A Great Film. Here Are the Ways in Which It's Great.

Rating: Null/10 (7 June 2002)

Pauline Kael said that Citizen Kane "is a masterpiece, but a shallow masterpiece." It's not hard to see her point. The script by Herman Mankiewicz is extremely clever, packed with enough witty lines to fill a book of quotes and structured as an innovative set of (often out of sequence) flashbacks, but Kane himself is something of a cartoon, an idealistic young man who eventually reveals himself as an opportunist, a stock theatrical type. As a story, Kane is heavy on the irony, light on the deeper emotions.
But Kane is great in two areas: acting and technique. The former is supplied by one of the greatest casts ever put together in a film: Orson Welles (in his best big screen performance), Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick, Dorothy Comingore, and a uniformally terrific set of supporting players. The latter is supplied by Director Welles and Cinematographer Greg Toland, who enjoy equal credits at the end of the film. This suggests that the technique is highly visual, which it is. The film is an unsurpassed visual experience; few modern movies even come close. Welles and Toland invented film noir and few directors or cinematographers have done it as well. (Bernardo Bertolucci and Ridley Scott have probably come closest.)
Even better, the technique informs the story. The warring shots of Welles and Cotten, interspersed throughout the flashback sequences, tell far more about their relationship than words could convey. The widely-praised sequence around the breakfast table, which encapsulates the progress of Kane's first marriage into about 2-3 minutes, is a spectacular example of technique relating story, but so are the chorus girl sequence, the Declaration of Principles sequence, and the deservedly famous sequence where Kane trashes Susan's room after she's left him. (The last was done in single takes, since Welles essentially destroyed the set as it was being shot.)
Bottom line: If you aren't fascinated by cinematic technique, you quite probably will enjoy Kane for the sheer cleverness of the story. But if you're the kind of person who watches a film with an eye toward innovative ways of telling a story, this film may be a revelatory experience. And be sure to watch the DVD version, with alternate soundtracks by both Roger Ebert and Peter Bogdonavich that explain the technique in great detail.