Citizen Kane: Film Analysis

The Authorship Controversy<r>Summary

Orson Welles dominates Citizen Kane. He produced, directed, and starred in it, and his overpowering presence both on and off screen has often overshadowed the fact that the film was actually the result of a successful collaboration between some of the greatest minds in Hollywood at that time. The greatest controversy is over who wrote the script, and this battle has colored much of the discussion of this movie over the years.

Before making Citizen Kane, Welles had been accustomed to taking full credit for works that were often collaborations. When Welles worked with the Mercury Theatre, the Mercury Theatre on the Air scripts were generally credited as studio productions—until the great success of the War of the Worlds radio broadcast. The broadcast generated so much publicity that Welles decided to take full authorship credit, even though it had actually been written by studio writer Howard Koch. The Mercury Theatre continued to encourage Welles to take credit for productions, believing that his name and reputation would bring good publicity. Welles’s reputation as a theatrical genius had been growing since his adolescence, and the Mercury Theatre was more than happy to take advantage of it.

Welles eventually began to buy into his own publicity, and he conveniently disregarded the fact that he was not the sole creative genius behind his troupe’s endeavors. His ego wasn’t welcome when he went to Hollywood to work on Citizen Kane, and, not surprisingly, Hollywood wasn’t willing to give Welles credit he didn’t deserve. Welles met huge opposition when he tried to take full credit for creating Citizen Kane.

Although he played a key role in writing Citizen Kane, Welles did not create the script single-handedly. Much evidence suggests that the original idea for Citizen Kane came from Herman Mankiewicz, a battle-hardened Hollywood scriptwriter. Mankiewicz was well acquainted with William Randolph Hearst, having spent a great deal of time at Hearst’s ranch in San Simeon. Charles Foster Kane, the protagonist of the film, resembles Hearst in many specific, personal ways, and such information could have come only from insider knowledge of Hearst's life, which Welles did not have. Welles did play an important role in creating the script, and few critics doubt that he drew from his personal life, in the same way that Mankiewicz drew from Hearst’s life, to flesh out the character of Charles Foster Kane. Welles, however, was certainly not the only person responsible for the script’s creation.

Mankiewicz collaborated with John Houseman, Welles’s partner at the Mercury Theater, on the initial draft of Citizen Kane. Both Mankiewicz and Houseman wanted writing credit on the final version, but Welles refused. Houseman gave up when Welles dug in his heels, but Mankiewicz had the power of the Hollywood writers’ union behind him. He threatened Welles with legal action in order to be listed as a writer, and Welles yielded. On Oscar night, Citizen Kane won the award for Best Original Screenplay, and this was the only Oscar either Welles or Mankiewicz ever received.

<r>Analysis<r>Filmic Elements<r>Summary

Citizen Kane made cinematic advances on many fronts, and its most significant contribution to cinematography came from the use of a technique known as deep focus. Deep focus refers to having everything in the frame, even the background, in focus at the same time, as opposed to having only the people and things in the foreground in focus. The deep focus technique requires the cinematographer to combine lighting, composition, and type of camera lens to produce the desired effect. With deep focus, a filmmaker can showcase overlapping actions, and mise-en-scène (the physical environment in which a film takes place) becomes more critical. Effectively manipulating the mise-en-scène for deep focus actively engages the whole space of the frame without leaving the viewer confused. Deep focus is most effective in scenes that depict Kane’s loss of control and his personal isolation because it gives the audience a clear view of the space Kane commands as well as the space over which he has no power. Gregg Toland, the cinematographer Welles chose for Citizen Kane, had used the technique in an earlier film he had worked on, The Long Voyage Home, but Citizen Kane marked the first time it was used so extensively or effectively. Citizen Kane introduced Hollywood to the creative potential of other cinematic techniques as well. One such innovation was a technique known as the "wipe," where one image is "wiped" off the screen by another. Other innovations involved unique experiments with camera angles.

