Citizen Kane (1941)

Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane”

Thematic Elements: Orson Welles’s ‘Citizen Kane’ is a film about trying to put the pieces of a puzzle of one man together to assign some sort of identity to him. Who was he? How was he so powerful? What did he value? These are the same questions you could be asking about all powerful men, as none of them seem to be really truly known other than the persona that they present to the world. The opening shot of the film is a fence with a ‘No Trespassing’ sign. This single image plays on the theme presented throughout the film. Kane is a character completely guarded, not allowing anyone too close to him. Those who did begin to know him well and see inside his soul saw nothing of note, only that he had no love for them or others, but only kept his love for himself. Kane wanted love from the people in his life and from the world at large and went through extreme measures to obtain love. The love that Kane sought his whole life is made completely understood through his final word, ‘Rosebud.’ Rosebud being the subject of which the March of Time wants to create a story from. Rosebud ends up being the old sled that he enjoyed as a child, right before his mother sold him to the bankers. The act of his mother and father abandoning him creates this lack that Kane feels for the rest of his life and thus gets actualized through the sled Rosebud – a metaphor for the loss of his innocence, the loss of his childhood, and the loss of love from his parents. This hole in Kane that predicates on the feeling of not being loved enough gets amplified through his life as he tries desperately to fill that hole. He buys a newspaper so readers will love him, he runs for governor so the people of America will love him, and he buys Susan everything she could possibly ask for just to get her to love him. Kane uses all the money he has acquired as mechanisms to acquire love.

Charles Kane embodies the wealthy and powerful of the early 20th century, those who came into their power through industrialization and control over information and resources. The film was written in part by Herman J. Mankiewicz to critique the affluence and mystery of William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was a man who owned many powerful newspapers and used those newspapers to illicit gossip and sensationalism to bring about his own means. He also used his vast wealth and power in influencing American and World politics, even being an engine for igniting wars. This mirrors Charles Kane in this film. Because Kane desires and wants love and to bring about his own reality, he decides to create a reality for himself. He does this through his newspaper, the Inquirer. He begins wars to sell his newspaper, he throws mud at politicians, and he belittles all those who stand against them (even calling them anarchists). The desire for love creates a desire for power in Kane. The more money he acquires means the more power he can acquire as a means for collect adoration from other and to promote his own self-adoration.

Kane’s ascension is also a descension. As Kane acquires more wealth, power, and prestige, he loses the love from others that he so greatly desired in the beginning. He loses the love of his first wife, Emily, as the two of them grow further and further apart throughout the years due to Kane’s inability to set aside time for her. Kane also loses the love of his best friend, Jedidiah. As Kane becomes more prominent in running his newspaper, his means of exploitation and libel increases. This complete disregard for ethics and morality creates a broken relationship between Jedidiah and Kane, as Jedidiah throws Kane’s original declaration of principles back in his face towards the end of the film. Kane’s disregard for his original principles and moral standing costs him his best friend. Kane also loses the love he has in Susan. Kane believes that if he simply buys Susan everything she could possibly desire, her own career as an opera singer, her own opera house, a giant mansion, and plenty of material possessions, that she will love him. However, buying her these things do not grant him the love from her that he desires as she becomes more and more resentful over his control over her and the lack of passion she has for her affluence and materials possessions. Susan grows so tired of Kane’s uncompromising vision for her to become an opera star that she eventually attempts suicide. Once she grows tired of her vast material possessions, she leaves Kane. In leaving Kane, Susan tells him that he does not have the capacity to love her, that he only has the capacity and interest for others to love him and for him to love himself. This final stab in the heart and Susan’s parting leaves Kane with total emptiness. He now has wealth, power, and prestige – however he has lost the one true thing he has wanted his entire life: love.

Camerawork: Orson Welles was given free reign by RKO Studios to create his own authentic work. With this freedom, he created a film that utilizes unique sequences, various staging, vast settings, innovating camerawork, and genius lighting. Welles also uses deep perspective in this film, framing scenes with significant dimensional depth. The objects or persons far away from frame are just as in focus as what’s right in front of the frame. This gives Welles the opportunity to create a connection and depth between characters that are far away from each other in the frame. Welles also loves using wide settings in his scenes, long rooms, rooms lengthened by ceilings, and high angle shots that present the ceiling as if it were the sky. These wide and vast settings accompany the use of space and depth Orson creates in his frames – presenting the characters in many fields of vision, many varying angles, varying points of perspective. These vast and meticulous shots force the audience to view the characters in varieties of different ways, just as we are viewing Kane in a variety of different ways through the different perspectives of him. Welles creates a three-dimensional world for his three-dimensional characters to inhabit.

Welles worked with cinematographer Greg Tolland to create scenes of varying dark lighting, utilizing shadows and partial lighting to black out faces and darken rooms. The use of light and shadow are manipulated to convey shifting tones throughout the film. The scene in which the March of Time employees are discussing how to dig deeper into the Kane story shows all of them shrouded in darkness with varying lights coming in through the window and projector. These varying degrees of light and shadow literally paint these men as dark figures. After all, they are simply an extension of the sensational newspaper world that was created by Kane himself, simply after their own self-interest and the prosperity of their propaganda.

Welles’s innovative camerawork and genius lighting techniques created a masterpiece of images with depth and space. The camera is presented as not just an observer, but as a participator. The camera follows characters into spaces the camera would not normally go, is positioned in places as if to seem like a fly on the wall, and utilizes its motion to investigate the dimensions of both the space the characters inhabit as well as the characters themselves.

Best Shot: One of the best shots of Citizen Kane is Kane walking through his home in a malaise after Susan has just left him. As he walks down the hallway, we see Kane’s reflection in multiplicity. It is almost as if there are multiple versions of Charles Foster Kane – which is a major aspect presented in the film. There are many different versions of Kane that exist, the versions of Kane the press paints in their stories, the version of Kane that exists in Susan, Jedediah, and Mr. Bernstein, and the version of Kane that the world sees at large. All these different versions of Kane present a puzzle that must be put together to get any semblance of who he really is. This shot exemplifies this dramatic theme, presenting us many different versions of Kane, just as many versions of Kane exist in the various perceptions of those who knew him and those who saw him from afar.