Citizen Kane (1941) Film Review

Citizen Kane (1941) Director: Orson Welles

“Rosebud.”

★★★★★

No pilgrimage through classic cinema would be complete without a thorough praise of Citizen Kane –a film which has rightly earned itself the honor of the greatest movie ever made. Praised as a genius, Orson Welles was initially thrust into the spotlight in his early twenties when he directed theatrical performances of Shakespeare (including a famous Haitian, all-black performance of Macbeth known as the “Voodoo Macbeth”). He was also a prominent voice in the emerging medium of radio, traveling frequently between radio stations throughout New York. In 1938, Welles performed a series of radio programs called ‘The Mercury Theatre on the Air’ where he narrated a notorious adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” which sounded so realistic, that it sparked a cultural panic, leading many listeners to fear an imminent alien invasion. In fact, most of the actors in Citizen Kane were from his days at the Mercury Theater. Quickly hailed as a twenty-five-year-old prodigy wunderkind, Welles was offered the rarest of opportunities. Lured away from radio, Welles was given the single most amazing film contract in history –George Schaefer, President of RKO Pictures, offered Welles the chance to write, direct, produce, and star in two films. Essentially, Welles was given complete artistic control and the promise of total control. Not since the films of Charlie Chaplin or D.W. Griffith had an auteur been given such immense power over his artwork. With initial plans to adapt Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and The Smiler with A Knife (incidentally based on a mystery novel by Daniel Day-Lewis’s father, Cecil Day-Lewis, who wrote the novels of Nigel Strangeways under a pseudonym “Nicholas Blake”), plans were soon scrapped and a somewhat controversial script-writing process for a new film unfolded between Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz (soon to become Citizen Kane) –all of this is by now the stuff of Hollywood legend.    

I. Opening Sequence

A lone mansion sits ominously atop a moonlit mountain surrounded by rusted animal cages and a sprawling, spire-capped chain-link fence is spread around the property like a prison with an eye-level sign that reads “No Trespassers” –however, in spite of this warning, as movie-goers, we are actually given the ability to trespass into this space. As we emerge over the fence, we are given the sense of a gigantic property in overgrown decay: see fog in the distance, a boat in the water, a pair of monkeys beside a cage, and an upper window light which remains lit in the distance, it is placed within the same section of the frame as we lurch ever closer to the window, almost as if sneaking inside this sinister castle amidst a series of fades and dissolves –until it suddenly goes out. A snow globe swirls inside someone’s hand and a man lying on his deathbed utters the famous word “rosebud” before suddenly dropping the globe on the floor, smashing it into pieces. Already in these opening shots, Bernard Herrmann’s score beautifully complements Gregg Toland’s cinematography and the matte paintings of Mario Larrinaga, Chesley Bonestell, and Fitch Fulton. 

II. “News on the March” Newsreel

These iconic opening scenes show us the death of an American tycoon, Charles Foster Kane (played by Orson Welles), a magnate in the vein of Henry Ford or William Randolph Hearst (both of whom are briefly mentioned in the film). Who is Charles Foster Kane? The film uniquely presents us with the facts of his life in a triumphant old-timey “News on the March” newsreel sequence –the same kind of news bulletin that frequently appeared in theaters in those days (a nod to the “March of Time” newsreels). Using stock RKO footage to create the image of a political epic, editor Robert Wise apparently dragged footage across the floor to give it a grainy look. Narrated by William Alland (who also plays the reporter Thompson in the film), a title reads: “News on the March.” It is an obituary for Charles Foster Kane (he is compared to a modern-day “Kubla Khan” and ancient Egyptian “Pharoah”). Kane is the first escribed as the “landlord” of a vast palatial estate known as Xanadu, a parody of Hearst Castle at San Simeon (though whereas Hearst Castle sits along the central coast of California, Kane’s Xanadu has been constructed along the Gulf Coast of Florida).

“Legendary was the Xanadu where Kubla Khan decreed his stately pleasure dome. Today almost as legendary as Florida’s Xanadu, world’s largest private pleasure ground. Here on the deserts of the Gulf Coast, a private mountain was commissioned and successfully built. One hundred thousand tress, twenty thousand tons of marble, are the ingredients of Xanadu’s mountain. Contents of Xanadu’s palace: paintings, pictures, statues, the very stones of many another palace. A collection of everything, so big it can never be catalogued or appraised, enough for ten museums –the loot of the world. Xanadu’s livestock: the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea, the beast of the field and jungle, two of each, the biggest private zoo since Noah. Like the pharaohs, Xanadu’s landlord leaves many stones to mark his grave. Since the pyramids, Xanadu is the costliest monument a man has built to himself.”

