A Young Man's Audacious, Precocious and Fully Realized Cinematic Vision

Rating: 10/10 (24 April 2007)

Laying claim to being the greatest movie ever made is bound to attract extensive essays from cineastes dismantling the film every which way ad infinitum. Suffice it to say that Orson Welles' first-time effort as a filmmaker remains an astonishing and often unparalleled work. Only 25 years old at the time, he provides an audacious vision in which all the parts of this 1941 masterpiece fit perfectly together with a furious precision. Moreover, there is a consistently precocious tone throughout that a more veteran director could not possibly capture, and this is what makes the film truly unique. It manifests itself in several complementary ways, whether it's the groundbreaking deep-focus cinematography of Gregg Toland, or the propulsive editing by Welles and future director Robert Wise, or the involving whodunit quality of Welles' and Herman Mankiewicz's sharp screenplay, or the meaty performances of a then-unknown cast of stage actors. The beauty of the film comes from the simple fact that no single component dominates the other.
The result is as cohesive a vision as has likely been seen on screen and one that Welles was never able to recapture for the rest of his life no matter how hard he tried. The film examines the life of a William Randolph Hearst doppelganger named Charles Foster Kane, a newspaper publisher who has amassed a fortune and more than a few enemies. The plot revolves around the mysterious utterance of "Rosebud" as Kane's dying words and how an investigative reporter interviews the people in Kane's life to find out the hidden meaning of that word. The interviews provide the means for selective flashbacks to his lonely childhood, his beginnings as a yellow journalist in building a publishing empire with closest confidante Jedidiah Leland, his first marriage to wealthy socialite Emily Norton, his scandal-laden run for governor, his obsession in turning second wife Susan Alexander into a world-class opera singer, and his sad decline at his isolated mountaintop estate, Xanadu.
The film combines a first-rate detective story with a classic tragedy about wealth and power and the inevitable ruin that comes from Kane's unrelenting self-absorption. It is startling how convincing Welles is as an aging magnate, and his naturally larger-than-life persona fits nicely into the Shakespearean contours of the character. The cast consists entirely of his Mercury Theater troupe with Joseph Cotten a particular standout as Leland. I always found Dorothy Comingore a bit too cartoonish as Susan, the character inspired by real-life movie star Marion Davies, Hearst's long-time mistress, but more subtle turns by Agnes Moorehead as Kane's mother and Ruth Warrick as Emily more than compensate.
The 60th Anniversary, two-disc DVD set has enough material to please Kane aficionados beginning with two separate but equally valuable commentary tracks, one by director and Welles confidante Peter Bogdanovich and the other by film critic Roger Ebert. Bogdanovich is more academic in his approach even though he had the personal relationship with Welles, while Ebert can barely contain his enthusiasm with each scene he describes. The first disc also contains the original trailer, a brief newsreel of the film's New York premiere and three sections of intriguing material focusing on the production, post-production and the press book. The second disc contains a fascinating 1996 documentary feature, "The Battle Over Citizen Kane", which focuses on Hearst's attempts to ruin the film. To put it mildly, this DVD set reflects essential viewing.