Welles’s chosen Mercury Theatre cast was an asset to the film and vital to the success of techniques like deep focus. These cast members were classically trained theatrical actors, and none had ever made a movie before Welles brought them to Hollywood. Their stage training, rather than being overpowering, helped them to place themselves firmly in each scene, which complements the use of deep focus. The cinematography and acting technique combined so perfectly that the total control Welles was given over casting was justified. The combination of innovative techniques, not one individual technique, is what makes Citizen Kane such a cinematically important film.

Citizen Kane employs creative storytelling techniques as well. Acting almost as a biopic (biographical film), Citizen Kane portrays a long period of time realistically, allowing the characters to age as the story goes on. Instead of being told in a linear, completely chronological manner, Kane’s story unfolds in overlapping segments that add more information as each narrator adds his or her story. Telling Kane’s life story entirely in flashbacks was another innovative approach to storytelling. Flashbacks had been used in earlier films, but Citizen Kane used them most effectively. The flashbacks are given from the perspectives of characters who are aging or forgetful, which casts doubt on the memories being discussed. In other words, these are unreliable narrators whose own opinions and interpretations affect their accuracy. The storytelling techniques succeed in painting Charles Foster Kane as an enigma, a tortured, complicated man who, in the end, leaves viewers with more questions than answers and inevitably invokes sympathy rather than contempt.

Welles's achievements in this film marked a new direction in cinema. Many critics argue that Citizen Kane, with its inventive use of lighting and shadow, is the first film noir, or at least the direct predecessor of noir, a genre that employs dark, moody atmosphere to augment the often violent or mysterious events taking place. Citizen Kane introduced Hollywood to the creative potential of cinematic technique. Even apart from the controversy the film stirred, a multitude of innovations made Citizen Kane the most exciting movie in the history of cinema at that time.

<r>Analysis<r>Acting <r>Summary

The principal cast members of Citizen Kane were not Hollywood actors. Rather, they were theatrically trained actors Welles had assembled many years before with his partner and mentor, John Houseman. In 1934, when Welles and Houseman met, Houseman was thirty-three years old and was already highly respected in the theatrical world as an actor, director, and producer. Welles and Houseman produced plays together through the Federal Theatre Project, a program formed under the Works Project Administration (WPA) to provide employment in the cultural arena. Their first project was a daring adaptation of Macbeth—they used black actors and staged it as a voodoo-themed production. In 1937, they both resigned from the Federal Theatre Project after one of their plays, The Cradle Will Rock, was closed down by federal agents because of its leftist politics.

Shortly thereafter, Welles and Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre. The group consisted of many of the elite theater actors of that time, and they were known as the Mercury Players. Eventually, the Mercury Players included actors who went on to make a significant impact in film, such as Joseph Cotten, Everett Sloane, Ruth Warrick, and Agnes Moorehead. Welles and Houseman’s ambition for the Mercury Theatre was to stage the classic plays “with their original speed and violence,” as Houseman once said. Their first play, a modern adaptation of Julius Caesar set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany, was a great success. In 1938, Welles, who had already been working very successfully in radio, formed Mercury Theatre on the Air, a weekly radio broadcast starring his Mercury Players. At this time, radio focused more on drama than music, and the Mercury Players, with their theatrical talents, were extraordinarily well-suited for the medium. Their most famous performance was the 1938 Halloween eve broadcast of War of the Worlds.

The Mercury Players soon moved beyond the limitations of radio. Shortly after the War of the Worlds broadcast, Welles accepted his Hollywood contract and moved west. At first, he flew back to New York to do his weekly radio broadcasts, but he eventually brought the Mercury Players to Los Angeles. Welles and the Mercury Players continued with the weekly Mercury Theatre on the Air radio broadcasts as Welles worked to develop a project for RKO Studios. Welles was anxious to cast his theatrical group in his first movie, but the length of time it was taking for Welles to settle on a project took a financial toll on the actors. Some had to take other jobs. A few got roles in other films, which upset Welles—he’d wanted their debuts to be in his film. The stress ultimately led to a blowup between Welles and Houseman, and their partnership ended.

