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Citizen Kane (English, 1941)

Updated: Sep 16, 2024

Citizen Kane, considered by many critics to be the best film ever made, was the directorial debut of Orson Welles and is believed to be loosely based on the life of the media mogul William Randolph Hearst.



The plot


The film unfolds as a journalistic investigation into the life of media tycoon Charles Foster Kane (played by Orson Welles) following his death at Xanadu, his opulent estate in Florida. Unsatisfied with the newsreel obituary his team has compiled, newsman Rawlston (played by Philip Van Zandt) assigns his deputy, Jerry Thompson (played by William Alland), to uncover the real man behind the public image. They believe the key to unlock this elusive thing called Charlie Kane's "essence" lies in the last word he reportedly uttered before dying: "Rosebud." The film presents a portrait of Citizen Kane that Thompson pieces together from the recollections of those who knew the late business magnate.


Charlie Kane began life modestly as the son of Mary Kane (played by Agnes Moorehead), who ran Mrs. Kane's Boarding House. In 1868, a defaulting lodger, Fred Graves, settled his debt to Mrs. Kane by leaving her what was thought to be a worthless mineshaft, the Colorado Lode. However, the land's value skyrockets when gold is discovered there. Since Charlie is still a child, his mother appoints the firm of the banker Walter Parks Thatcher (played by George Coulouris) as the trustee of the newfound fortune. She also places Charlie under Thatcher's guardianship to provide him with a top-tier education and escape his abusive father, Jim Kane (played by Harry Shannon). As a result, Charlie grows up as a trust fund kid.


Thatcher invests the mine's proceeds expertly, hence, by the time Charlie turns 25, he controls the world's sixth-largest private fortune, derived from a conglomerate with interests in industries as varied as oil, real estate, and shipping. However, the only business that captures Charlie's imagination is an obscure newspaper that Thatcher's firm had acquired through foreclosure. Charlie transforms the New York Inquirer into a leading purveyor of yellow journalism, much to the dismay of its incumbent editor, Herbert Carter (played by Erskine Sanford), who leaves in disgust. Charlie's trusted lieutenant in running the business is Mr. Bernstein (played by Everett Sloane), while his close friend from school, Jedediah Leland (played by Joseph Cotten), serves as the paper's drama critic. As a newspaper proprietor, Charlie Kane acquires an inflated ego, appointing himself as the guardian of the American public and using his growing media empire of newspapers and radio stations to propagate polarizing political positions.


On the personal front, Charlie marries Emily Mary Norton (played by Ruth Warrick), the niece of the sitting President. However, their marriage quickly begins to unravel as Charlie is a workaholic and they have little in common. Tensions mount further when Charlie's newspaper takes editorial stances against the President. The marriage, which lasts for sixteen years, reaches a breaking point when Emily discovers his affair with Susan Alexander (played by Dorothy Comingore), a young woman who works at a department store's sheet music counter. The dalliance is exposed by Jim W. Gettys (played by Ray Collins), Charlie's rival in a gubernatorial race—his ill-fated and sole attempt at a political career. Following the public scandal, Emily divorces him, and two years later, she dies in a car accident, along with Charlie's only son.


After the divorce, Charlie marries Susan and launches her career as an opera singer, going so far as to build an opera house in Chicago for her debut and providing fawning coverage in his newspapers. While Charlie is a committed Pygmalion, Susan, who lacks any real talent, is a reluctant Galatea. Unable to endure the critics' ridicule and the relentless pressure from Charlie to perform, Susan attempts suicide, finally causing Charlie to back off. Eventually, she leaves him.


Charlie, now seventy, dies bitter, alone, and unloved, surrounded by the expensive ephemera he has accumulated. The people cataloging his belongings discard his cheap tchotchkes into a furnace, including the sled he played with as a child, which bears the name "Rosebud."


Observations


Rosebud


Despite his efforts, Thompson could not decipher what "Rosebud" is, but he perceptively concludes that it represents a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle—a piece that could explain much of Charles Kane's behavior and the life he led. The sled Rosebud is the embodiment of his lost childhood and the mother's love that was snatched away. Another reminder of his childhood in the Colorado countryside is a glass paperweight containing a snow-covered log cabin, which he held in his hand at the moment of his death. In his final moments, he literally clung to his abridged childhood.


None of the five people Thompson relies on in his investigation—Thatcher, Mr. Bernstein, Leland, Susan, and the butler Raymond (played by Paul Stewart)—could uncover the missing piece of the puzzle that was Charlie Kane, despite their long associations with him. However, Leland and Susan accurately identify his pathological need to be liked as the driving force behind his actions, though they don't know where this impulse originates. Since neither Leland nor Susan mentions Charlie's childhood to Thompson, it is reasonable to infer that Charlie never discussed this topic with them. While Thatcher and Bernstein were business associates, it's astounding that Charlie never confided in Leland, who was supposedly his best friend before they fell out, or in Susan, his wife.