Kane died at Xanadu the prior week (the year is 1941) and his death was followed by the “biggest, strangest funeral” of the year. A montage sequence of newspaper headlines flood past the screen with opinionated front-page pieces about Kane’s death –some sympathetic, others unfriendly—for example, The New York Daily Inquirer (the paper we later learn Kane owned) reads “Charles Foster Kane Dies After Lifetime of Service” and “Finds Place in U.S. Hall of Fame” and “World Leaders Express Grief for Publish” and “Entire Nation Mourns Great Publisher as Outstanding American” and “Kane Called World’s Best Philanthropist.” While The Daily Chronicle (the enemy of the Inquirer) reads “C.F. Kane Dies at Xanadu Estate – Death of a Publisher Finds Few Who Will Mourn Him.” The Chicago Globe reads “Death Calls Publisher Charles Kane – Stormy Career Ends for U.S. Fascist No. 1.” The Record of Herald reads “Kane, Sponsor of Democracy, Dies” and “Publisher Gave Life to Nation’s Service During Long Career.” The Detroit Star Reads: “Kane, Leader of News World, Called by Death at Xanadu – War Master of Destiny.” The El Paso Journal reads: “End Comes for Charles Foster Kane – Editor Who Instigated ‘War For Profit’ Beaten By Death.” Global newspapers from around the world announce Kane’s death in foreign languages, as well. We get a sense of the largesse of this man, his death overshadows news of the war, and also, we are confronted with the controversies that dogged Kane all his life along with divisive opinions about what he represents. Is he a friend of the people? Or a fascistic tyrant? 

“To forty-four million U.S. news buyers, more newsworthy than the names in his own headlines, was Kane himself, greatest newspaper tycoon of this or any other generation.”

The “March of Time” reel continues by depicting Kane’s humble beginnings in a ramshackle building where he acquired a dying daily newspaper, before drastically expanding it into a vast business empire. “Kane’s empire in its glory held dominion over thirty-seven newspapers, two syndicates, a radio network –an empire upon an empire. The first of grocery stores (‘Kane Foods’), paper mills, apartment buildings, factories, forests, ocean liners –an empire through which for fifty years flowed in an unending stream the wealth of the earth’s third richest gold mine.” 

However, Kane was not a Horatio Alger-styled self-made man. The origins of the Kane family wealth is “famed in American legend.” His mother, Mary Kane (brilliantly played by Agnes Moorehead), was a lower-class boarding housekeeper in Colorado. In 1868 she inherited a supposedly worthless deed to an abandoned mineshaft, the Colorado Lode, by a defaulting boarder. However, the mineshaft was found to be rich in ore. Fifty-seven years later, Walter P. Thatcher (George Coulouris), “a grand old man of Wall Street, for years chief interest Kane paper’s attacks on trusts, recalls a journey he made as a youth.” His firm was appointed trustee of the lode. With a new large fortune to manage, it was her wish that young Charlie be given the opportunities of a well-to-do boy, so he was handed over as a ward of Thatcher and the bank where he would be sent to the best schools.

As the news reel proceeds, Thatcher is shown before a congressional committee –a congressman interrupts him to ask about an old story wherein young Charlie personally attacked Thatcher once with his sled. But this important moment is simply laughed off and brushed aside. Thatcher accuses Charles Foster Kane of being a communist –“Mr. Charles Foster Kane, in every essence of his social beliefs, and by the dangerous manner in which he has persistently attacked the American traditions of private property, initiative, and opportunity for advancement is, in fact, nothing more or less than a communist.” Meanwhile, a rabble-rousing speech is delivered in Union square in which Kane is also denounced as an enemy of the working man –a “fascist.” But a third opinion emerges –that of Kane himself—in which he claims, “I am, have been, and will be only one thing – an American” (in fact, an early title for Citizen Kane was “The American”). In his early years, he sees himself as a citizen, a part of a broader community (hence “Citizen Kane”). Active from 1895-1941, the newsreel reminds us that “many of these things he was.” Kane had urged his country into one war (the Spanish-American War in 1898) and opposed participation in another (World War I in 1919). He swung the American presidential election for at least one president (a Roosevelt banner can be seen waving) –and he “spoke for millions of Americans, was hated by many more.” Kane papers were known to take a stand on every public issue imaginable –he either supported or denounced politicians– and often he would support, and then denounce them. He met with both communistic military juntas as well as fascists like Hitler. “In politics – always a bridesmaid, never a bride.” Despite being a “molder of mass opinion,” he was never granted elective office by the voters,

For a celebrity like Kane, “Few Private Lives were more public.” He was twice married, and twice divorced. First, he was wedded to a president’s niece, Emily Norton, who left him in 1916, and then died in 1918 in a motor accident with their only son. Sixteen years after his first marriage, two weeks after his first divorce, Kane married Susan Alexander, a singer of sorts. They were married at the town hall in Trenton, New Jersey. She then becomes an Opera singer (note her name is spelled differently in images shown in the film) as she performs in “Salammbo” at the Chicago Municipal Opera House (built by Kane at a cost of three million dollars). Xanadu was conceived for Susan Alexander Kane, it was half-finished before she divorced him, and it remains still unfinished. At what cost, no man can say.

In 1916, as an independent candidate for governor of New York –with the White House seemingly in reach– less than one week before the election, a “shameful, ignominious” scandal broke out in the news (The Chronicle headline reads: “Candidate Kane Caught in Love Next with ‘Singer’” –note “singer” is listed in quotation marks– and “Entrapped by wife As Love Pirate, Kane Refuses to Quit Race”). With his affair revealed, Kane faced a defeat that erected to the the cause of political reform in the U.S. by twenty years. Then in the first year of the Great Depression, a Kane paper closed, followed by a financial collapse. Eleven Kane papers wound up merging, and more were soon scrapped.

