Years after the controversy, the film fails to stand on its own merits

Rating: 4/10 (18 March 2011)

It is virtually impossible to come across a 10 Best Films List from any "serious" critic or film institution that does not have Citizen Kane ensconced in the Number 1 slot. I have literally heard film historians who insist that if you don't like this film, then you don't like films. Well, I happen to love films and I do not especially like Citizen Kane and, refreshingly, I see from many of the comments there are legions of people that also do not appear to like this film much either. Much of the aggrandizement stems from the high esteem that the film industry and critics held auteur Orson Welles and the empathy they had for Welles in the obstacles that he faced in making this film. Yet while one can appreciate the single-minded ferocity an artist can have in bringing forth a vision – one must also admit that many times the end product of that vision is not a masterpiece. Welles' melodrama, which is a thinly veiled depiction of the life of legendary power broker William Randolph Hearst, put him on the wrong side of the publishing magnate, who did not like having his life be the subject of a film and set forth the dogs of war to try to hamper Welles. Many critics gathered around Welles and starting inventing superlatives to describe the end result as an antidote. At the time, this picture caused quite the controversy and became a cause célèbre. Unfortunately, decades after the death of Hearst, when many new film watchers barely know who he was, the film must be judged on its own merits and not the controversy it caused in its day, and that is where the film falls apart.
The film opens with the death of its central character, the obscenely wealthy Charles Foster Kane (played by Welles) and his whispered dying word of "Rosebud". A group of journalists go on the hunt to figure out the meaning of what or who is "Rosebud", and we get to see Kane's life unfold in retrospect based on the investigations of journalist Joseph Cotton. "Rosebud" is the film's central mystery, but it is basically a McGuffin. People going into the film familiar with the answer will find the proceedings utterly pointless. Those unfamiliar with the identity of "Rosebud" may be less charitable once they realize that they have been gamed into hanging on for something so trivial. In fact, it is almost laughable as to how slight the storyline ends up being.
Welles depicts everything on screen at arm's length. There is no character to draw the viewer into the events that unfold or to win sympathy. They are all just ciphers moving in and out of the frames. Emotionally, the film is positively glacial. The acting, even by Welles himself, is outrageously stiff. Events befall the central character and have minimal impact and thus the viewer has absolutely no reason to be impressed by them. Fans of the film drone on and on about "shots" and camera effects as though great film's succeed on those merits at the expense of story, acting, style and substance. Welles, the director, overuses the canard of mammoth Gothic sets that dwarf his characters to emphasize their purported loneliness or disenfranchisement. This may have been impressive at the time, but now it merely seems a ploy to compensate for the tepid dialog and stale performances. Anyone who truly wants to give director James Cameron grief about his dialog really needs to go back and listen to Citizen Kane with an unbiased ear. Additionally, the much lauded darkness of the film and trick camera shots that earned Welles praise for his cinematic decisions become far less impressive when one realizes that Welles directed and photographed ALL of his films in this fashion, whether it was warranted (Journey Into Fear) or not (The Magnificent Ambersons). It was simply his directorial style and he offered no other alternatives in his career because it was all he knew how to do. Unlike other films of the era which are still impressive, even if we don't like their point of view (Gone With the Wind comes to mind), it is difficult to even understand how Citizen Kane rated as a great film in its day. Its central character remains aloof and the grand secret of Rosebud leaves most viewers I know shrugging their shoulders, if not lamenting the loss of time it took to find out about it. The revelation, rather than arousing sympathy or understanding for Kane, fails to make him any more accessible and, like the camera work, ends up coming off as a last-minute gimmick to try to make Kane the man seem more human than we have witnessed in compensation for the lack of development during the course of the film due to the weaknesses of the writing and acting.
And finally, for those film historians/critics who are still thumping their chests 70 years after the fact as to how the Oscar voters gave the Best Picture to How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane, the answer is quite obvious to someone watching the films with fresh eyes. HGWMV may have its share of downbeat moments and may not be "perfection", but it contains in its running time more emotion, character development and solid storytelling than Citizen Kane is able to muster on its best day. It is far and away the more accessible film for viewers emotionally - then and now.