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Orson Welles Citizen Kane (1941)

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. It was released by RKO
Pictures, and was Welles's first feature film. The film was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories; it
won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Herman Mankiewicz and Welles. Citizen
Kane is considered the greatest film of all time by many critics. It is particularly praised for its innovative
cinematography, music, and narrative structure.
The story is examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a character based in part
upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold
McCormick, and aspects of Welles's own life. Upon its release, Hearst prohibited mention of the film in any of
his newspapers. Kane's career in the publishing world is born of idealistic social service, but gradually evolves
into a ruthless pursuit of power. Narrated principally through flashbacks, the story is revealed through the
research of a newsreel reporter seeking to solve the mystery of the newspaper man's dying word: "Rosebud."

Hearst As Story Model
According to film critic and author Pauline Kael, Mankiewicz "was already caught up in the idea of a movie
about Hearst" when he was still working at the New York Times, in 1925. She learned from his family's
babysitter, Marion Fisher, that she once typed as "he dictated a screenplay, organized in flashbacks. She
recalls that he had barely started on the dictation, which went on for several weeks, when she remarked that
it seemed to be about William Randolph Hearst, and he said, 'You're a smart girl.'"
In Hollywood, Mankiewicz had frequented Hearst's parties until his alcoholism got him barred. And Hearst was
also a person known to Welles. "Once that was decided", wrote author Don Kilbourne, "Mankiewicz, Welles,
and John Houseman, a cofounder of the Mercury Theatre, rented a place in the desert, and the task of
creating Citizen Kane began." This "place in the desert" was on the historic Verde ranch on the Mojave River in
Victorville. In later years, Houseman gave Mankiewicz "total" credit for "the creation of Citizen Kane's script"
and credited Welles with "the visual presentation of the picture."
Mankiewicz was put under contract by Mercury Productions and was to receive no credit for his work as he
was hired as a script doctor. According to his contract with RKO, Welles would be given sole screenplay credit,
and had already written a rough script consisting of 300 pages of dialogue with occasional stage directions
under the title of John Citizen, USA.
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Hearst's Response
Hearing about the film enraged Hearst so much that he banned any advertising, reviewing, or mentioning of it
in his papers, and had his journalists libel Welles. Following lobbying from Hearst, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer, Louis B. Mayer, acting on behalf of the whole film industry, made an offer to RKO Pictures of $805,000
to destroy all prints of the film and burn the negative. Welles used Hearst's opposition to Citizen Kane as a
pretext for previewing the movie in several opinion-making screenings in Los Angeles, lobbying for its artistic
worth against the hostile campaign that Hearst was waging.
[
When George Schaefer of RKO rejected Hearst's offer to suppress the film, Hearst banned every newspaper
and station in his media conglomerate from reviewing or even mentioning the movie. He also had many
movie theaters ban it, and many did not show it through fear of being socially exposed by his massive
newspaper empire. The documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane lays the blame for Citizen Kane's relative
failure squarely at the feet of Hearst. The film did decent business at the box office; it went on to be the sixth
highest grossing film in its year of release, a modest success its backers found acceptable. Nevertheless, the
film's commercial performance fell short of its creators' expectations. In The Chief: The Life of William
Randolph Hearst, David Nasaw points out that Hearst's actions were not the only reason Kane failed, however:
the innovations Welles made with narrative, as well as the dark message at the heart of the film (that the
pursuit of success is ultimately futile) meant that a popular audience could not appreciate its merits.
In a pair of Arena documentaries about Welles's career produced and broadcast domestically by the BBC in
1982, Welles claimed that during opening week, a policeman approached him one night and told him: "Do not
go to your hotel room tonight; Hearst has set up an undressed, underage girl to leap into your arms when you
enter and a photographer to take pictures of you. Hearst is planning to publish it in all of his papers." Welles
thanked the man and stayed out all night. However, it is not confirmed whether this was true. Welles also
described how he accidentally bumped into Hearst in an elevator at the Fairmont Hotel when Kane was
opening in San Francisco. Welles's father had been friends with Hearst, so Welles tried to comfortably ask if
Hearst would see the film. Hearst ignored him. "As he was getting off at his floor, I said 'Charles Foster Kane
would have accepted.' No reply", recalled the director. "And Kane would have you know. That was his style."
Although Hearst's efforts to suppress it damaged the film's success, they backfired in the long run, since
almost every reference to Hearst's life and career made today typically includes a reference to the film's
parallel to it. The irony of Hearst's efforts is that the film is now inexorably connected to him. This connection
was reinforced by the publication in 1961 of W. A. Swanberg's extensive biography, Citizen Hearst.

