Review - Citizen Kane

Rating: 10/10 (2 July 2012)

Citizen Kane has been lauded the best film ever made by many people. Do I particularly agree? No. But nonetheless, I think it is a great movie. It has some of the dated characteristics of cinema of it's period, the 1940's, but a lot of it's characteristics are still strong nowadays. I understand that the plot has some parallels to the real life story of William Randolph Hearst, but I don't know all that much about him, so I'm going to talk about only the film, which is great itself. The film is an important figure in the history of cinema, technologically and in terms of storytelling.
The story is really not all that complicated, but the way it unfolds is great and engaging, and almost makes it seem complex, and it's told from a number of perspectives. The film opens up with the death of Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), the owner of the Inquirer, a New York newspaper. Just before dying, Kane utters the word "Rosebud". Then an approximately ten minute long newsreel summarizes the story of Kane, representing the public's view of him, and an overview of the story. Then, for the rest of the film, we are shown more details and depth of the story via flashbacks as news reporters go around and obtain information about Kane and his life.
For those of you who haven't seen the film, I won't fully spoil it for you. I'll just give an overview. Kane achieved success and rose to power, but eventually suffered a major blow to his reputation, and he crashed. Along the way, he even gets married and divorced twice. With the aid of his closest friend, Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten), Kane starts builds a nationwide newspaper empire. He is ruthless as he achieves this, yet generous at the same time in a few ways, such as being willing to lose a million dollars a year to gain more newspaper circulation. Eventually, he runs for a political position, but his success to this is lost as his rival uncovers his affair with a "singer", and after this, his reputation is destroyed and his life's success declines. There is more to the story, but, like I said, I'm only giving a summary; I'm not giving the full story away, for those of you who haven't seen the film.
All the while, we, the audience, and the reporters in the film, wonder who Kane really was, not just the story of the events of his life, from his rise to his fall, but who he really was underneath. They believe that a key to finding this out lies in his dying word, "Rosebud". At one point in the film, a reporter, Thompson, says, about the word, "Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost." At another point, someone (I don't remember who) says, "I don't think one word can describe one man's life". The entire movie is a puzzle, a puzzle of Kane's life, and not just that, but of who he really was (for lack of a better, deeper term). "Rosebud" is just one piece, a missing piece, of that puzzle, but it may be an important piece. Although, then again, maybe not. We do eventually find out what the word represents and what its origin is, and it represents one of the important messages of the movie, but I won't spoil it for, again, those of you who haven't seen the film.
The film is great in terms of its storytelling. In addition to its storytelling, the film is also an important point in cinema in terms of a few other factors, such as cinematography. One of the most striking of the cinematographic effects is this stark contrast between brightness and darkness. Also notable are the camera angles - which create many unique shots throughout the film - and the use of deep focus, enabling images both in the back ground and the foreground to stay clear in focus. I also liked the music score. Bernard Herrmann, who also composed the score for Psycho (1960), created an effective score with very good combinations and uses of harmony, orchestration, melody, and other musical elements, and really supports the drama and moods of the film.
So, in summary, while I personally don't think Citizen Kane is the best film ever made, I did find it to be great. Watching it was a very good experience for me. It's great in terms of storytelling and technical aspects, and, overall, like I've said, it's a great piece of cinema, and an important landmark in cinema history.
My Rating: **** (out of ****)