“But America Still Reads Kane newspapers and Kane Himself was Always News.”

We first hear Kane speak as he is interviewed by “Mr. Bones” (played by none other than film cinematographer). Returning home from a trip abroad, Kane is in the middle of a line of questioning. Bones says, “Is that correct?” But Kane responds, “Don’t believe everything you ear on the radio. Uh, read the Inquirer.” It is 1935, Kane has just returned from Europe where he he met with the leaders of the great powers of England, France, Germany, and Italy, and with concerns of a new war rising, he assures the audience, “they are too intelligent to embark on a project. Which would mean the end of. Civilization as now know it. You can take my word for it –there will be no war.” Of course, we know this to be a false promise from Kane.

“The great yellow journalist himself lived to be history, outlived his power to make it. Alone in his never finished already decaying pleasure palace, aloof, seldom visited, never photographed, an emperor of newsprint continued to direct his failing empire, vainly attempted to sway as he once did the destinies of a nation that had ceased to listen to him, ceased to trust him.

With an entirely unique narrative structure, Citizen Kane gives us all the pieces to Kane’s story at beginning, highlighting the key moments in his life, but somehow this list of facts is not the whole story. How can we possibly manage to condense a single life into an easily digestible narrative? Surely there has to be more depth to a man like Kane? Who really was Charles Foster Kane? Making sense of a giant among men like Kane, who is at once beloved and hated, proves to be an elusive task. And yet we are given a clue in the title, Kane is still a citizen after all (rather than a king as if to imply “King Kane”).  

III. William P. Thatcher’s Memoirs

The “March of Time” newsreel is interrupted by a shadowy, smoke-filled room haunted by the silhouettes of reporters whose faces are obscured in darkness (both Joseph Cotten and future star Alan Ladd appear in this scene). These early scenes were accomplished without the prying eyes of RKO because Welles claimed to be merely shooting test shoots on already established sets. The head of this photo magazine (not unlike TIME Magazine) Rawlston (Philip Van Zandt) comments on the unsatisfactory nature of the newsreel —“It isn’t enough to tell us what a man did. You’ve got to tell us who he was.” Was he an Ayn Randian egoist? Or a defender of the little guy? Or a philanthropic altruist? Seventy years of a man’s life is difficult to encapsulate in a single newsreel —“what it needs is an angle.” Rawlston decides that one reporter known to us as Jerry Thompson (William Alland) will be sent to further investigate Kane’s last word “Rosebud” –“Maybe he told us all about himself on his deathbed… All we saw on that screen was a big American… one of the biggest… but how is he any different from Ford? Or Hearst for that matter? Or John Doe… When Charles Foster Kane died, he said just one word -…Rosebud, just that one word, but who is she…What was it?… Here’s a man that could have been president, who was as loved and hated and as talked about as any man in our time. But when he comes to die, he’s got something on his mind called ‘Rosebud.’ Now what does that mean?”

“…it [rosebud] will probably turn out to be a very simple thing.”

First, Thompson pays a visit to Kane’s second wife, Susan Alexander Kane (Dorothy Comingore who was secretly pregnant during filming of certain scenes) at a nightclub called El Rancho in Atlantic City, where she performs twice nightly. It is a rainy night with rows of empty tables at the cabaret, and Susan –now a drunkard drinking double highballs—simply shouts at Thompson to “get out!” Thompson pays a nightclub waiter for any information he might have heard Susan say about “rosebud” but nothing is revealed.  

The next day, Thompson is sent to Philadelphia to the Walter Parks Thatcher Memorial Library to see “that family diary of his.” The library –a cold, austere, mausoleum of sorts– contains an enormous statue of the late Thatcher. It is also filled with detailed rules, for example, under no circumstances are direct quotations to be used from Thatcher’s manuscripts. Thompson is given a window of time in which he is allowed to rea pages 83-142 of the memoirs (he is confined only to those sections concerning Mr. Kane).

As Thompson reads the page, a flashback takes us back to 1871 when Thatcher paid a visit to Mrs. Mary Kane’s Boarding House. The rural Colorado landscape is covered in snow, and Kane can be spotted tossing snowballs while he shouts “the union forever” –this incredible scene is a technical masterpiece of both foreground and background focus as young Charlie remains in the frame of the window outside while his parents (particularly Mary) handle his future inside the house. Additionally, furniture was built specifically for this scene to allow for a camera to pass through, then the furniture was quickly snapped back together, until finally the camera rested upon the table for an extraordinarily long take. At any rate, Mary Kane signs the papers handing Charlie’s future over to Mr. Thatcher (his bank is Thatcher & Company) as well as management of the Colorado Lode in exchange for a sum of $50,000 per year to paid to Mr. and Mrs. Kane as long as they both shall live. Everything else, the principal as well as all monies earned, is to be managed in a trust by the bank until Charles reaches his twenty-fifth birthday at which time he is to come into complete possession of his funds. Until then he will receive the best upbringing money can buy in America –he will be cultured in Chicago, New York, and Washington. His hokey, low-class father Jim speculates about his son —“you’ll probably be the richest man in America one day”— but his mother claims, “you won’t be lonely, Charles.” In this moment, Charles uses his sled to attack Thatcher –“sleds aren’t to hit people with, sleds are to sleigh with!” And this attack becomes a metaphor for Kane’s lifelong relationship with Thatcher –noticeably, the last time Kane holds his prized sled –a metaphor for his lost youth—Kane uses it to strike back at his new guardian. Nevertheless, Kane is taken away and we see the passing of time as his neglected childhood sled is left unattended, gathering snow in the yard.

