The Xanadu of motion picture classics

Rating: 10/10 (30 October 2001)

Though not top on my personal favorites list, it's still pretty much the greatest film ever made for a wide and varied number of fascinating reasons. The genius behind it is undeniable, and it is THE film for seeing things in the more times you see it. Welles was aiming for a high level of technical ingenuity, a goal he accomplished with brilliant aplomb as the style of the filmmaking overturns every Hollywood convention before 1941, and set the standard thereafter. The only filmmaker of stature who had dabbled in expressionistic and innovative camera angles in the 1930's was John Ford. Welles credited Ford as being his visual influence, then he took innovation to a new height, creating so many new devices and techniques to tell his story both visually and orally that every director who was an artist at heart couldn't not have admired it. There was an understandable hatred for Welles when he blew into Hollywood, the 24 year old upstart boy wonder, full of ego, charisma and a with cheerful and swaggering disregard for the Hollywood establishment. He was dangerous and a threat, and people
would have known he didn't come from New York to direct a musical in the vein of The Wizard of Oz. Welles was going to do something to shock, to stir opinions and passions, and to show the world he WAS the only director in town. A tall order. After a couple of initial projects fizzled the winds of fate carried Citizen Kane to his feet.
A vitriolic and condemning character study based on the tyrannical William Randolph Hearst was not ever going to be popular entertainment but it fit Welles' needs precisely. Along with writer Mankiewicz, and cinematographer Greg Toland (who had worked with Ford), he conspired to create a film so gargantuan in its aspirations, so self promoting, so wickedly sharp in its observations, and so gleefully clever you couldn't help but take notice of it, especially in it's unveiling of the meaning(s) behind the word Rosebud. Once you think of how a child usually rides a sled it strikes you as obvious. Kane as a boy is first seen riding the sled on his belly, and it's symbolic of the sexual position he would have assumed with Susan Alexander, who was based on Hearst's Mistress Marion Davies, whom it was rumoured Hearst had nicknamed an obvious part of her anatomy "Rosebud". Roger Ebert says at the end of his audio commentary on the DVD that the sled Rosebud really explains nothing but I beg to differ. It explains, like a great piece of art, any number of things. A symbol of boyhood innocence, that place he wishes he was never torn from, his regrets etc etc. Along, of course, with the more intended sexual connotation.
Citizen Kane truly is a haunting, emotionally cold, and ultimately depressive piece of work. And for that reason alone it won't top everyone's personal favorites list. It is at times very hard to watch and work out. But it is the most profound and intelligent film of it's day and it pays off many rewards the more times you visit it. Fluff it was not. It destroyed Welles' directorial career in Hollywood, and no doubt shortened the life of William Randolph Hearst in his determination to blacklist Welles. It's a story that speaks the truth about corruption, power, and materialism, and how one man, however forceful, can become dwarfed by and be enslaved by them. It is a work of pure brilliance in writing, showmanship, technical illusion, and improvisation. A film for the ages. A testament to the other worldly genius of Orson Welles. And a definite must see for everyone.