Charlie's preferential attachment to his mother, rather than his father, is clear from his body language in the brief scene where all three are present. Although his mother relinquished guardianship of Charlie to a bank with his best interests in mind, most children would see this as abandonment. Her behavior during their parting also suggests she was not emotionally expressive. As a result, Charlie's actions as an adult were largely driven by his need to find the love he was denied in childhood. Rosebud symbolizes the counterfactual life he might have lived in the snowy village of Colorado. Tragically, he confuses approval with love and seeks human attachment as one would with a dog—by bestowing treats. He never develops empathy, possibly because he is either incapable of it or suppresses it out of a fear of abandonment—a lack that makes genuine love impossible.


Charlie cultivates a self-image of being a great man with a strong sense of noblesse oblige. He seeks to validate this self-image in both his professional and personal life. Professionally, he uses his media empire as a platform to attack Wall Street, industrialists, politicians, and even his own father-in-law, the President. His ill-fated political campaign is an extension of his desire for adulation, offering him a chance to champion the masses more directly than through mere editorializing. Today, we might call him a populist.


Charlie vaguely suggests that his advocacy might have a self-serving aspect, implying that it is preferable for this crusade against capitalism to be led by an insider like himself rather than by an outsider. Yet, it would be inaccurate to label him a hypocrite, as he is willing to face financial losses to maintain his public image of integrity. For example, he is a major shareholder in the Public Transit Company, one of the companies his newspapers criticize. When Thatcher points out that his newspapers are losing a million dollars a year, Charlie memorably replies that at that rate, he would go bankrupt in 60 years.


Charlie Kane is adept at making money. After the Great Depression of 1929, when he signs away his stake in his media empire to Thatcher, the banker predicts that Charlie will eventually become wealthy again. To Charlie, money itself holds little value; instead, it is a means to prove his greatness to the world. When Thatcher accuses him of financial imprudence for choosing to buy things rather than invest, he fails to understand what Charlie is truly purchasing: validation.


Charlie's quest for validation of his self-crafted lofty image extends beyond the professional realms of journalism and politics; it also permeates his personal life. One notable episode involves an unfinished review of Susan's debut opera performance, which he reads on Leland's typewriter. The commentary is unflattering and acerbic. Finding Leland too drunk to complete it, Charlie finishes the review in the same unfavorable tone. By publishing this disparaging assessment of his wife's performance in his own newspaper, Charlie Kane presents himself to the world as a man of principle.


Leland contends that Charlie's fervor to turn Susan into an opera star was partly due to his humiliation over a salacious newspaper headline about him being discovered in a love nest with a "singer". According to Leland, the fact that "singer" was placed in quotation marks insulted Charlie, as it implied that his paramour was not respectable. Susan's emotional anguish from being forced into a career for which she lacked both talent and ambition was merely collateral damage. Leland may only be partially correct in his analysis as there could have been another motivation at play.


There is reason to infer that Susan reminded Charlie of his mother, and that, in his own, albeit cruel way, he was attempting to elevate his mother. He first met Susan on his way to the Western Manhattan Warehouse in Colorado, where his mother's personal belongings, including presumably Rosebud, were stored. The fact that he made the journey for items that held no financial value to him suggests his emotional state at the time. Thus, he was primed to be charmed by Susan's simplicity and kindness, especially since she was unaware of his wealth and status. When she mentioned that her mother had wanted her to be an opera singer, he fixated on this idea. Perhaps, subconsciously, he believed he was helping his own mother fulfill her dreams—the tragic irony being that he continued down this path long after it became evident that it was more of a nightmare than a dream for Susan.


Rosebud is thus not merely symbolic of Charlie's lost childhood but a void that can never be filled.


Ozymandias


The film alludes to Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan, which opens with a reference to Xanadu—the same name given to Charles Kane's Florida estate—where Kubla Khan decreed a pleasure dome to be built. A more fitting literary parallel might be found in Shelley's Ozymandias, which recounts the story of a traveler discovering a shattered statue in a vast desert, with an inscription boasting of a once-mighty king's power, now serving as a reminder of the futility of human vanity against the inexorable passage of time.


During his ascent, Charles is intoxicated by his own power. This sense of grandiosity is evident from the very beginning. The first issue of the New York Inquirer published under his leadership features a front-page Declaration of Principles, in which he pompously offers his personal guarantee to provide readers with truthful news. His conceit is fueled by Leland, who requests a signed copy of the document, suggesting it might one day hold as much significance as the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence! Leland, though a friend, depends on Charles for his livelihood, which explains his flattery. Sycophancy is on peak display at a raucous office party where hired performers dance to a song praising Charles Kane.


The adulation from paid minions and his business successes inflate Charles's ego, and, like many modern-day billionaires, he fancies himself as a key player in global politics. Returning from a trip to Europe in 1935, he confidently declares that there will be no war, having spoken with the leaders of the UK, Germany, and France. His signals his status through the extravagant Xanadu, where he builds a private mountain, creates a zoo reminiscent of Noah's Ark, and adorns it with precious antiques.


