The Aurora Borealis of Cinema

Rating: 10/10 (10 July 2016)

Began seeing this film in snippets running in and out of the house between playing baseball in the backyard and heading back down into the basement with Cool-Aid and tuna fish sandwiches to sit on the couch and watch this thing on our black and white T.V. Sooner or later, it would be on the Bill Kennedy show and he would look into his files for newspaper footage about it. The thing that's so wonderful is how accessible this film is for being touted by some as 'the greatest of all time'. Whether or not that is so is more than I know. I've seen and enjoyed a lot of great films. Anything that I might say would barely add or subtract to what has already been said and would probably prove to be redundant at best, so I'll just make a few personal observations and let it go at that.
CITIZEN KANE is like a Magic Box filled with all these independent features of interest. Barely coming in under two hours it seems much longer than that and compares favorably with other epics that require an intermission somewhere between its three hours or more length. That's the first thing I have to say about it; the way it seems to dilate time and yet is over before you know it. You don't even have to see the thing from beginning to end to enjoy it. Some years passed before I actually sat down and saw this piece in its entirety. But it didn't seem to matter. There is something ubiquitous about it; it will be there for you when you get the time to fully appreciate it. As a kid, the film noir beginning made me wonder whether or not this was a horror story or some kind of detective tale. As most people know, the truth is it is both and more than that.
Agnes Moorehead never looked better in her life! Joseph Cotton along with the rest of the Mercury Theater come on strong in this tale.
There are many who will compare this film to THE GODFATHER or VERTIGO and there is probably much to be gained from this, but looking at the film from the inside out you feel yourself having access to one of the most liberal minds of all time. There is a strong spirit of inventiveness here where Welles as the auteur is not adapting his tale to the strictures of Film, but rather adapting the strictures of Film to this vision of grand sweeping storytelling. This to me is what separates it from other great films that it can be compared and discussed with. For most cinematic works, technique is subservient to the story; and yet in CITIZEN KANE it feels as though technique is subservient to the inventiveness of its creator. I'm sure this is true in some Hitchcock films and of course the films of Ingmar Bergman and others, but here that sense of inventiveness is less coldly calculated as it is with Hitchcock at his best, nor is it as somber and steeped in religious and philosophical overtones as it is with Bergman at his most profound. The inventiveness of Welles here is youthful and exuberant and in a naive sort of way distinctly American. Gangway! The young Turks have come to town! Clear the floor for some hoofin' and break out the champagne!
I say naive because there is something unselfconscious about this modern classic. Welles is too busy having fun to worry about posterity right now, he'll get back to you later concerning all that. I'll never forget the scene with the dance hall girls. After a bit of cinematic legerdemain where we see Kane buy off the whole staff of a rival newspaper and frame them for a news photograph, we then find his own people joining in to sing his praises. As a youngster the thing that startled me was how long this scene went on; Welles didn't seem to be doing this scene to serve the story particularly, but just for the sheer thrill of dancing with the ladies and having fun! The exhilaration of this scene was something that has stayed with me all my life. Some kind of energy seemed to spiral out of the screen and shake you by the shoulders and urge you to take one spin around yourself. Come on! There's enough booze and food for everyone! It's this scene that makes me wish that Welles had chosen the life of Babe Ruth to chronicle rather than that of William Randolph Hearst.
But it doesn't stop there. When you hear Welles present Kane as an orator you are seeing a spellbinder at work; you will see this side of Welles again in MOBY DICK and perhaps more importantly, in the final scenes of the film COMPULSION. This is the energy and passion of a young man at the height of his powers. Kane for President! He'll fight for the common people and win us our rights!
Eventually, due to poor choices and a marked propensity to love the power that his wealth brings him more than the people he supposedly wishes to champion, we see Kane progress towards his inevitable slide into tragedy. This is handled with sophistication and taste and we see how Kane becomes an embittered worn out old man living a shallow existence among the shadows of the things that he owns.
In the end, we are given a glimpse of insight into the character of Kane that is denied all the other characters in the film. But even that is just an echo of what Everett Sloan as Bernstein tells the reporter Jerry about the girl he saw crossing over on the Ferry. Soon even this is just so much smoke drifting up above the chain link fence and the NO TRESPASSING sign in front of Xanadu...
NEWS! ON THE MARCH!