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Citizen Kane

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Films

              Citizen Kane
    Orson Welles' Citizen Kane poster
     Directed by   Orson Welles
     Produced by   Orson Welles
     Written by    Orson Welles,
                   Herman J. Mankiewicz
      Starring     Orson Welles,
                   Joseph Cotten,
                   Dorothy Comingore,
                   Ruth Warrick,
                   Everett Sloane,
                   George Coulouris,
                   Ray Collins,
                   Agnes Moorehead
      Music by     Bernard Herrmann
   Cinematography  Gregg Toland
     Editing by    Robert Wise
   Distributed by  RKO Radio Pictures
   Release date(s) May 1, 1941
    Running time   119 min.
      Language     English
       Budget      $686,034 (est.)
              IMDb profile

   Citizen Kane is a 1941 mystery/ drama film released by RKO Pictures and
   directed by Orson Welles, his first feature film. The story traces the
   life and career of Charles Foster Kane, a man whose career in the
   publishing world was born of idealistic social service, but gradually
   evolved into a ruthless pursuit of power and ego at any cost. Narrated
   principally through flashbacks, the story is revealed through the
   research of a newspaper reporter seeking to solve the mystery of the
   newspaper magnate's dying word, "Rosebud."

   Citizen Kane is often cited as being one of the most innovative works
   in the history of film, and in 1998 the American Film Institute placed
   it at number one in its list of the 100 greatest U.S. movies of all
   time. In a recent poll of film directors conducted by the British Film
   Institute, Citizen Kane was ranked number one best film of all time.

   The film's main character, Charles Foster Kane, was inspired by
   newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Upon its release, the film
   was conspicuously absent from Hearst's newspapers.

Cast

         Actor                 Role
   William Alland    Jerry Thompson
   Georgia Backus    Bertha Anderson
   Fortunio Bonanova Signor Matiste
   Ray Collins       James W. Gettys
   Dorothy Comingore Susan Alexander Kane
   Joseph Cotten     Jedediah Leland
   George Coulouris  Walter Parks Thatcher
   Agnes Moorehead   Mary Kane
   Erskine Sanford   Herbert Carter
   Gus Schilling     The Headwaiter
   Harry Shannon     Kane's Father
   Everett Sloane    Mr. Bernstein
   Paul Stewart      Raymond
   Buddy Swan        young Charles Foster Kane
   Ruth Warrick      Emily Monroe Norton Kane
   Orson Welles      Charles Foster Kane
   Philip Van Zandt  Mr. Rawlston

Synopsis

   When wealthy media magnate Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) dies, he
   utters the enigmatic word "Rosebud". This is in the famous first scene,
   starting with a view of a metal "No Trespassing" sign on a chain link
   fence. The camera slowly cuts to an iron fence, with the letter "K" on
   top. In the background looms the large, gloomy palace of Xanadu. There
   is only one window lit, making it look all the more eerie. The film
   slowly cuts through a series of shots of the building coming closer and
   closer, displaying signs of Kane's immense wealth. When it gets to the
   lit window, the light inexplicably goes out. It then cuts inside the
   window, where it starts snowing. It quickly pans out of a snow globe
   containing a little wood house. There is a hand holding it. Kane's
   mouth is shown uttering the word that anchors the movie - "Rosebud." He
   drops the globe, which falls on the floor and breaks. The glass
   reflects a maidservant entering the room. She slowly covers Kane's dead
   body with a blanket.

   An obituary newsreel documents the events in his public life. The
   producer of the newsreel asks a reporter, Thompson ( William Alland),
   to find out about Kane's private life and personality, in particular to
   discover the meaning behind his last word. The reporter interviews the
   great man's friends and associates, and Kane's story unfolds as a
   series of flashbacks.