Years pass and on Kane’s twenty-fifth birthday, he assumes the world’s sixth largest private fortune, but he’s not interested in gold mines, oil wells, shipping, or real estate –he only wants to run a failing newspaper known as The New York Inquirer –“I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.” Shortly after taking over the newspaper, Kane makes drastic changes –his youthful vigor is contrasted with the previous staff who were mostly quiet, elderly men. The paper now becomes a haven for yellow journalism, taking on the big trusts, standing up for the working man with headlines reading: “Traction Trust Exposed,” “Traction Trust Bleeds Public White,” “Traction Trust Smashed By Inquirer,” “Landlords Refuse To Clear Slums,” “Inquirer Wins slum Fight,” “Wall Street Backs Copper Swingle!!” “Copper Robbers Indicted,” “Galleons of Spain Off Jersey Coast!”

Thatcher confronts Kane over his newspaper business (he is positioned in the lower right of the scene as is each witness in the film, whether it be the person having a flashback or the journalist Thompson). At the newspaper, Kane is joined by his good college friend, Leland, and his manager, Bernstein. A reporter named Wheeler sends Kane a cable from Cuba. It reads that the ladies are lovely in Cuba (in fact he could send prose poems about them) but contrary to the narrative Kane has been pushing, there is no war in Cuba. Kane simply smiles and coyly responds, “Dear Wheeler, you provide the prose poems. I’ll provide the war.”

At first, Kane serves as a crusading defender of the downtrodden –running an altruistic, impassioned “philanthropic enterprise’ which costs him a million dollars per year. “You’re right, Mr. Thatcher. I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in… sixty years.” Kane takes on the public transit trust despite the fact that he is also one of the largest individual stockholders in that very company.   

“I am the publisher of the Inquirer! As such, it is my duty, and I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s also my pleasure to see to it that decent, hardworking people in this community aren’t robbed blind by a pack of money-mad pirates, just because they haven’t anybody to look after their interests. I’ll let you in on another little secret, Mr. Thatcher. I think I’m the man to do it, you see, I have money and property. If I don’t look after the interests of the underprivileged, maybe somebody else will, maybe somebody without money or property. And that would be too bad.”

But by the winter of 1929, Kane’s newspapers run out of cash during the Depression and he is forced to return financial ownership back to Thatcher & Company while still continuing to maintain a “large measure of control.” Kane notably walks away from the table toward the incredibly large windows in the backdrop –here, he appears diminished while his future affairs are once again handled by other people. When he walks back to the table, Kane remarks that Mr. Thatcher was “always too old.” But even in this moment, we see an older, less vigorous, less idealistic Kane who might even be “too old” himself. He was a child of privilege who was “always gagged on that silver spoon.” He says, “If I hadn’t been very rich, I might’ve been a great man… I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.” Seething with resentment, Kane celebrates everything Thatcher hates.

At this point, Thompson’s time has expired reading the memoirs at the Thatcher Library –a rare privilege to sit beneath a gigantic portrait of Thatcher– and he departs.  

IV. Mr. Bernstein’s Memories

Next, Thompson has an appointment in New York with Kane’s general manager (“what’s his name?”) Bernstein. He represents the “idle rich” while serving as chairman of the board of the Inquirer –“I’ve got nothing but time.” Mr. Bernstein (we only ever know him as Mr. Bernstein) wonders if “rosebud” could be referring to a girl? Bernstein shares a beautiful memory he once had of a young anonymous girl wearing a white dress he passed on the ferry in 1896. He only saw her for one second but not a month has gone by that he hasn’t thought about that girl.

“It’s no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want is to make a lot of money.
You take Mr. Kane. It wasn’t money he wanted.”

Bernstein then reflects on Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten), Mr. Kane’s closest friend. Mr. Leland “never had a nickel. One of those old families where the father is worth ten million and then one day, he shoots himself and it turns out there’s nothing but debts.” Leland was with Bernstein the first day they took over the Inquirer, when they found the silent room of aging old men and an agitated Dickensian leader named Mr. Herbert Carter (Erskine Sanford). The paper has a low energy quality to it –it is closed for practically twelve hours a day—but Kane introduces a shake-up, reminding them that the news goes on for twenty-four hours a day. He starts to employ shady tricks like the “gossip of housewives” to secure new stories. He spends hours changing the paper’s first headline no less than four times. The paper’s chief rival is the Chronicle, with a circulation of 495,000, and Kane looks on with envy since it took The Chronicle twenty years to build a “who’s who” of staff including the greatest newspapermen. However, six years later, Kane managed to poach them all (uniquely filmed walking into a photograph) and The Inquirer now has a circulation of 684,132 (the highest circulation in New York) with 467 employees.

