CITIZEN KANE (1941) FILM REVIEW

*****

U, 114 Mins

A five star swansong for Charles Foster Kane.

David Fincher’s ‘Mank’ (2020) is currently out on Netflix and it details the race and struggles to get the screenplay of ‘Citizen Kane’ (1941) completed by Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz. I haven’t seen ‘Mank’ yet, but am told it’s brilliant and, with the film currently shaping up as a major Oscar contender, I thought what better time to review the movie being made at its heart…

I don’t know what’s left to say about ‘Citizen Kane’ that hasn’t been already said. It’s a technical triumph - Gregg Toland’s snowy, sinewy cinematography looks especially gothic in the opening Xanadu mansion title credits and especially beautiful and funky in Kane’s newsreel obituary. It features a breathtaking performance from Orson Welles who co-wrote, produced, directed and starred all at the age of just 24! Bernard Herrmann’s score is magnificently ominous and intimidating - painting a vast canvas of a big, broken man. 

But what I love most about ‘Citizen Kane’ is quite how Shakespearean and contemporary it is - even at nearly 80 years old…

In the opening credits, Charles Foster Kane (Welles), a hugely rich newspaper publisher and industrial magnate, dies holding a snow globe and muttering one last word: “rosebud”. 

Kane’s death a major news story around the globe, the producer of his obituary newsreel asks reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) to get to the bottom of the meaning of the word “rosebud”. He sets out interviewing Kane’s closest associates including his alcoholic ex-wife Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore). 

Thompson also uncovers the private archive of late banker Walter Parks Thatcher. Reading Thatcher’s written memoirs, Thompson discovers about the rise and fall of Kane’s personal fortune…

‘Citizen Kane’ is a 20th century Shakespearean tragedy. It’s a story of a big man rising and falling with a particularly tragic ending that ends with the central character’s demise. It also has lashings of mystery evident in Thompson’s pursuits to discover the mystery behind Rosebud with elements of full-bodied Gothic horror in the opening title crawl where Kane’s mansion Xanadu is first revealed with monkeys crawling at its gates…

Orson Welles’s performance is monumental in every shape of the word. Not least because he looks monumental - noticeably taller and bigger than everyone else in the cast. His Charles Foster Kane is a big man in a big suit, but the genius of Welles’s performance is how little he actually seems.

As the movie continues, Kane’s hair greys, his hairline recedes and the pot belly grows. Welles begins to shrink into his suit - a metaphor for Kane’s decline from grace and shrinking of power.

The relationship between Charles and Susan is the beating heart of the film. At first, so loving, but later so hostile and even abusive. The scene where Charles first hits her really got me on the edge of my seat and Dorothy Comingore’s portrayal of Alcoholism is superb. She’s a woman broken by such an abusive relationship.

‘Citizen Kane’s very modern tragedy couldn’t feel more contemporary than it does today. At one stage in the movie, Kane runs for Governor and the newsreel states that this man “could have been President”. It’s hard not to think of America’s current President as a Kane-like figure - a rich, vile man consumed by greed and power-hungry gluttony.

There were also definitely comparisons to be found in the story of Mark Zuckerberg in ‘The Social Network’ (2010). That was another story about a young man who came from nothing, but built his fortunes out of his own intellectual brilliance and his own free will. And Zuckerberg shared Kane’s manifestation of Lord Acton’s quote “power corrupts”.

It’s interesting that ‘The Social Network’ was directed by David Fincher who has now made a movie about the making of ‘Citizen Kane’ in the form of ‘Mank’.

Wherever you stand on the famous feud between Director Welles and Screenwriter Mankiewicz (and film critic Pauline Kael’s assessment that Mr. Mank was the true genius behind ‘Citizen Kane’), the story of Charles Foster Kane has never felt more chillingly contemporary...

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