   First, Thompson approaches Kane's second wife, Susan Alexander (
   Dorothy Comingore), who refuses to tell him anything. Then Thompson
   goes to the library of Mr. Thatcher ( George Coulouris). It is there
   that Thompson learns about Kane's childhood. In the first flashback,
   Kane as a young child is abandoned by his mother ( Agnes Moorehead)
   when he becomes suddenly wealthy, and sent to live with his banker, Mr
   Thatcher, despite the misgivings of Kane's father.

   Other flashbacks show Kane's entry into the newspaper business and his
   profit-seeking with low-quality " yellow journalism". These show that
   he is not a man to be pushed around. He takes over the newspaper and
   hires all the best journalists (which he gets from the Inquirer's
   rival, The Chronicle). His attempted rise to power is documented,
   including his first marriage to a President's niece and his campaign
   for the office of governor. A "love nest" scandal ends both his
   marriage and his political aspirations. Kane remarries, but his
   domineering personality destroys his relationships and pushes away his
   loved ones.

   Despite Thompson's numerous interviews with the people in Kane's life,
   he is unable to solve the mystery; he concludes that "Rosebud" will
   remain an enigma. However, the camera pans over workers burning some of
   Kane's many possessions. One throws an old sled, with the word
   "Rosebud" painted on it, into the fire. This was the sled Kane was
   riding as a child the day his mother sent him away. There is a shot of
   a chimney with black smoke coming out. After this twist ending, the
   film ends as it began, with the "No Trespassing" sign. The closing shot
   shows the "K" on top of the iron fence.

Overview

   Citizen Kane has inspired myriad interpretations over the decades. In
   Orson Welles: Hello Americans, Simon Callow argued that Citizen Kane
   should not just be understood as a fictional work but also as a
   post-fictional piece: a piece where the audience is drawn in to view
   themselves in the process of watching the film. 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 that "... 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."

   The film combines revolutionary cinematography (by Gregg Toland, with
   whom Welles shared a title card, which was a gesture of Welles'
   appreciation for Toland's overall contribution to the film, much like
   John Ford previously shared credit with Toland for The Long Voyage
   Home) with an Oscar-winning screenplay (by Welles and Herman J.
   Mankiewicz — though most film history circles consider Mankiewicz's
   contribution to the screenplay to be far greater than that of Welles),
   and a lineup of first time film actors, associates of Mr. Welles from
   his stint at the Mercury Theatre, such as Joseph Cotten and Agnes
   Moorehead.

Themes

   The journalist's mission of retrieving the meaning of Kane's final word
   leads him in the end to conclude that a man's life cannot be summed up
   in one word and, as he picks up pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, that Rosebud
   is a "missing piece" in his life. The movie is made up of fragments of
   Kane's life, shown in non-chronological order, for the viewer to put
   together.

   When his second wife abandons him, Kane begins destroying her room. He
   grabs a snow globe and is about to throw it when he sees the falling
   snowflakes inside. The image of falling snow evokes involuntary
   memories in Kane. He remembers being sent away by his mother when it
   was snowing, making him utter "Rosebud" — another memory of the
   occasion.

Debate over authorship

   One of the long standing academic debates of Citizen Kane has been the
   nature of the authorship of the original screenplay, which the opening
   credits attributes to both Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz.

   Most famously, film critic Pauline Kael, in an essay entitled "Raising
   Kane" (originally published in The New Yorker in 1971 and later
   reprinted in The Citizen Kane Book and in her omnibus collection For
   Keeps) claims that Welles downplayed veteran screenwriter Herman J.
   Mankiewicz's contribution. Kael argues that Mankiewicz was the true
   author of the screenplay and therefore responsible for much of what
   made the movie great. This angered many critics of the day, most
   notably critic-turned-filmmaker (and close friend of Welles) Peter
   Bogdanovich, who rebutted many of Kael's claims.