As a narrator, Bernstein reflects on the greatness of a young Kane –bold, idealistic, a man with a vision. Kane drafts a document “A Declaration of Principles” which Leland keeps as an important piece of history. Leland is given the role of theater critic. According to Bernstein’s reflections, Leland is more of a heartfelt sentimentalist who is truly committed to an ideal. He decides to keep the first published paper of the Inquirer because it may just turn out to be an important document “like the Declaration of Independence” or the “Constitution” or his first “report card at school.” However, in time Kane and Leland fail to see eye-to-eye as Kane becomes increasingly jingoistic over the war in Spain, and the full nature of their relationship is kept somewhat opaque. Are they friends? Business partners? Enemies? Or even lovers? Leland grows visibly dismayed at a grand party which features a line of chorus girls celebrating the Inquirer and, above all, Kane (this scene was intended to take place inside a brothel but the censorious Hay’s Office rejected the idea).  

Having successfully established his media empire, Kane decides to take a trip abroad where he begins collecting antiques and artifacts, shipping them all back home one at a time. But Leland declined to go to Europe with Kane –perhaps because Kane called him “a stuffed shirt,” a “horse-faced hypocrite,” and a “New England schoolmarm.” In addition to collecting artifacts, Kane has also collected a wife — Emily Monroe Norton (Ruth Warrick), niece of the President of the U.S. (“before he’s through she’ll be a President’s wife”).

As we return from Bernstein’s memories, he recalls that Emily was no “rosebud” neither was Susan. On “rosebud,” Bernstein says, “Maybe that was something he lost. Mr. Kane was a man who lost almost everything he had.” And is he wrong? Bernstein seems to be rather consumed by the relationship between Kane and Leland –Leland didn’t see eye-to-eye with Kane on the Spanish-American War, Kane pushed for it “even though we didn’t really have anything to fight about.” Though without it, we wouldn’t have the Panama Canal. Bernstein still finds a way to defend Kane.

V. Jedediah Leland’s Memories

At Bernstein’s direction, Thompson finds Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten) residing at the Huntington Memorial Hospital on 180^th street, though there is “nothing particular the matter with him,” perhaps it is just “old age –it’s the only disease… that you don’t look forward to be curing of” as Bernstein says.

A chummy, albeit slightly aloof, elder Leland (curiously now with a Southern drawl) claims he can “remember absolutely everything” that memory is his “curse” (one of the greatest curses ever inflicted on the human race, in fact). He chuckles and confesses to have become a “disagreeable old man” who seems to want nothing more than a cigar in his nursing home. When asked about Kane, Leland chuckles to himself and comments that Charlie behaved like a swine –though he wasn’t a brutal man. A good argument can be made that Leland, a lifelong bachelor who attended dance school with Kane’s wife, was secretly in love with Kane. At least, he clearly spent a great deal of time fawning over Kane, searching for his tender romantic inclinations, inspired by his youthful sense of idealistic virtue.     

“You’re a reporter. You want to know what I think about Charlie Kane. Well… I suppose he had some private sort of greatness, but he kept it to himself. He never gave himself away. He never gave anything away –he just left you a tip. He had a generous mind, I don’t suppose anybody ever had so many opinions, but he never believed in anything except Charlie Kane, he never had a conviction except Charlie Kane in his life. I suppose he died without one. It must have been pretty unpleasant. Of course, a lot of us check out without having any special convictions about death, but we do know what we’re leavin’ we do believe in something.”

We learn that Kane was thrown out of a lot of colleges –Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Switzerland; and as his mind bounces from memory to memory, Leland claims to have never believed anything he saw in the Inquirer; and Leland recalls attending dancing school with Kane’s first wife Emily. She was “very graceful” very nice, even nicer than other girls in dancing school. Her “Uncle John” is the President of the United States. After the first few months of marriage, they didn’t see much of one another, “it was a marriage just like any other marriage.” But what does Leland really know about marriage?

In a flashback, we see the budding romance between Charles and Emily at the start of their marriage from their seats at the breakfast table –their chairs are placed beside one another as they gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes, but as time passes, tension builds and their chairs at the breakfast table steadily grow apart (especially as Kane’s newspaper continues to criticize the presidential administration). Notably, Emily reads The Chronicle, not The Inquirer. They have one young son together. This is, of course, Leland’s image of Kane’s first marriage. Interestingly enough, we are not given portraits of some key moments in Kane’s life, such as the death of his first wife and son in a car accident, or the death of his mother (did they ever reconnect in later life?).

“That’s Charlie’s story, how he lost it. You see, he just didn’t have any to give.”

