Critically Appraise Citizen Kane as Cinema

                                                Peter J Pullicino

 

“It isn't enough to tell us what a man did. You've got to tell us who he was.”

– Newsreel Editor Rawlston, in Citizen Kane

 

The quote above is useful to the explanation of the topic. The legacy of Citizen Kane has parallels with its namesake, Charles Foster Kane, in that its reputation overshadows its essence as a film. It is the purpose of this enquiry is to search out the substance of Citizen Kane;  to find out “what it is” as cinema. If Citizen Kane was greeted with shallow criticism and misunderstanding[1] then today it is possible to say the opposite is true; that is popularly held to be the best film of all time with little in the way of proper cinematic explanation[2].

 

A proper account of the power of Citizen Kane must be tackled from the standpoint of today’s viewer. Classic texts such Homer and the Bible are hard to approach as texts because they carry so much historical baggage along with them. In the same way, a critical appraisal of Orson Welles’ masterpiece must not slip into nostalgia or irrelevant contextualism[3].

 

The structure of the film is hermeneutic. This is a way of keeping the interest of the audience from beginning to the end. In the first few minutes a ‘code-word’ is given, and then an investigative search begins for its meaning. This is rather superficial technique of maintaining interest, and by itself would leave the film audience feeling cheated. However the ‘rosebud’ mechanism is useful in that it propels the narrative of discovering the real Kane. It is this delving into the human character which is of lasting appeal to the spectator.  It is also the thing which accounts for the enjoyability of repeated viewings.  It is arguable that even once the meaning of Rosebud is known there is an ongoing interest to go back and watch the film again precisely because of the superficiality of the hermeneutic structure compared to the strength of the body of the narrative. In fact repeat viewings of Kane may be better because they lack the disappointment of such a trite denouement.

 

Citizen Kane is essentially a biographical narrative. It is a single man’s career seen through the eyes of the public, his financial advisors, his writers, his friends and his two wives. The reporter who we never see, and who carries our perspective, is in fact a biographer. He takes us through a variety of interviews and flashbacks in order to discover what really drives the media baron. Part of this interpretation involves delving into theories about Kane’s psyche.

 

By the death of Freud in 1939 the broader media had a good conception of the basic principles of psychoanalysis. Certainly educated parts of the population would have been familiar with the concept that dramatic events in a childs life can manifest themselves at a later stage. These tools made cinema-going more interesting and involved for audiences. Mildred Pierce (1945) and other movies of the same time period have psychoanalytic sub-texts also. Today almost everyone knows about Freud’s Oedipaedal theory and maybe that is why the film has increased its number of admirers. Orson Welles said[4]:

 

“From the point of view of the psychologist, my character had never made what is known as the ‘transference’ from the mother. Hence his failure with his wives… [Rosebud] represented the simplicity, the comfort, above all the lack of responsibility in his home, and also it stood for his mother’s love with Kane never lost.”

 

Welles had definitely read up on “dollar book Freud” as he called it[5]. There is no doubt that the psychological connection adds new dimensions and meanings, and makes this a much richer film. This aspect cannot be underestimated. 

 

This is amplified by the ambiguity of Charles Foster Kane’s personality,

 

“Even a cursory summary of the fragments leads us to an imposing list of contradictions: Kane is the dashing hero and a grotesque tyrant, an idealist and a cynic, and egotist and a defender of the common man, a child who never grew up, and a man who never had a childhood….”[6]

 

I would tentatively suggest that the audience are put in the position of an artificial parent[7]. He remains “boyish” to audience, because they watch him grow and sympathise with him along the way. He is well-loved by those around him, he has charm and panache, but he can never materialise this into something meaningful, something that will give him a wholesome happiness. He collects wives, possessions and animals in his pleasure dome, but is never satisfied. This invokes more compassion because he is an idealist who loses out, a tragic figure flailing towards love (“no one can take the love of this state away from me”, “If I hadn’t been very rich I might have been a great man”). Such displays of idealism and his search for love make him an object of endearment as well as pity. Towards the end of the movie when his apparent emotional isolation is clear, it is only the audience who still cares what happens to him. This interplay with the audience’s feelings of protectiveness makes Citizen Kane a remarkable piece of psychological engineering. The spectator who is clued into basic Freudianism will largely excuse Kane for the monster he becomes, because he is a product of his childhood. (As Leyland says “He was not a brutal man, he just did brutal things”.)

 

Apart from the narrative, there is the plot which orders the way we find out about Kane. It starts with the death of Kane and then shows him as a little boy, as a young man, works up to the death again, and then there is a post-death period resulting in the burning of the sled. This non-chronological plot is permitted by the narrative because of recollections provoked by Thompson’s questioning. Generally speaking the flashbacks he provokes move from the impersonal to the personal, with increasing linearisation[8]. This is not to say that the plot is unnatural. It has some of the naturalism of human recall, while avoiding straightforward A,B,C chronology. Many of the modern classics, for example Tarantino’s Pulp Ficiton, use this ‘memory’ form. Also by showing the scenes out of order Welles  increases the curiosity about Rosebud, and adds a element of the tragic before the audience really knows anything about C.F. Kane. The plot focusses the spectator on the progression of Kane’s descent into bitterness by punctuating the flashbacks. It also sends a message that the spectator is only viewing selected parts of Kane’s life, and alerts s/he to the subjectivity of those excepts. At a more practical level the plot gives relief from a biographical documentary style by harking back to the interrogative present.