   Subsequently, Robert L. Carringer, in a 1978 essay entitled "The
   Scripts of Citizen Kane", and in his 1985 book The Making of Citizen
   Kane, refutes Kael's claim that Mankiewicz was the sole author of the
   screenplay. After thorough analysis of the seven script revisions of
   the film, Carringer found the film's dual credit for both Welles and
   Mankiewicz to be accurate. The script revisions clearly indicate the
   different contributions and the author of each of those contributions
   and prove definitively that Mankiewicz did not write the script
   entirely on his own and that Welles contributed to it significantly.

   Welles scholar James Naremore, in his book The Magic World of Orson
   Welles states:

          "Carringer, who has researched the RKO archives, examined all
          seven revisions of the script, and spoken to most of the people
          concerned, has found documentary proof that Welles was one of
          the principal authors of the screenplay. In other words, the
          credits as they appear on the screen are fairly accurate: Kane
          was produced by Welles company, co-authored by Herman Mankiewicz
          and Welles ( John Houseman was offered screenplay credit, but
          declined), and directed by Welles, who also played the leading
          character."

Production

   During production, Citizen Kane was referred to as RKO 281. Filming
   took place between June 29 and October 23, 1940. 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' 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.

Filmmaking innovations

   Film scholars and historians view Citizen Kane as Welles' attempt to
   create a new style of filmmaking by studying various forms of movie
   making, and combining them all into one (much like D. W. Griffith's The
   Birth of a Nation did in 1915). Welles' acting style can also be seen
   as an early example of method acting. For example, the scene where Kane
   vents his anger from the top of a staircase, at his political opponent
   Jim Gettys. Welles tripped and chipped his anklebone during the filming
   of the scene, but the cameras continued to roll and the shot made it
   into the final print of the film. Some view this as an example of
   Welles' workhorse ethic. As a director, Welles disliked actors who
   subscribed to method acting, considering them unreliable. In particular
   he dismissed the practice of internalizing as being a hindrance rather
   than contributing to the production as a whole. He liked to work with
   actors who were malleable to his vision and always prepared to change a
   delivery at the drop of a hat without too much worry over motivation.
   Welles, as an actor, frequently practiced cold reading and spent more
   time memorizing lines (which never took him long) than doing any mental
   prep work. It is commonly agreed, however, that there are instances in
   Citizen Kane where Welles became consumed with his role. In one famous
   scene in the movie, Kane destroys his second wife's bedroom with his
   bare hands after she has left him. According to biographers, after
   Welles destroyed the room and shooting finished he stumbled off the set
   with bloody hands muttering to himself, "I felt it. I felt it."

   The most innovative technical aspect of Citizen Kane is the
   unprecedented use of deep focus. In nearly every scene in the film, the
   foreground, background and everything in between are all in sharp
   focus. This was done by renowned cinematographer Gregg Toland through
   his experimentation with lenses and lighting. Specifically, Toland
   often used telephoto lenses to shoot close-up scenes. Anytime 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 — Toland used an optical printer to make
   the whole screen appear in focus (one piece of film is printed onto
   another piece of film). However, many deep focus shots were the result
   of in-camera effects, as in the famous example of the 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 reshot 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. Since movies
   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. Welles' crew
   used muslin draped above the set to produce the illusion of a regular
   room with a ceiling, while the boom mikes were hidden above the cloth.

   One of the story-telling techniques introduced in this film was 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 this way, Welles chronicled the breakdown of
   Kane's first marriage, which took years of story time, in a matter of
   minutes. Prior to this technique, filmmakers often had to use a long
   period of screen time to explain the character's changed circumstances.
   For example, in Erich von Stroheim's masterpiece Greed, the breakdown
   of the marriage of the main characters takes almost an hour of screen
   time, even in the most abbreviated cut.

   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 the
   second Mrs. Kane's performance was shot by panning a camera 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.

   The film broke new ground with its use of special effects makeup,
   believably ageing the cast many decades over the course of the story.
   The details extended down to hazy contact lenses to make Cotten's eyes
   look rheumy as an old man. Welles later claimed that his own dashing
   appearance as a young man also involved a lot of makeup (including some
   strategically applied tape to give him a mini- facelift).