However, towards the end, he fades into irrelevance. All the king's horses and all the king's men cannot restore his standing in the public square. The newsreel obituary somewhat humiliatingly refers to him merely as "Xanadu's landlord" in its introduction—a reduction akin to describing Thomas Jefferson as the owner of Monticello.


The fourth estate


Charlie Kane's journalistic practices are a far cry from the commitment to truth he publicly espouses through the Declaration of Principles. In his case, "truth" is merely a narrative, and the media is a battleground for competing narratives. This manipulation of facts and the blurring of lines between journalism and activism are all too familiar to us today. However, it is surprising to discover that such practices existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the period in which the film is set.


Charlie Kane's media empire rests on two pillars. The first is scandal—such as sensationalizing the disappearance of a man's wife with reckless speculation, even going so far as to send a reporter posing as a government official to threaten the husband with arrest. While this is deplorable, the second pillar—political advocacy based on fabricated facts—is even more dangerous.


The film highlights the role of sensationalist journalism in the Spanish-American War of 1898, which was fought over issues related to Cuba's independence from Spain. After the war, Spain relinquished control of Cuba and ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. Newspapers like William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, which the film uses as a model, published lurid stories of Spanish atrocities in Cuba, often embellishing or even fabricating events to sell more papers and generate sympathy for the Cuban rebels. A memorable line in the film is when Charlie Kane tells a reporter who can't find any conflict in Cuba, "You provide the prose poems; I'll provide the war." Bernstein justifies this dishonest journalism by arguing that the war ultimately led the U.S. to build the Panama Canal as is it highlighted the need for a faster maritime route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for the U.S. Navy.


Vibes and visuals


The film's dramatic impact is enhanced by a mosaic of stylistic elements that were innovative for its time. Four of these elements stand out.


First, the visual progression of the narrative across frames features many creative flourishes. For example, the dissolution of Charlie and Elaine's marriage is depicted through a series of dinner table conversations between the couple that dissolve into each other. Another clever visual transition is the move from the door of the apartment where Charlie and Susan's trysts occur to a photograph of the same door on a newspaper, accompanied by a sensational headline. A photograph as a transitional device between scenes is also used when Charlie sees a picture of the city's best newsmen at the rival paper, The Chronicle. This leads to a scene where the same group is being photographed at the New York Inquirer, all having been poached by Charlie. A newspaper headline also serves as a bridge between scenes when the caption of Charlie and Susan's wedding merges into a scene of the newlyweds leaving their ceremony. Later, the progression of Susan's opera career is depicted through a series of news clippings.


Second, the film's non-verbal cues emphasize the sphinx-like nature of Charlie Kane's character. The structure of the film as a futile investigation into the significance of "Rosebud" is itself pregnant with meaning. Additionally, the film's imagery accentuates the sense of enigma surrounding the protagonist. The film opens and closes with a shot of barbed wire encircling the Xanadu estate, marked by a "No Trespassing" sign. Throughout the film, Thompson's face is either turned away from the camera or obscured by dim lighting. The ominous grandeur of the library where Thompson reads Thatcher's unpublished memoir, combined with the stony countenance of the librarian and the visual of sunlight streaming onto the library table, signal the presence of a confounding mystery.


Third, the film weaves a narrative through six different viewpoints—five characters and a newsreel obituary—that lends verisimilitude to the story. For instance, the scene of Susan leaving Charlie is shown from her perspective, but what happens immediately afterward is described later by Raymond, Charlie's butler. These intersecting narratives often present events out of order, revisit the same moments from different perspectives, and sometimes reveal future events before the past ones are fully explained. An example of this is when Leland recalls Charlie finding his unflattering review of Susan's debut performance. The lead-up to this incident is later shown from Susan's perspective, including the tense preparations and her performance at the opera house that Leland attends as a drama critic. While this narrative technique has been used in many other films, famously in Kurosawa's Rashomon and Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Citizen Kane was one of the early pioneers of this style.


Finally, the screenplay is enriched with pithy reflections and witty banter. These range from philosophical musings (Mr. Bernstein describing old age as "the only disease one does not want to be cured of"), to commentary on journalism (Charlie declaring that "if the headline is big enough, the news is big enough"), to sarcasm (Charlie replies "with great difficulty" when a reporter asks how he found business conditions in Europe), and biting criticism (Leland saying "Charlie never gave anything away, he only left you a tip").



Citizen Kane is a meditation on the transient nature of the human condition and the folly of shaping our lives around a rigid self-image we have created, rather than allowing our actions to be guided by what brings joy to ourselves and others. The film's final scenes, which display a labyrinth of the deceased man's useless possessions, serve as a powerful commentary on the absurdity of materialism. It is a sophisticated film that seamlessly blends story, imagery, narrative technique, superb acting, and dialogue to not only entertain but also challenge us to unravel its many mysteries. It is astonishing that Citizen Kane is the work of a first time filmmaker.

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