If the RKO executives had not signed away so much control to Welles, the studio undoubtedly would have objected to Welles’s plan to cast his Mercury Players in the key roles in Citizen Kane. Then, as now, the idea of casting unknowns in a major picture met a great deal of resistance. In fact, Welles maintained that the reason an earlier project he had been developing never got off the ground was that the studio was unwilling to let him cast Lucille Ball, who at that point had never starred in a major picture. In Citizen Kane, however, Welles was able to cast his unknown Mercury Players, and much of the success of the film stems from how well their theatrical training worked within the dramatic framework of the movie. The fact that they were unknowns actually may have contributed to their effectiveness, since more recognizable players may have distracted viewers from the story.

<r>Analysis<r>Biography of William Randolph Hearst<r>Summary

Critics generally agree that Citizen Kane’s protagonist, Charles Foster Kane, is based on William Randolph Hearst, who built a media empire in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Though Citizen Kane is fiction, the number of parallels between Kane and Hearst make the connection between the two undeniable.

William Randolph Hearst was born on April 29, 1863, in San Francisco, California to multimillionaire George Hearst and Phoebe Apperson Hearst. Hearst was an only child, and his mother adored and indulged him. Mother and son often traveled to Europe while George stayed home to oversee his empire. Hearst went to Harvard but never applied himself seriously to his studies. On the verge of flunking out for his rowdy behavior, he decided he’d like to try his hand at the newspaper business. George had taken over a small paper, the San Francisco Examiner, as payment for a debt, and Hearst was determined to run it. He greatly admired Joseph Pulitzer and wanted to emulate his sensationalist style of journalism. Hearst went on to purchase the New York Journal and wooed much of Pulitzer’s staff away from him, much as Kane purchased the staff of his paper’s rival, the Chronicle, in the film. On this foundation Hearst built a national media empire.

Hearst let neither money nor the truth stand in the way of his quest to be the most successful newspaper publisher of all time. For him, the Cuban Revolution of 1895 offered a perfect opportunity to sell more papers. His sensationalist and often false reports from Cuba are widely credited with pushing American intervention and sparking the Spanish American War. One famous anecdote, which made its way into Citizen Kane, tells of Hearst ordering the legendary artist Frederic Remington to send dispatches about the war from Cuba. Remington sent Hearst a telegram saying there was no war. Hearst replied that if Remington furnished the pictures, Hearst would furnish the war. Hearst made up stories about politicians, advocated political assassinations in an editorial just a few months before McKinley was assassinated, staged crimes so his reporters could write about them, and generally took “yellow journalism” (sensationalist journalism) to new depths of irresponsibility.

Around 1918, Hearst met silent movie actress Marion Davies and began what would become a life-long affair. At the time, Hearst was married and had five sons. He and his wife, Millicent Veronica Willson, a former showgirl turned society matron, separated in 1926. Hearst and Willson never divorced, and Hearst and Davies lived together openly even though they never married. Hearst built the magnificent castle San Simeon for Davies, which was the inspiration for Xanadu in Citizen Kane. Hearst's estate differed from Kane's—unlike the lonely fortress Xanadu, San Simeon was full of laughter and parties. Like Kane, however, Hearst was a rapacious collector who filled his castle with possessions, without regard to aesthetics or suitability. When Hearst began to suffer financially in the late 1930s, Davies saved his enterprises by selling off a million dollars in jewelry and real estate and turning the money over to Hearst. Her actions leave no doubt about the strength of their relationship, unlike the shaky bond between Kane and Susan Alexander.

Hearst and Welles probably never met, although each certainly knew of the other. Welles surely felt that Hearst had tried to crimp his early theatrical career. The two men occupied opposite ends of the political spectrum as well. Hearst was wealthy and conservative, hated minorities, distrusted Jews, supported the Nazi party, was an isolationist and an anti-communist, loathed President Roosevelt, and hated the New Deal. Welles’s first big directing job, meanwhile, was with the New York Federal Theatre Project, which was part of the New Deal and supplied acting jobs for unemployed black actors. Welles tended toward liberalism and was accustomed to accepting people for their talents rather than their religion or ethnicity. However, although Hearst and Welles were polar opposites politically and socially, both were smart, egotistical, and indulged by those around them. Welles both loathed Hearst and identified with him, and portraying Kane required him to reconcile these conflicting feelings.

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