Leland then recounts the story of Kane’s second wife who was a “cross-section of the American public.” Kane apparently later told Leland that on their first night together all she had was a tooth-ache. In a flashback, Kane meets a friendly Susan Alexander on the street one rainy evening. His suit has been covered in mud and she has just returned from the drugstore with some medicine for her tooth-ache. She is coquette, innocent, ignorant, and frivolous like a child –she represents the gaiety of youth, a youth was denied to Kane. Notably, at this very moment, Kane was on his way to the western Manhattan warehouse in search of his own childhood. By now, his mother has died a long time ago, and on this night, he was planning to take a “sentimental journey” to look at some of his mother’s possessions in storage. Perhaps Kane was going in search of “rosebud.” But instead of visiting the warehouse, he is distracted by Susan –she is nearly twenty-two, and in charge of the sheet music at Seligman’s. In her flat, we voyeuristically enter the room even as Susan’s landlord has requested that she keep her door open if she has a gentleman caller. This marks the first chronological appearance of the famous snow globe object which reminds Kane of his childhood. She sings for him, and despite not being a particularly impressive singer, Kane claps (his lone applause of her singing foreshadows things to come). In order to cheer Susan up, Kane wiggles his ears –a boyhood trick taught to him at one of the world’s best boys’ schools by the former President of Venezuela.

Needless to say, Kane and Susan strike up an affair. However, we also learn that at this time Kane is running for governor –he hopes to rid the state of the evil politics of Boss Jim Gettys (Ray Collins). Charles Foster Kane is publicly portrayed as the fighting liberal, a friend of the working man who enters the campaign with “one purpose only: to point out and make public the dishonesty, the downright villainy of Boss Jim Gettys political machine!” Notably, both Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were defenders of the “little man” in their early years, as well. Kane’s populist tirade against the establishment that seems to be working until Gettys threatens to ruin Kane with news of his affair with Susan (Welles actually broke his ankle on the stairs screaming at Gettys in these scenes). It ultimately spells the downfall of Kane’s political career and his marriage. At first he is in denial about this “public thief to take the love of the people of this state away from me” but when his newspaper changes their morning headlines after the election from “Kane Elected” or “Fraud at the polls!” Kane retreats from politics. Perhaps it is this moment that most starkly transforms Kane from a young idealist into a cynical egoist. Watching this decline, Leland drunkenly confronts Kane over his faux defense of the “working man” –he knows Kane will one day find out that the working man has demands for rights (he doesn’t simply wait idly for the dispensation of gifts). But Kane merely toasts to “my terms” since “those are the only terms anybody ever knows.”

Leland and Kane stop speaking to each other for years. Leland requests a transfer to the Chicago paper and becomes a drunkard. The end of his tenure at The Inquirer comes when he writes a terrible review of Kane’s wife Susan in her controversial operatic debut (The Barber of Seville). Kane discovers Leland’s unfinished draft of the scathing review and finishes it before firing Leland.

“He was disappointed in the world so he built his own –an absolute monarchy.”

As the flashback ends, we are reminded that the elder Leland is a bit of a scattered old man, and his unreliable narration becomes apparent as he pretends not to remember the name of Kane’s Florida palace (“Xanadu”). He claims Kane wrote to him some five years ago –what did the letter say? Leland never explains. He is led away by a nurse who rolls her eyes at him as he still begs Thompson for a cigar. Unlike Bernstein who likened old age to a solemn disease that no one wishes to be cured of, a whimsical Leland seems to be resigned to his fate, hoping to continue smoking in spite of his young doctor ‘who wants to keep him alive.’ Of course, both men –Leland and Bernstein– are sharply contrasted with the demise of Kane, whose end of life seems ghostly, barren, sorrowful, and lonely.      

VI. Susan Alexander Kane’s Memories

Now, our intrepid reporter Thompson returns to the El Rancho nightclub in Atlantic City to attempt another interview with Susan Alexander Kane (like many of the sets in the film, the El Rancho nightclub was re-used from an existing western set). The cabaret seems even more worn down than it was a few days ago. Jazz music plays in the background (performed by a then-yet-to-be-famous Nat King Cole). In reflecting upon Kane, Susan laments his desire to build that grand opera house. “You wouldn’t want to hear a lot about what comes into my mind about myself and Mr. Charlie Kane.” She wonders that maybe she shouldn’t have sung for him that first time. She didn’t want to sing and she didn’t want the opera house “everything was his idea –except my leavin’ him.”

In a flashback: with his political career gone, Kane begins foisting a new career upon his wife –he compels Susan into a singing career, even though the best Italian vocal coach Signor Matiste (Fortunio Bonanova) simply cannot train her to become a good singer. But Kane will not accept “no” for an answer. With enough money and drive, he believes success can be achieved –a crude parody of the American dream. At her first performance, he forces her mother’s dream upon her, refusing to listen to reason, and amidst a cohort of sycophantic fans and other audience members who loudly state how “dreadful” the performance is, he forces her to continue with her singing –enforcing a tireless American work ethic, stubbornly rejecting the notion that some people simply aren’t cut out for their dreams.

Leland later sends Kane his crumpled up “Declaration of Principles” which Kane now calls an “antique” and Leland shreds a $25,000 check sent to him by Kane after being fired. Pushed to the brink, Susan attempts suicide with a sedative prescribed to her, because she simply cannot reach Kane and she despises having to perform when “a whole audience just doesn’t want you.” But Kane responds, “that’s when you’ve got to fight them.” He refuses to relent.  