 

Getting away from broader structures and talking from a technical shot-by-shot point of view, the way information is presented provides a relief from standard arrangements, even when compared with today’s mainstream features. Some of these ‘independent cinema’ techniques are put to use well. What an earlier reviewer said still holds true,

 

“The picture is very exciting to anyone who gets excited about how things can be done in the movies; and the many places where it takes off like the Wright brothers…The Kubla Khan setting, the electioneering stage, the of the rough-cut in the Marsh of Thyme projection room, the kid outside the window in the legacy scene the opera stage, the dramatics of the review copy on opening night…”[9]

 

The mise-en-scene is still memorable; Charles Kane on his podium with that massive picture behind him; the large halls of Xanadu; the sword of light in the projection room. These scenes offer a striking panorama of mental images which linger long after the credits have faded.

 

In 1941 the cinematography in Kane was fresh and original[10]. The techniques therein have been studied and used by later directors, and Welles’ shots in 1941 don’t have the same shock value in 1999. That is not to say that the cinematography is boring, in fact, some of it is so perfect it is hard to imagine improving on it even though 60 years have gone past.

 

The breakfast table scene still stands out, and remains unparalleled, for its representation of how Kane and Emily drift apart; the subtle body language, the editing to change their costume, and a seamless dialogue between them as all this happens. The development of their marriage is told efficiently in six segments separated by whip pans, essentially by the camera and not clumsy spoken narrative. In another scene, when Kane is being lectured by Leyland after the election the framing has been used to emphasise Kane’s power by placing the camera down low so as to capture the ceiling and Kane’s stature. Such techniques illustrate that Welles has used his resources to good effect and has shown inventiveness in using the cinematic tools of the 1940s. Time after time Welles[11] goes out of his way to frame the shot in an exciting way. He tilts the camera on X axis when Kane is being presented with the trophy on his return from Europe; he pulls the camera quickly up on the Y axis when Susan is singing to get the workmen operating the lights. These are shots which stand out as carefully chosen unconventionalities – they are intriguing, and the film is full of them.

 

One striking technical aspect of Kane  is the use of deep-focus. This focus allows characters in the background to be seen with the same clarity as those in the foreground. This gives the spectator a richer experience because it gives s/he a choice where to look. For instance when Kane is with his banker, Thatcher, the spectator can either focus on the close Thatcher or the distant Charles Kane standing at the window.

 

Another aspect is the use of zoom, dissolves and wipes. All these techniques are frowned upon by most modern directors, who use them sparingly, if at all. In Citizen Kane  they work well, and are exciting, maybe because of discomfort they cause to the spectator. Nobody has eyes which act like a zoom. It is possible that these techniques are part of the counter-cinema of Kane, like Bernstein’s direct address to the audience.

 

Sound has been ignored by many critics, but Welles’ has again come up with high art. Each character has been given a distinctive voice, which is theatrical, but works well. In addition to vocals, there is a particular scene where Susan is coming down from a high note and Welles crosses to a lightbulb slowly going out – as the light fades Susan’s voice drops its pitch. When the lightbulb goes out there is no sound. The use of sound and the lightbulb going out links Susan’s trouble with her singing career perfectly. The association becomes obvious, and so much information is communicated by such a simple idea. Welles’ genius lies in his simultaneous mixture of all the elements of cinema; he not only has the best ingredients, he also bakes the best cake.

 

The audience is also treated to different tempos, for instance the scratchy, bombastic “News on The March” runs faster compared to the slower scenes towards the end. Even though the tempos are kept variable, and this is a good thing, many modern viewers would suggest that it is generally too slow moving. All issues of this nature are highly subjective, but this criticism of Citizen Kane is not without evidence[12]. Orson Welles came from a background of theatre[13]. Cinema in general in those days was more heavily influenced by the stage. Many of the characters in Kane are stage actors. Presently there is no demand for cinema which moves at the speed of theatre. Welles and his contemporaries would have thought the tempo of Citizen Kane was extremely fast paced[14], much faster than theatre or a radio play, but movies like Pulp Fiction (to name one) have trained audiences to expect sharper quicker jump cuts.

 

It is hard to judge Citizen Kane as straight cinema because as spectators we bring more than our eyes to the movie theatre. We bring our love of Orson Welles as an actor, an appreciation of his genius as a director, our memories of previous films and our life experiences. It would be wrong to tear apart Kane to show a good mastery of technique (this essay’s purpose), and to conclude that it is therefore easy to understand its overall effect. Like any “classic” its massive reputation precedes it and our expectations influence any breakdown of its cinematic components.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

 

David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson, Film-Art: An Introduction, 5^th ed, McGraw-Hill, US, 1997

Gerard Mast, Marshall Cohen, Leo Braudy, Film Theory and Criticism, 4^th Ed, Oxford Uni Press, 1992.

Laura Mulvey, Citizen Kane, BFI Film Classics, UK, 1992.

Leonard J Leff, “Reading Kane”, Film Quarterly, Fall 1985

Ronald Gottesman and Harry Geduld, Focus on Citizen Kane, Prentice-Hall, USA, 1971

Simon Callow, Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu, Random House 1995.