The Melville of Cinema

Rating: 10/10 (1 March 1999)

The careers of Orson Welles and Herman Melville are eerily similar...there is the great early work that is thought by some to be the alpha and omega of their respective forms (Citizen Kane and Moby Dick), there is the long eclipse, there is the great late work rediscovered (Touch of Evil or (the yet to be rediscovered and absolutely flabbergasting) Chimes at Midnight and Billy Budd, sailor), and there is the irrepressible mindf**k (F for Fake and The Confidence Man). But even more than that, Welles and Melville were the two most disillusioned artists America ever produced, which goes a long way toward explaining why average people interested in the arts as mere "entertainment" don't like their work. Both Kane and Ahab are singularly unpleasant individuals who are crushed by the cosmos in one way or another in spite of their indomitable defiance. These are not pleasant archetypes in the least...but they are infinitely more valuable than all the "heroes" of popular fiction. Welles and Melville take a speculum to the human condition by testing these characters to destruction. Citizen Kane has one of the most difficult structures in film. Its fractured narrative prevents the viewer from truly understanding Kane--but this is the point of the movie...why else would the film conspicuously leave out one crucial viewpoint (Kane himself)? In this respect, Citizen Kane is also a lot like Hamlet, which is similarly impenetrable. Anyone who demands identification with the "hero" is going to be sorely taxed by Kane--this separates the men from the boys, so to speak.
Is Citizen Kane THE greatest film of all time? Of course not. To declare that any film holds that honor is ludicrous. After all, once a certain level of craftsmanship is attained, once a certain level of insight is expressed, these distinctions become meaningless. Star Wars lost the best picture Oscar to Annie Hall in 1977--is one better than the other? The experience of watching either of them is so radically different that the comparison is absolutely invalid...they have nothing in common except their relative excellence. Kane's hold on the honor stems from the fact that it invented more of the language of sound filmmaking than any other movie, but no one claims that the other contender based on that criterion is the greatest film of all time (that would be the extremely controversial Birth of a Nation). Dont get me wrong...Kane is ONE of the greatest films...but no film could or should be asked to stand as the alpha and omega of the art.
Even so, Kane is a harrowing aesthetic experience.
And Kane IS massively entertaining. I resent the notion that a film has to elicit some knee-jerk emotional response to be considered entertaining--having the eye engaged and having the mind challenged ARE entertaining...but I sometimes forget that we as a people more and more value feeling over thought...God help us all.
(If anyone is interested, I also reviewed Cat People (1942)