   Welles brought his experience with sound from radio along to
   filmmaking, producing a layered and complex soundtrack. In one famous
   scene the elderly Kane strikes Susan in a tent on the beach, and as the
   two characters silently glower at each other a woman at the nearby
   party can be heard hysterically laughing in the background, her
   giddiness in grotesque counterpoint to the misery of Susan and Kane.
   Elsewhere, Welles skillfully employed sound effects to create a
   mood—such as the chilly echo of the monumental library, where the
   reporter is confronted by an intimidating, officious librarian.

   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 and wishes him a "Merry
   Christmas" we are suddenly taken to a shot of Kane 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 screen, is what
   makes for a seamless narrative structure. (Cook, 330)

   Welles also carried over techniques from radio not yet popular in the
   movies (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 movie
   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; as a scene would come to a close, the audio would
   transition to the next scene before the visual did.

Aftermath

   Despite numerous positive reviews from critics at the time, the film
   was a box office failure which resulted in Welles' career suffering a
   crippling blow, he spent the rest of his life struggling to make films
   on his own terms. He lived long enough to see his debut film
   acknowledged as a classic, and late in life he famously remarked that
   he'd started at the top and spent the rest of his life working his way
   down.

   Citizen Kane was little seen and virtually forgotten until its release
   in Europe in 1946, where it garnered considerable acclaim, particularly
   from French film critics such as Andre Bazin. In the United States, it
   was neglected and forgotten until its revival in the late 1950s, and
   its critical fortunes have skyrocketed since. Critics worldwide began
   listing it among the best films ever made. For Welles, however, this
   was too late. Hearst had been successful in blacklisting Welles in
   Hollywood so that no studio would agree to work with him.

Worldwide release dates

     * Argentina: August 27, 1941
     * Portugal: October 27, 1941
     * Australia: January 15, 1942
     * U.K.: January 24, 1942
     * Greece: January 26, 1942
     * Sweden: January 26, 1942
     * Spain: February 11, 1946
     * France: July 3, 1946
     * Norway: October 23, 1946
     * Finland: July 18, 1947
     * Netherlands: February 5, 1948
     * Belgium: February 5, 1948
     * Denmark: May 12, 1948
     * Austria: September 2, 1949
     * Hong Kong: February 24, 1950
     * Italy: April 14, 1950
     * West Germany: June 29, 1962
     * Japan: June 4, 1966
     * Czech Republic: January 25, 2001

Prints

   Welles' original master film negative of Citizen Kane was destroyed in
   a fire in the 1970s at his villa in Madrid, Spain, along with the only
   known print of Welles' 1938 short film Too Much Johnston. Until 1991,
   all existing theatrical prints of the film were made from copies of the
   original. When the film was purchased by Ted Turner's Turner
   Entertainment (which bought the rights to the MGM and RKO film
   libraries), film restoration 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 an interpositive 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. The transfer to Region 1 DVD
   has been criticised 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, Orson Welles' daughter Beatrice sued Turner Entertainment and
   RKO Pictures, claiming that the Welles estate is the legal owner of the
   film. Her attorney said that Orson Welles had left RKO with an exit
   deal terminating his contracts with the studio, meaning that Welles
   still had an interest in the film and his previous contract giving the
   studio the ownership of the film was null and void. Beatrice Welles
   also claimed that, if the courts did not uphold her claim of ownership,
   RKO nevertheless owes the estate 20% of the profits, from a previous
   contract which has not been lived up to.

   In the 1980s, this film became the catalyst in the controversy over the
   colorization of black and white films. When Ted Turner told members of
   the press that he was considering colorizing Citizen Kane, his comments
   led to an immediate public outcry. The uproar was for naught, as Turner
   Pictures had never actually announced that this was an upcoming planned
   project. Turner later claimed that this was a joke designed to needle
   colorization critics, and that he had never had any intention of
   colorizing the film.

