Citizen Kane Questionnaire ( I need an A on this )

Information About Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane (1941) is widely recognized by experts as “the greatest movie ever made.” It was voted #1 of the greatest films ever made in 1998 in an American Film Institute poll of the film community (filmmakers, critics, and educators). It was re-voted #1 in 2007.

It deserves this honor, not for any resemblance to the slickness of modern movies, but for the sheer genius of its integration of the film arts, for becoming a cultural milestone due to its content, and for standing the test of time. It is considered a virtual textbook of technique and style by those who love the art of filmmaking, and is admired by virtually all leading film directors today.

I will simply summarize the Citizen Kane issues and qualities here. Books have been written about it, and there is a lot of information about it online, all of it fascinating. I encourage you to read more about it. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CitizenKane , http://www.filmsite.org/citi.html , http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033467/ , etc.

Orson Welles was only 25 years old when he made the movie, having created a name for himself on radio, especially with his 1938 presentation of War of the Worlds, causing a panic on the East Coast and making people believe Martians had landed in New Jersey. He brought his radio actors, the Mercury Players, to Hollywood when RKO Studios offered him the opportunity to make a film with complete artistic freedom.

He worked with screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz to rework an unpublished Mankiewicz novel into Citizen Kane. As the story of Charles Foster Kane, it was a thinly veiled fictionalization of the life of media magnate William Randolph Hearst. As soon as rumors of its content reached Hearst, the newspaper publisher set out to ruin Welles and the film for what could be viewed as personal and insulting comparisons to his own life. For example, Kane (or Hearst) is shown as a monster who destroys those closest to him. Hearst’s mistress was actress Marion Davies, whom he sponsored into the movie business in which he had considerable holdings; she specialized in playing airheaded blondes. Kane has a ditzy, talentless blonde singer for a mistress. Hearst had his San Simeon (Hearst Castle) in Morro Bay, Calif., and Kane has his Xanadu in Florida. The controversy added cultural significance to the film, which Hearst even attempted to buy to destroy it; Hearst even threatened the heads of all the major studios into trying to buy and destroy it themselves.

The movie survived all of that, even though it toppled the president of RKO. It was released to generally lukewarm reviews and did not do all that well in the box office. However, within 25 years, even though Welles career never flourished in part as a result of Citizen Kane (in fact, it ruined him by labeling him as “dangerous”), it was being hailed as a masterpiece and a work of genius.

What was so great about it? Literarily, it has some truly great dialogue. It is timeless in its story and characters. Consider the big themes and then the unique construction of the story. It is arranged as a mystery, and has an all-time surprise ending. There are Freudian implications, drug abuse, and even domestic abuse, all of which were almost unheard of in films of that era. It is a movie about a media magnate and uses multimedia to make its point.

Then consider the theatrical aspects. All aspects of production design are excellent, including the sets, costuming, makeup, and lighting, which is often used to suggest mysteries and revelations. The acting, particularly by Welles, who plays Kane from age 25 to about 70, is superb. Even the actors’ movements are purposeful in portraying the personalities.

Welles acquired acclaimed cinematographer Greg Toland to shoot it. The cinematic elements include unusual camera angles, camera movement, and framing; unusual editing techniques including novel transitions, special effects, animation, and montage. Borrowing from Japanese filmmakers, Toland had special lenses ground to enable Welles to shoot scenes in grand scale in “deep focus.” Extreme low angle shots empowered characters and caused “ceiling framing” composition. Formal composition is used to arrange actors in conflict in an endless array of groupings that emphasize the speakers and their ideas. Influenced by German films, black and white is used to create shadows and light that accent the mood of every scene. There is montage, especially the opening “newsreel,” that creates a sense of scope and passage of time. Even relationships are compressed in time through montage.

Welles brought new sound techniques to film from radio, including audio transitions from scene to scene. The music, composed by Bernard Herrmann (who later wrote the music to Hitchcock films including Vertigo and Psycho, and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver), adds many special touches to the presentation. There are melodies for every occasion, adding to the audio manipulation.

Each time one views Citizen Kane, one discovers something delightful that one had not been noticed before. Taken as a package, Citizen Kane isn’t perfect, but it is probably as perfect as a film can be. Most notably, it has stood the test of time for greatness.

Your challenge as students of motion pictures is to apply what you are learning in this class to this film. When you “get it,” you will know that you have derived from this class a sense of film appreciation that enhances your media literacy and critical thinking skills.