Technically speaking, this film is a masterpiece. Music, cinematography, direction, structure- it’s all there and it all works astoundingly well. The acting is sharp and a testament to Orson Welles’s attention to detail. He demands daring shots, scandalous content, and an edginess rarely seen in cinema. In short, Citizen Kane is on a completely separate level from just about everything that came before it.
The only problem with the film? Partway through the film, Charles Foster Kane becomes a very unlikeable man. He is corrupted and consumed by the very things he set out to defy. As masterful as it all is, it is hard to continue caring about someone who pulls such a harsh 180. There is no final-reel turnaround which, while possibly being more realistic, saps the fun out of what was building up to be a through-and-through triumph of good. Maybe it’s all intentional and just part of the unparalleled genius of Orson Welles. Perhaps future viewings will elucidate that for me.
Hollywood was too cowardly to embrace Citizen Kane when it came out because it was loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst. At the time of its release, Hearst was still the most powerful name in print media and was prepared to ruin anyone who came out in support of the film. After Hearst died and Citizen Kane ran on television in the 1950s, its stature was raised.
I think that some of the gushing fervor for Kane was initially a release of pent-up admiration by those who were too afraid of Hearst to get behind the film upon its release. Over time, this love became institutionalized among film historians and teachers of motion picture making. That’s not to say it wasn’t warranted. Orson Welles (in his early years at least) was a national treasure. He was a powerful force in theatre and radio. That Citizen Kane was Welles’s first film boggles the mind because he was an outsider and didn’t know much about how to make a film, yet he created something unlike anything the world had ever seen.
Maybe I’m just being ornery and trying not to jump on the Kane bandwagon. Or maybe I still don’t fully appreciate just how revolutionary this film was. I know it was groundbreaking because it defied Hollywood convention. Welles was not content to fit the mold. He was an experimenter, a tinkerer, an iconoclast. Citizen Kane is technically majestic, bold beyond all measure for going after Hearst, and stunning when you realize that Welles was only 25 years old when the film was shot.
The unlikeable turn of Kane still bugs me to this day and I cannot shake the thought that its hype is slightly false because Hollywood wanted to make up for past indiscretions. I have to wonder what is really being praised with Citizen Kane-is it the film or the filmmaker? I respect both immensely but I can’t elevate it to my highest rating just yet. Maybe it will get there someday.
Original Rating: 4.25 out of 5
New Rating: 4.5 out of 5
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