Awards and recognition

Academy Awards

   Wins:
     * Best Original Screenplay - Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz

   Nominations:
     * Best Picture - Orson Welles
     * Best Director - Orson Welles
     * Best Actor - Orson Welles
     * Best Film Editing - Robert Wise
     * Best Art Direction - Perry Ferguson, A. Roland Fields, Van Nest
       Polglase, Darrell Silvera
     * Best Cinematography (black and white) - Gregg Toland
     * Best Sound Mixing - John Aalberg
     * Best Music Score - Bernard Herrmann

   Boos were heard almost every time Citizen Kane was referred to during
   the Oscars ceremony that year. 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.

   The American Film Institute put the film at the top of its " 100
   Greatest Movies" list; it has been selected for preservation in the
   United States National Film Registry; and it is consistently in the top
   30 on the Internet Movie Database. Beginning in 1962, and every ten
   years since, it has been voted the best film ever made by the Sight and
   Sound critics' poll. The quote, "Rosebud," was listed as no. 17 on the
   American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes. The film
   has also ranked number one in the following film "best of" lists:
   Editorial Jaguar, FIAF Centenary List, France Critics Top 10,
   Kinovedcheskie Russia Top 10, Romanian Critics Top 10, Time Out
   Magazine Greatest Films, and Village Voice 100 Greatest Films.

   Other Awards
     * NYFCC Best Picture for 1941

Criticism

   Despite its status, Citizen Kane is not entirely without its critics.
   Boston University film scholar Ray Carney, although noting its
   technical achievements, criticized what he saw as the film's lack of
   emotional depth, shallow characterization and empty metaphors. Listing
   it amongst the most overrated works within the film community, he
   accused the film of being, "an all-American triumph of style over
   substance... indistinguishable from the opera production within it:
   attempting to conceal the banality of its performances by wrapping them
   in a thousand layers of acoustic and visual processing." Of its
   director, he went on to state, "Welles is Kane – in a sense he couldn't
   have intended – substituting razzle-dazzle for truth and hoping no one
   notices the sleight of hand." He also criticized critics and scholars
   of allowing themselves to be pandered to, stating "critics obviously
   enjoy being told what to think or they'd never sit still for the hammy
   acting, cartoon characterizations, tendentious photography,
   editorializing blockings, and absurdly grandiose (and annoyingly
   insistent) metaphors... When will film studies grow up? Even Jedediah
   Leland, the opera reviewer in the film, knew better than to be taken in
   by Salammbo's empty reverberations."

   On the movie's release, Jorge Luis Borges opined, "It suffers from
   grossness, pedantry, dullness. It is not intelligent," and predicted
   "Citizen Kane will endure in the same way certain films of Griffith or
   Pudovkin endure: no one denies their historical value but no one sees
   them again."

   Similarly James Agate wrote, "I thought the photography quite good, but
   nothing to write to Moscow about, the acting middling, and the whole
   thing a little dull... Mr. Welles's high-brow direction is of that
   super-clever order which prevents you from seeing what that which is
   being directed is all about."

Mistakes

   According to Roger Ebert, there are several technical mistakes in the
   film. In the scene in which the young Charles Foster Kane is sent away
   from his parents, the camera dollies backwards revealing a top hat on a
   table; the top hat is teetering back and forth, because the table on
   which it is sitting had just been moved into place to allow the camera
   to dolly between the two halves. Later in the scene, as the camera
   moves with Mrs. Kane to the window in the background, a chair can be
   seen to be yanked out of the picture by a stagehand to clear the way
   for the moving camera. Late in the film, a white cockatoo links one
   scene with the next, but the cockatoo is clearly superimposed because
   the background can be seen through its eye. The "beach party" scene was
   shot in a studio against a blank grey screen, and the background was
   matted in later, but the background is stock footage from an earlier
   RKO Pictures jungle movie and in one shot, pteranodon-like creatures
   can be seen flying through the trees.
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