In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree

Rating: Null/10 (9 May 2015)

After "Back to the Future" and "To Kill a Mockingbird", this is my third favourite film of all time. Only 25 years old at the time that it was made, Orson Welles made one of the greatest films of all time. There are not many actors or directors whom I would describe as artists but, in my view, Welles was one of his generation's two greatest artists in the filmmaking sphere, the other being Laurence Olivier. His skills as a director have been much praised over the course of the last 74 years but I want to focus on his skills as an actor first of all. As Charles Foster Kane, Welles is simply magnificent. Through the various flashbacks, we learn about the different sides of the man's character and he excels at playing all of them. Welles plays Kane over a period of more than 50 years and does so with a great deal more passion and gravitas than many actors of comparable age are capable of.
The newsreel footage in the first ten minutes is crucial to our understanding of Kane as it not only places his life in chronological order but it gives us insight into the manner in which he is viewed by the public. The former is significant given the film's format of flashbacks while the latter allows us to contrast the public man with the private man. As shown by his genuinely and deeply meant Declaration of Principles and his confrontation with Thatcher, Kane's motives are pure at the beginning of his journalistic career but he becomes more and more ruthless in his pursuit of power as the years and decades pass by. This is best seen in the recollections of Jed Leland, the closest thing that he had a friend. Leland tells the intrepid journalist Jerry Thompson that he did not think that Kane loved anyone except for himself and his mother. The obvious implication from that statement is that Kane married his first wife Emily Norton as she is the niece of the US President. He comes to neglect her but this pales in comparison to the emotional abuse which he inflicts on his second wife Susan Alexander, which eventually leads her to attempt suicide. In spite of Kane's myriad flaws, I felt pity for him as his actions meant that he was left with no one to care about him. He made a fortune but money cannot buy happiness, as is portrayed in the film in an almost Dickensian way. This is best illustrated by the fact that his dying thoughts are of his boyhood sleigh Rosebud. On his deathbed, he recalls the last time in his life that he was truly happy, playing in the snow outside his mother's boarding house. For Kane, the sleigh represents perfect happiness and his own conception of Elysium. Its simplicity serves as a wonderful contrast to the cold opulence of the 49,000 acre estate of Xanadu, which becomes something of a prison to him in his last years. The sleigh's destruction in the film's final scene represents the death of Kane's dream of achieving happiness.
Welles and his co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz gave all of the best bits to the actor-director himself but our understanding of Kane would be nothing without the supporting characters. The most important of these is perhaps Jed Leland, played very well by Welles' close friend Joseph Cotten. He is most effective as the elderly Leland in the framework scenes and the scene in which Leland, while very drunk, tells Kane exactly what he thinks of him after he loses the gubernatorial election. Leland remains constant throughout the film and this provides another fantastic contrast, this time to Kane himself. If you look carefully, you can also spot Cotten as one of the journalists shrouded in darkness after the newsreel has been played. Dorothy Comingore is excellent as Susan Alexander, a well meaning but not terribly bright or talented young woman whose life is gradually destroyed by Kane. He had something to prove in building the opera house for her and does not allow her to stop singing because it would be too embarrassing for him, not caring at all about the affect that the humiliation is having on her. The rest of the cast is very strong as well, particularly Everett Sloane as the ever loyal Mr Bernstein, George Coulouris as Walter Parks Thatcher, Ruth Warrick as Emily Norton Kane, Ray Collins as Jim Gettys, William Alland as Jerry Thompson and Paul Stewart as Kane's callous butler Raymond. The most interesting of the minor characters is Kane's mother Mary, played wonderfully by Agnes Moorehead.
The manner in which the film was shot was absolutely innovative in its time and it still looks beautiful. Welles and the cinematographer Gregg Toland pioneered the technique of deep focus for the silver screen in which every part of the frame is in focus simultaneously. This is perhaps best illustrated by the scene in which Mary Kane makes Thatcher her son's legal guardian while the young Kane can be seen playing in the background. What makes it even more impressive is that most of this scene is shot in a single take, as are numerous other scenes in the film. Another very impressively shot scene is the party scene in which Kane celebrates coaxing the Daily Chronicle's best journalists to defect to the Inquirer after six years of trying. this scene involves Kane and numerous chorus girls singing and dancing in the background while Leland and Bernstein have a private conversation in the foreground. At several points, we see Kane reflected in the window on the other side of them. This must have been a logistical nightmare for Welles to shoot but he did it brilliantly.