But in time, he quietly accepts a certain degree of defeat. He retires with Susan to Xanadu, his vast, spartan palace where even the gargantuan fireplace dwarfs him. It is a place of immense opulence that Susan often whines about: “A person could go crazy in this dump –nobody to talk to, nobody to have any fun with –forty-nine thousand acres of nothing but scenery and statues. I’m lonesome!” In Xanadu, time seems to stand still, Susan is unsure of whether the time in New York 11:30 morning or night (though it is the same time zone as Florida). She spends her days playing jigsaw puzzles and hosting parties (though we never see the parties) –this image runs darkly parallel to the lavish parties thrown by Hearst to impress his mistress, Marion Davies. At any rate, the gulf of distance that now exists between Kane and Susan makes the earlier breakfast table sequence with Emily seem trite by comparison. Out of sheer boredom, Kane and Susan make a trip to the Everglades. We see a solemn train of cars snaking along the coast. Apparently, guests have joined, though Kane has no real friends. He and Susan spend the trip arguing inside a tent until Kane smacks Susan –and he is not remorseful about it.  

Later, back at Xanadu, we see Kane slowly plodding through rows of mammoth museum pieces he has accumulated and scattered throughout his palace. He is interrupted by a servant who informs Kane that Susan plans to leave him. He trudges up to her room, which seems like a small dollhouse when contrasted with the immense scope of Xanadu, and he begs her to stay, —“please don’t go… you can’t do this to me…” Apparently, they have guests visiting in another wing of the palace, but we never see these distant visitors. In spite of Kane’s pleas, Susan storms out of Xanadu, marching down rows of matte-painted hallways into oblivion, never to return.  

By now, Kane lives alone, surrounded by his priceless treasures collected from around the world, many of them sitting in unopened boxes –undisplayed– while his media empire continues to crumble, its ownership still under the thumb of Thatcher & Company. Kane has neither friends, nor family, nor love –but he is doted upon by an army of servants. His life is forlorn and reclusive as he trudges down endless echoing hallways filled with mirrors and marble archways.

As we exit the flashback and return to the El Rancho nightclub, Thompson remarks that he “feels kinda sorry for Mr. Kane” and Susan replies, “Don’t you think I do?” She proudly mentions that she has lost all of her money –not necessarily a result of the Depression. Finally, she suggests Thompson speak with Raymond the butler at Xanadu because “he knows where all the bodies are buried.”

VII. Raymond the Butler’s Memories

Heeding her advice, Thompson arrives at Xanadu and briefly speaks with the sleazy butler Raymond (Paul Stewart) who worked for Kane for eleven years. He asks Thompson for $1,000 in exchange for what he knows, and at the same time, he smokes a cigarette which he disrespectfully puts out on the marble inside the mansion. We get the impression that Raymond has likely been stealing from Kane for years.     

Raymond says Kane would act “funny” sometimes. Like when his wife left him and he destroyed a whole room –an event which only stopped when Kane spotted the small snow globe. With tears in his eyes, he uttered the word “rosebud” before trudging down mirror-filled hallways into darkness. But, according to Raymond, “he said all kinds of things that didn’t mean anything.”

As the camera pans upward, we see hordes of people cataloguing countless artifacts –everything from $25,000 headless Venus sculptures to a single stove from Kane’s mother, Mary Kane, only valued at $2 from Salem Colorado, as well as a Burmese temple, and three Spanish ceilings, part of a Scotch Caste, and even some things of sentimental value like his celebration “welcome home” trophy from the 467 employees of The Inquirer –a moment which feels like a lifetime ago. Someone remarks that Kane “never threw anything away.” While all the people begin putting a price on all these objects, we ask ourselves: how can we account for the value of a man’s life? Is it possible to accurately measure the value of people, places, memories, artifacts?   

“Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn’t get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn’t explain anything. I don’t think any word can explain a man’s life. No I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle – a missing piece.”

The meaning of “rosebud” seems to be a mystery until the end. As the camera pans over mountains of objects, “rosebud” is secretly revealed only to the audience –it is none other than the name of his childhood sled, the very same one he played with in Colorado and once used to knock Thatcher down. A worker carelessly labels the sled “junk” and tossed into a giant furnace. Only we in the audience are allowed to learn the truth of “rosebud” though it’s true significance to Kane remains as elusive as the man himself. We then return to the outer grounds of Xanadu and conclude the film right where we began –outside a fence where a sign reads “No Trespassing.” Of course, we are given the impression that in watching Citizen Kane we have indeed been allowed trespass into the private life of one man –Charles Foster Kane– a man who reached the pinnacle of modern success, an idealistic dreamer who was defeated by his ambitions and retreated into a vain world of hubris. With Citizen Kane, and its quest to discover the meaning of “rosebud,” we are permitted to look upon something sacred –the life of a man, for better or worse, as told through hazy, non-linear, fragmented portraits recounted by several unreliable narrators who each deliver a complex, kaleidoscope of an aging colossus. This film is ostensibly a biography which wrestles with the very question of biography as a narrative art form –a meta biography which in some ways reveals more about the biographer than the man being profiled. Kane’s second wife Susan recalls him with a mix of anger and pity while in an alcoholic stupor; both Bernstein and Thatcher are unreliable narrators who highlight Kane’s faults while minimizing their own, and Leland is losing his memory, or perhaps he wishes to conceal certain aspects of his own fondness for Kane. The truth of the matter is far more difficult to apprehend, like a jigsaw puzzle we still need to put the pieces together.

