12/08/10 - Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane (1941, 119 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033467/

This is usually regarded as the best movie ever made. And if not, then it's at least in the top couple or so. And if it's not even there, then it's usually a questionable list. I knew all this going in - Citizen Kane is the pinnacle of film making, the best of the best, unquestionably at the top. Now for me to see if all these claims are correct.

The film details the life of newspaper magnate Kane (Orson Welles) after he dies and everyone wants to know why the last word he said was "Rosebud." Trying to find this out is reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) as he talks to multiple prominent figures in Kane's life. The first source he uses is actually the archive of Kane's guardian when he was young, one Walter Parks Thatcher (George Coulouris). The second is Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane) who managed much of Kane's finances. The third is Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten) who was Kane's first editor at his newspaper and best friend. The final two interviews are with Kane's second wife Susan Alexander Kane (Dorothy Comingore) and his butler Raymond (Paul Stewart). The film is also directed by Orson Welles.

I can quickly and right away say that Citizen Kane is a 10/10 movie. But it's more than that. Citizen Kane is breathtaking for many reasons. For one, Citizen Kane is basically a modern movie. For something as old as 1941 to be called a modern movie is insane to me. I mean, that's almost 70 years old. I loved Stalag 17 and Sunset Blvd. because I viewed them as essentially modern as well and Citizen Kane is older than either of them. What I mean by this is that Citizen Kane could basically be remade scene by scene and it would still mostly entertain modern audiences. While I haven't seen Ben-Hur I've been told it's basically watched now so that one can say they saw it because it has aged so poorly. While I think that might be a contributing factor to why many people watch Citizen Kane in the first place, I would find it hard to believe someone would walk away from watching this movie and say "That movie was so boring." or any other common complaint I feel people lump on movies from the 1950s or earlier.

So what exactly makes Citizen Kane a modern movie? Well, to me it was the camerawork. The camera seemed to constantly be moving and when it wasn't moving it was taking some incredibly bizarre angle that was adding a second layer of analysis to the film. First, about the moving. There's noted shots where the camera sweeps across the scene to give a more grandiose spectacle. The coolest one of these to me was when the camera glided between some words in a sign so that it could gaze down into a bar from a window on the ceiling. Then the scene faded to being inside the bar and looking at from inside what the camera was looking at from outside. Both of these things made these simply ten seconds really cool and modern. I mean, all the camera did was go between two letters in a sign but if this same shot was done now, there would probably be some CGI added or something to make it easier. Welles did this all through prop manipulation and other simple things and this adds to the charm of the shot. While I singled out this example there's tons of other cool shots where the camera sweeps across a room to really give this grand effect to everything. On the other side of the coin, when the camera isn't moving around and making the movie larger than life, it's static and commenting on the film. The noted example here is when Jedediah is talking with Kane at the newspaper office. The camera basically lays on the floor for these shots as we see Jedediah and Kane interacting. It's weird and different and probably really unique for 1941 standards. Anyway, it adds this other layer of commentary on the film as we view Jedediah and Kane from different angles. Obviously these figures aren't supposed to be equals but these shots almost insinuate this. I'm not quite entirely sure what to make of it except that it was cool to see. I would imagine with some further reading, it would be possible to find essays devoted to this particular scene.

Besides these two camerawork staples, the movie is noted for its use of deep focus which basically means everything in the shot is in focus. The most cited example of this (and another example of a scene on which essays have been written) is in the beginning when Kane's mother is talking with Thatcher in the foreground, his dad is in the middleground and Kane is in the background through a window playing in the snow. Everything is in crisp and sharp focus. Apparently this was almost groundbreaking back in 1941 and while I can't really comment on this, I can say that it again contributes to that modern feel I mentioned above. This is used throughout the film but this is apparently the most important use of the technique.

