Remarkable movie.

Rating: 10/10 (21 October 2007)

This movie is an expressionist interpretation of a story that, if told conventionally, would be flat. The story is expressionist because it is told from the point of view of the reporter who is trying to piece together the pieces of a puzzle regarding the life of Charles Foster Kane. The only clue the reporter has is the last word that Kane utters before he dies; it is that word that may hold the key to revealing the real Charles Foster Kane. Kane's public persona is a sham covering up a personality that is an enigma. The movie consists of a series of flashbacks as told by the people who were closest to Kane, and who despised him the most. The depicts Kane's life as a series of montages, with wide-angled and close-ups rapidly interspersed, depending on what feeling the movie is trying to evoke, all of which together convey the impression of a jumbled life in which the pieces don't quite fit together. At the start, Kane is young, dynamic, and determined to make things happen; by the end, he is defeated, deflated and behaving like a child. He is angry by the way he was rejected by his parents and has contempt for money, which he associates with the banker-guardian who Kane despises. Kane dedicates his life to spending as much money as he can, and in doing whatever it takes to maintain control, including building a palace and housing it with as many artifacts as he can buy as a way of insulating himself from a world which he finds hostile to him. Kane's life goes into a tailspin after he is caught cheating on his wife, destroying his reputation and revealing him as being a hypocrite. His second marriage, to his mistress, is also a disaster as Kane bullies her into becoming an opera singer just to prove to the world that he had in fact married a singer. He tries to buy her love and when she leaves him, he completely falls apart, utterly alone and unloved, having driven away the last person who had still cared for him. To suggest that Kane deliberately and maliciously used people would not be entirely correct. He was driven to act by psychological forces that distorted his ability to get close with people and ultimately led to his demise. As for the word rosebud, the reported never finds out what that word meant, but the meaning is revealed to the audience, leaving the audience knowing something that the reporter does not know.
Citizen Kane is a remarkable movie. It has withstood the test of time, meaning that the movie is not dated and presents a story that would resonant with today's audience, in fact even more so that when the movie was first released in 1941. The acting is great and the cinematography is astounding. Who really was Charles Foster Kane? He had so much money and was known as a man of the people yet was alone. The acting is great. Dorothy Comingore's performance is especially powerful. Her role is the key to the movie. Actually this movie could have more aptly been titled Mrs. Citizen Kane because of the central role of Ms. Comingore's character. The story is as much about her as about Kane. The movie is timeless, its themes universal and contains performances that cover the gamut of human emotions.