Citizen Kane review

Rating: 10/10 (10 December 2003)

Aside from being argued as the technical genius of films, 1941's Citizen Kane also delivered plenty of ahead-of-its-time issues to the forefront: monopolization and celebrity doom. Citizen Kane is a film that charts the four-step life of entrepreneur Charles Foster Kane, a dramatic on-screen version of William Randolph Hurst, who merged his vast array of national newspapers and radio stations into an evil empire. The buying out (or making up) of other papers, such as the Chronicle for instance, along with his usual yellowish editorial tactics, helped the Enquirer become the voice of America; again only to be propagandized by one voice: Kane's.
With popularity that skyrocketed nearly everyone but the president, Kane (the always masterful Mercury Theatre Radio guru, Orson Welles) looked to shoot even higher in politics-ala Larry Flynt-only to be dragged down by the same tabloid controversy he once seemingly mastered. This case will also recollect to the near chagrin Arnold Schwarzenegger took just days before election in this year's California gubernatorial race. Kane was sought fostering with a `singer,' much like the fun Arnold had during his `groping' days of Pumping Iron.
Nothing in the film seems to swarm with more controversy, however, than Kane's final word, and the very search for, `Rosebud.' Was this Kane's second mistress? Or yet another one of his four-billion statues crated into a mover's worst nightmare? As you'll discover in the film's culmination, Rosebud was the only love Kane had for whom or what it was, and not because Kane wanted the love back; a rarity, since the gist of the film is about Kane desire for everyone's love. Again, this opening and closing to Citizen Kane is surrounded by the same aura the tabloid-edged Enquirer swelled upon the nation; of course it seems likely Kane would not have had it any other way. And much like America will always watch Schwarzenegger films (even more so now because he is governor), America then still read Kane newspapers, as Citizen Kane himself was always news-and if perhaps not the greatest, the most important film of all time.

5/5 stars