Cinematography

A deep focus shot: everything, including the hat in the foreground and the boy (young Kane) in the distance, is
in sharp focus.
Deep Focus - In nearly every scene in the film, the foreground, background and everything in between are all
in sharp focus
Low-Angle Shots - Were used to display a point of view facing upwards, thus allowing ceilings to be shown in
the background
Storytelling Techniques
Flashback A scene or event that happened before the beginning of a story [movie] or at an earlier point.
Kanes story is told entirely in flashback using different points of view
Multiple Narrators -- Welles uses multiple narrators to recount Kane's life. Each narrator recounts a different
part of Kane's life, with each story partly overlapping. The use of the reporter Thompson acts as a substitute
for the audience, questioning Kane's associates and piecing together his life.
Parody -- An imitation of a serious work of art. The News on the March segment is a parody of The March of
Time newsreel series
Montage -- A technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense
space, time, and information. Specifically, montage could work by 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 the breakfast montage,
Welles chronicles the breakdown of Kane's first marriage in five vignettes that condense 16 years of story time
into two minutes of screen time.

Special Effects
Welles also pioneered visual effects in order to cheaply shoot things like crowd scenes, large interior spaces,
and to efficiently emphasize plot points. For example:
Miniatures small scale reproductions Welles used to make the film look much more expensive than it truly
was, such as various shots of Xanadu
Close-ups -- A loud, full-screen close-up of a typewriter typing a single word ("weak"), magnifies the review for
the Chicago Inquirer.

Soundtrack
"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, Kane begrudgingly wishes
him a "Merry Christmas." Suddenly we are taken to a shot of his guardian 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
image, is what makes for a seamless narrative structure.

Radio Techniques -- Welles also carried over techniques from radio not yet popular in the movies (though
they would become staples). For example, 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 gave the impression of
a whole town talking and, equally important, what the town was talking about.
Overlapping Dialogue -- One character speaks before another finishes. Welles considered this more realistic
than the stage and movie tradition of characters not stepping on each other's sentences.
J-Cut - 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 visuals did.

Music
Score -- Original music written specifically to accompany a film. Citizen Kane used "radio scoring," musical cues
which typically lasted between five and fifteen seconds to bridge the action or suggest a different emotional
response. One of the most effective musical cues was the "Breakfast Montage." The scene begins with a
graceful waltz theme and gets darker with each variation on that theme as the passage of time leads to the
hardening of Kane's personality and the breakup of his marriage to Emily.

Identify:
1. Charles Foster Kane


2. Xanadu


3. Rosebud


4. Jerry Thompson


5. Susan Alexander


6. Walter Parks Thatcher


7. Mr. Bernstein


8. Jedediah Leland


9. Raymond



Questions
1. Where and in what financial circumstances was Kanes childhood spent?


2. How does Kane end up in the position of being sent to the East Coast to live with Thatcher? Why is he
sent away?


3. Kane gains full control of his possessions at the age of ____________ and enters the world of
___________ journalism (a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched
news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers). He takes control of the
newspaper, the __________ ___________ ___________, and hires all the best journalists. He also
manipulates public opinion for the _______________ ___________ _________.
4. Kanes first marriage was to Emily Monroe Norton, a _____________s niece, and runs for the office of
______________ of New York State.

5. Describe how Kanes marriage and political career end:



6. Describe Kanes marriage to Susan Alexander and how it ultimately ends:



7. How are Kanes last years spent?



8. What does Thompson finally conclude about Rosebud?



9. What is revealed to the audience about Rosebud in the ending of the film?



10. What do you think Rosebud symbolizes?