a complex montage sequence is linked by related sounds
- a cast of characters that ages throughout the film
- flashbacks, flashforwards and non-linear story-telling (used in earlier films, including another rags-to-riches tale starring Spencer Tracy titled The Power and the Glory (1933) with a screenplay by Preston Sturges, and RKO's A Man to Remember (1938) from director Garson Kanin and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo)
- the frequent use of transitionary dissolves or curtain wipes, as in the scene in which the camera ascended in the opera house into the rafters to show the workmen's disapproval of Mrs. Kane's operatic performance; also the famous 'breakfast' montage scene illustrating the disintegration of Kane's marriage in a brief time
- long, uninterrupted shots or lengthy takes of sequences
Its complex and pessimistic theme of a spiritually-failed man is told from several, unreliable perspectives and points-of-view (also metaphorically communicated by the jigsaw puzzle) by several different characters (the associates and friends of the deceased) - providing a sometimes contradictory, non-sequential, and enigmatic portrait. The film tells the thought-provoking, tragic epic story of a 'rags-to-riches' child who inherited a fortune, was taken away from his humble surroundings and his father and mother, was raised by a banker, and became a fabulously wealthy, arrogant, and energetic newspaperman. He made his reputation as the generous, idealistic champion of the underprivileged, and set his egotistical mind on a political career, until those political dreams were shattered after the revelation of an ill-advised 'love-nest' affair with a singer. Kane's life was corrupted and ultimately self-destructed by a lust to fulfill the American dream of success, fame, wealth, power and immortality. After two failed marriages and a transformation into a morose, grotesque, and tyrannical monster, his final days were spent alone, morose, and unhappy before his death in a reclusive refuge of his own making - an ominous castle filled with innumerable possessions to compensate for his life's emptiness.
The discovery and revelation of the mystery of the life of the multi-millionaire publishing tycoon is determined through a reporter's search for the meaning of his single, cryptic dying word: "Rosebud" - in part, the film's plot enabling device - or McGuffin (MacGuffin). However, no-one was present to hear him utter the elusive last word. The reporter looks for clues to the word's identity by researching the newspaper publisher's life, through interviews with several of Kane's former friends and colleagues. Was it a favorite pet or nickname of a lost love? Or the name of a racehorse? At film's end, the identity of "Rosebud" is revealed, but only to the film audience. [One source, Gore Vidal - a close friend of Hearst, wildly claimed in 1989 in a short memoir in the New York Review of Books that "Rosebud" was a euphemism for the most intimate part of his long-time mistress Marion Davies' female anatomy.]
And finally, the film's title has often been copied or mirrored, as a template for the titles of other biopics or documentaries about a figure often striving for socio-political recognition, as in the following films:
- Citizen Saint (1947) about modern miracle worker Mother Frances Cabrini
- Damn Citizen (1958) about a Louisiana state politician
- Citizen Tania (1989) - about heiress Patty Hearst's abduction by the Symbionese Liberation Army
- the HBO made-for-TV Citizen Cohn (1992) - about Senator Joseph McCarthy's loathsome lawyer Roy Cohn (James Woods) of the late 40s and 50s in the HUAC
- Citizen Langlois (1995, Fr.) about pioneering film archivist Henri Langlois of the Cinematheque Francaise - with some footage from the 1941 film
- Oliver Stone's epic biography Nixon (1995) could have been titled Citizen Nixon -- it's a modern-day 'Citizen Kane' story about another tragic figure, filmed in a disjointed, non-linear or non-chronological fashion (with unexpected flashbacks) and the use of newsreel footage as Welles did, and including an argument between Nixon and his wife at the dinner table - resembling the famed breakfast table scene in Citizen Kane; the famous 18 1/2 minute gap would serve as the enigmatic 'Rosebud'
- director Alexander Payne's debut film and political satire Citizen Ruth (1996) about Ruth Stoops (Laura Dern) - a pregnant woman caught as a pawn in the middle of the abortion rights issue
- Citizen James (2000) about a young Bronx filmmaker (writer/director/star Doug E. Doug)
- the TV series Citizen Baines (2001) about an ex-politician (James Cromwell) dealing with three grown daughters
- the documentary Citizen King (2004) - about Martin Luther King, Jr. originally made for PBS' American Experience series
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