Basically, Citizen Kane employs lots of techniques that were in use at the time but only primitively. Citizen Kane takes these basic techniques, markedly improves them and then puts them all together to make a movie. This movie isn't dated in the slightest. Colorize it, add some current big name actors, do the same scenes in the same order and put it out and it'd probably be a big hit. Sure it wouldn't get "Best Film Ever" status since it's importance to film history would then be lost but the plot and excitement of watching an awesome movie would still be present. Keep in mind this is all coming from a 2010 audience, so a 1941 audience was probably floored at how incredible everything came together.

All this considered, I think the thing I liked the most in Citizen Kane was the unique storytelling. I love how Sunset Blvd. and many other noirs are told which is with the protagonist looking back on the events that led to the current situation. Frequently the protagonist is even dead which adds this omniscient feeling to everything. Here, though we have almost the exact opposite but a technique which still works marvelously. In Citizen Kane, a reporter goes around and interviews people about Kane and we learn his tale in segments from other people's points of view. Could they be lying profusely to make themselves look better? Of course they could - and there's not really any way to tell. Half of Citizen Kane could be a complete fabrication but this is the story of Kane that will be remembered. It's this lack of trust in everything that's happening contrasted with the supposedly factual nature of the newspaper (which is again mocked through Kane's downfall as a newspaper tycoon) that adds another deeper layer of confusion to Citizen Kane. It's not to say we can't trust anything that happens in the movie, it's just this uneasiness that I think adds to the mystique of the movie. How many of these techniques in plot were foreign to a 1941 audience are difficult for me to tell, but I would imagine that, just as with the camerawork, they found this movie quite enthralling back then.

A few months ago my roommate asked me what my favorite genre of movie was. I didn't really know but said that I enjoyed character dramas and cheesy action movies the most and that comedies weren't really my favorite. I've narrowed this down further as I've been recently been looking back at my full list of movies from 2010 and noted what I've seen and liked. The first subgenre that I find to be usually pretty good is crime dramas. Action crime movies can still be good but the crime drama is almost always going to be good if it has a good enough plot and some decent acting. The other subgenre that I love is the "fall from grace" story. I'm sure this has another name but I don't know what it really is. Basically it's when one character starts off angelic and then through events in the movie plummets and we watch this character downfall. Some quality examples include Apocalypse Now where we see psychotic events traumatize everyone - audience included; Lawrence of Arabia from last month where we saw Lawrence do so much greatness only to be reduced to a nobody; or Taxi Driver where a character slowly goes insane and is eventually reduced to an ironically heroic murderer. These character dramas go into the deepest parts of the human soul and explore the worst parts of human nature. Citizen Kane does this just as good as these other great movies. Though I think Apocalypse Now shows the fall of humanity probably better than other movie I've ever seen, Citizen Kane does a fantastic job at showing Kane's fall from grace into just another corrupt figure. I think the best example of this is when he receives his declaration from Jedediah and promptly tears it up. At this point the character is lost forever and his downward spiral just progresses faster and faster.

Finally, the linchpin of everything in Citizen Kane is Orson Welles as Kane and the director. He was but a young 25 when this movie was directed and yet Welles does one of the best jobs I've ever seen. He completely commands the stage with his character and with a figure as large as Kane that's so important. Add to this superb acting job all the fantastic technical innovations, the expert usage of camerawork, and the complex and layered plot and I wouldn't hesitate to say this is the best single job done for a movie by an individual in the history of cinema. Okay, Welles didn't come up with all those techniques by himself nor did he completely write the story himself, but his contributions still loom large in both of these things and he deserves as much credit as possible. I'm not far from 25 and so these accomplishments are even more mind-boggling to me.

Overall, I gave this film a 10/10. Citizen Kane lives up to all the hype I had placed on it. Is it the greatest film of all time? Probably not, I think that still goes to The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II (which basically form one large film). Is Citizen Kane the most influential film of all time. I'd say that it probably is. I'm glad I finally saw it and that it didn't disappoint me in the slightest. I think the biggest compliment I can give Citizen Kane is that this shouldn't be labeled as a movie you watch just to say you've seen, but rather a movie you should watch simply because it's worthy of so many of those high accolades.