In the end, we do not love, celebrate, or heroify Kane –but rather we pity him. Even though he achieved the height of the American experience –wealth, power, and fame—his empty materialism never gave him “rosebud” again. Rosebud comes to represent the blossoming of youth, the eternal springtime of life, an Arcadian age of simplicity and childhood that can never again be re-lived. Perhaps in the pursuit of reclaiming his lost boyhood, Charles Kane begins accumulating both objects and people –though unlike statues, which can be controlled absolutely, people can eventually one day leave you. His nostalgia leads him into a pit of darkness and despair, while his collection of personal artifacts, including ones that mean the most to him, are all unceremoniously burned up in smoke, leaving countless stories untold.   

Despite knowing all the facts of his life, we don’t ever really know the true Charles Kane –he is afraid of showing himself, hesitant to expose the myth, and with somewhat unreliable narrators, we must rely on the omniscient camerawork by Gregg Toland to reveal just enough information and frame our perspective by placing the camera in places where no one else had before –sometimes Toland shoots scenes at shoe-level to accentuate the height or grandeur of Kane, while other scenes show both the foreground and background fully lit. This, along with the use fabric ceilings to hide microphones, wide angles, high contrast lighting, frequent deep focus –Citizen Kane is an unparalleled technical masterpiece.  

However, mired in controversy, Citizen Kane faced calls for censorship from its very beginning as well as strident efforts to stop its release and ruthless suppression through intimidation, blackmail, newspaper smears, and FBI investigations –the greatest offender being William Randolph Hearst who accused Welles of painting a deeply unflattering portrait of his life. He instructed his media empire to ignore the film outright, blocking its release, threatening the studio heads with scurrilous headlines about Jews and immigrants in Hollywood, promising to expose various secret scandals, and even compelling Louis B. Mayer to pay RKO for the full cost of making the film simply in order to destroy it –such was the power held by William Randolph Hearst. Indeed, the film had hit too cose to home. Much like Kane, Hearst was once an idealistic dreamer turned titan of industry whose seaside castle in San Simeon and extensive art collection rivaled the best in the world (also, apparently his private nickname for Marion Davies’s intimate anatomy was “rosebud”). The notorious battle over the film’s release has since been further detailed in Thomas Lennon’s and Michael Epstein’s Oscar-nominated documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996), and it was retold in HBO’s cable-TV film RKO 281 (1999) and even more recently in David Fincher’s Mank (2020) which sought to investigate another infamous fight over Citizen Kane, namely the dispute over script-writing credit between Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz –one a fearless and tyrannical visionary auteur, the other an erratic playwright and alcoholic gambler who suffered a terrible car accident at the time. There are those like Pauline Kael who have come to Mank’s defense, while others like Peter Bogdanovich have defended Welles. In many respects, the squabbles over the true essence of Citizen Kane continue to this day. Sadly, the extraordinary tumult over the release of Citizen Kane cost Welles his independence as a filmmaker, depriving us of a cinematic genius. His next film The Magnificent Ambersons, despite being a masterpiece, was heavily edited by RKO, and of his subsequent films were independently produced.

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Credits:

• Director: Orson Welles
• Screenplay by: Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles
• Produced by: Orson Welles
• Starring:
  • Orson Welles…..Charles Foster Kane, a wealthy newspaper publisher.
  • Joseph Cotten…..Jedediah Leland, Kane’s best friend and a reporter for The Inquirer. Cotten also appears (hidden in darkness) in the News on the March screening room.
  • Dorothy Comingore…..Susan Alexander Kane, Kane’s mistress and second wife.
  • Everett Sloane…..Mr. Bernstein, Kane’s friend and employee at The Inquirer.
  • Ray Collins…..Jim W. Gettys, Kane’s political rival for the post of Governor of New York.
  • George Coulouris…..Walter Parks Thatcher, a banker who becomes Kane’s legal guardian.
  • Agnes Moorehead…..Mary Kane, Kane’s mother.
  • Paul Stewart…..Raymond, Kane’s butler.
  • Ruth Warrick…..Emily Monroe Norton Kane, Kane’s first wife.
  • Erskine Sanford…..Herbert Carter, editor of The Inquirer. Sanford also appears (hidden in darkness) in the News on the March screening room.
  • William Alland…..Jerry Thompson, a reporter for News on the March. Alland also voices the narrator of the News on the March newsreel.
• Cinematography: Gregg Toland
• Edited by: Robert Wise
• Music by: Bernard Herrmann
• Production Companies: RKO Radio Pictures and Mercury Productions
• Distributed by: RKO Radio Pictures

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