Citizen Kane was the first feature film directed by Orson Welles, after he had directed two short films previously. Endlessly discussed and dissected by critics and viewers alike, this innovative film is perhaps the most influential ever in film history.
Citizen Kane is rumored to be based on the lives of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, the reclusive aerospace and movie mogul Howard Hughes, and the Chicago utilities magnate Samuel Insull. Welles maintained that the character is a composite of several historical individuals. In F for Fake, Welles claims Kane was originally intended to be based on Hughes (to be played by Joseph Cotten) but he changed it to Hearst. Internally while it was under production, it was referred to as RKO 281. The film premiered on May 1, 1941.
The movie has some parallels to the 1933 movie The Power and the Glory.
The only remaining living cast member is Sonny Bupp who played Kane's young son, Charles Foster Kane III. Robert Wise, who died of heart failure on September 14, 2005, was the last living crew member.
Plot Description
Produced in 1941, the film deals with the inability of Charles Foster Kane (played by Welles) to truly love. Instead Kane has only "Love on my own terms." As a result, Kane eventually alienates every loved one around him and dies a lonely recluse in an opulent, but crumbling estate.
Kane dies in the opening scene of the film; this is followed by a newsreel pastiche documenting Kane's public life (this segment was produced by RKO's actual newsreel department). The remainder of the movie is told through flashbacks being related to a reporter trying to improve the newsreel—the newsreel is regarded as functional but not especially profound, and furthermore the reporter is searching for the meaning behind Mr. Kane's dying word, "rosebud."
What is revealed has been described by Jorge Luis Borges, in a 1941 review, as a "metaphysical detective story. [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... Overwhelmingly, endlessly, Orson Welles shows fragments of the life of the man, Charles Foster Kane, and invites us to combine them and reconstruct him. 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. 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 an unprecedented gesture of Welles' appreciation for Toland's overall contribution to the film) 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 Theater, such as Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead. [top]
Awards
The 1941 Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay was shared by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz as the only Oscar awarded for the film. It was nominated, however, for another eight awards[1]:
Academy Award for Best Picture - Orson Welles, producer
Best Actor in a Leading Role - Orson Welles
Academy Award for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White - Perry Ferguson, A. Roland Fields, Van Nest Polglase, and Darrell Silvera
Best Cinematography, Black-and-White - Gregg Toland
Best Director - Orson Welles
Best Film Editing - Robert Wise
Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture - Bernard Herrmann
Best Sound, Recording - John Aalberg
It should be noted that 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 ever see the light of day considering the threats that William Hearst had made if it did.
It 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 1950s, and its critical fortunes have skyrocketed since. Critics world-wide began crediting it as 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.
Many critics consider Citizen Kane the best film ever made; the American Film Institute ranked it #1 on its "100 Greatest Movies" list; it has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry; and the film is consistently in the top 20 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#17 on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes, a list of top movie quotes. [top]
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