Fathomless Field: Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941)
Film Analysis in 10 Slides
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Awards & Accolades
Citizen Kane was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories, and it won for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles. It stood at number 1 in Sight & Sound poll of critics for 50 consecutive years till Hitchcock’s Vertigo took its place in 2012. Citizen Kane is “probably the one that has started the largest number of filmmakers on their careers.” — François Truffaut
Background
Orson Welles was wooed by RKO pictures to make his first film, after his notorious broadcast of the adaptation of HG Well’s novel “The War of the Worlds”, with complete artistic control. Welles collaborated with Herman J. Mankiewicz who based the screenplay on the newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst whom he knew socially but hated him after Mankiewicz’s drinking made him unwelcome to Hearst’s castle San Simeon (see the picture above). Unfortunately, the film failed at the box office thanks to Hearst’s disruption of the film once he came to know that it was modelled on him.
Synopsis
After the passing away of the elderly newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane in his mansion named Xanadu, the reporter Thomson is asked to investigate the meaning of “Rosebud”, the last word that Kane uttered before his death. Thompson’s search takes him first to the library of Thatcher, who was the guardian of the young Kane. After reading Thatcher’s recollections of Kane in his diary, Thompson meets Kane’s manager Bernstein, Kane’s best friend Leland, Kane’s second wife Susan and Kane’s butler Raymond to get to know their accounts of him.
Structure
Unlike the chronological structure of biographical films of that period, Kane’s life is uncovered through a series of flashbacks, recollected by those whom Thompson meets in Citizen Kane. Thus, his search for the meaning of “Rosebud” leads to an investigation of Kane’s life, making it “a kind of metaphysical detective story” (Borges). The audience has to put together the fragments and construct the story of the film. The News on the March, shown in the beginning of the film, gives a general idea of Kane’s life, helping in piecing together the story.
Borges on the Film
Jorge Luis Borges, in his insightful review of Citizen Kane, wrote about the banality of Kane yearning for “the humble sled he played with as a child” in his death bed. However, his last word “Rosebud” that he uttered while dropping the snow globe (a mise-en-abyme), gives Thompson a goal to dig into Kane’s life. In the end though the fragments don’t make a whole. As Borges has written “Kane is a chaos of appearances” and the film is “a labyrinth with no center”. Borges’s guess was that Citizen Kane will be only of historical value but fortunately it is avidly watched by film buffs even today.
Deep Focus
In cinematography, Deep Focus refers to keeping everything in the foreground, middle ground, and background in focus. It’s done using a small aperture or by using a wide-angle lens. Citizen Kane’s cinematographer Gregg Toland shot several scenes in the film in deep focus. An example is the scene in which Kane’s mother signs the papers for giving away her son to Thatcher so that he can grow in the city under his care. Kane’s father is also in the foreground along with them making a feeble protest against it. In the far distance we can see the boy Kane playing in the snow through the window.
Bazin on the Film
The renowned French film critic and film theorist André Bazin wrote how the classical editing separated reality into successive shots, ordering them. “Orson Welles started a revolution by systematically employing a depth of focus that had so far not been used…It is no longer the editing that selects what we see, thus giving it an a priori significance, it is the mind of the spectator which is forced to discern”…”the dramatic spectrum proper to the scene.” (Bazin) He cited the example of the long take in which Susan attempts suicide which would have been done in 4 or 5 shots in other films.
David Fincher’s Mank (2020)
The authorship of the screenplay of Citizen Kane was controversial as Mankiewicz wouldn’t have got credit as per the contract. Although he got it eventually, the Fincher film is critical of Welles for taking joint credit for the screenplay. The general critical consensus was that Welles’s contributions transformed Mankiewicz’s script “from a solid basis for a story into an authentic plan for a masterpiece” (Robert L Carringer). Also, the film tries to make a hero out of Mankiewicz with fictitious scenes suggesting that he stood up against giving donation for the Republican gubernatorial candidate and took on the Media Moghul Hearst.
Closing Thoughts
It’ll be interesting to know in which position Citizen Kane will stand in this year’s BFI Sight & Sound poll. Even if it continues to slip further in this poll, it is likely to be among the Top 10 American films for long.
In the end of the film, Thompson is unable to find out the meaning of “Rosebud” but the audience is shown what it is. This is not of much help as Kane continues to be a mystery. The term “Depth of field” denotes the distance between the closest and the farthest objects that are in focus. Figuratively speaking, despite having a high depth of field in various scenes, the film is a fathomless field as we cannot know Kane fully. Citizen Kane dazzles us with its complexity and ambiguity.
