Citizen Kane: Greatest or Overrated?

Greatness is only defined by the people around it. The people went into an uproar when the book One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was published since the novel mocked the work ethic in mental hospitals. George Washington brought the United States independence and refused to be the new King of America, Abraham Lincoln, for whatever purposes were in his mind, brought about the freedom of the African slaves in the North and South. All of the greatest people and all of the greatest pieces of art evoked a reaction of either great shock (such as Picasso’s Guernica) or great jubilation (Franklin Delano Roosevelt bringing about the end of the Great Depression). All things great bring about a reaction equal to their greatness, one that brings about the true character of the surrounding culture and society.

The movie Citizen Kane is considered the best in my eyes because it has greatness that reaches far beyond its own timeline and culture. The movie made the powerhouse and divine king look like a lonely spoiled man who got everything he wanted. After Hurst was able to hear of the movie (he never actually saw it) he was bent on getting rid of it and not letting his reputation be tarnished. Citizen Kane reflected in many ways what the society around it was—there was no real freedom of speech. Only society dictated what was to be seen and what was to be heard. Citizen Kane was not to be heard at that time.
The societal aspect of the movie that transcends generations is that this whole issue of freedom of speech. If someone hadn’t known the past of the movie, they wouldn’t know of the film’s greatness (which is more or less the same way with anything great such as people or books). Citizen Kane is the best American-made movie.

Citizen Kane is the best American-made movie because of the humanistic aspects that are intermingled within the story and the themes that the characters embody throughout the story. The movie is more realistic than any other I have seen yet (or any that America has made yet). No one is able to see Kane for who he is, his life tragedies bottle into what his attitudes are (something movies don’t portray too much), and that people often look into another person and don’t instantly see them for who they are (something seen in romantic comedies in general). The complexities of humanity are portrayed spot-on within Citizen Kane.

Some younger critics within a film classroom might say that Charles Foster-Kane is more of an archetype and so is not relatable and doesn’t portray any meaning. They might say that he is only there to facilitate the story and brings about meaning through his more unorthodox actions (such as wrecking a room when his wife leaves him). His more unorthodox actions are intentional and also portray the biggest theme of the story: that everyone has limited empathy and views others in a more archetypal way. There needs to be a more in depth involvement to feel what Foster-Kane is feeling during the course of the movie. His feelings and “our knowledge is restricted principally to what Kane’s acquaintances know” (Bordwell 311). The reason why Citizen Kane is so great is because the script doesn’t feed the audience what the character is feeling and the film doesn’t explain Foster-Kane’s actions some of the time. The movie seems to encompass that theme of not being able to penetrate another human’s mind. Other movies don’t really delve into every step almost of a character and provide no explanation. Usually movies that tell a story of another’s life make the character a little more open to the audience or the specific scenes within the person’s life are more telling of what is emotionally happening with the main character allowing that interpersonal connection between the character and the audience.

The reason why I think that Foster-Kane grew up to be a more spoiled character that cares mostly about money and succeeding and retaining the things he is able to obtain is because Charles Foster-Kane is brought up in an abnormal environment devoid of love. Near the beginning of the movie we see Charles Kane being handed over to a man that is supposed to be a Foster parent to Charles. Through this we see that there are more parental negligence that culminate to what makes Charles Foster-Kane and to ignore that is to only prove what the movie is trying to prove (which is that since no one really knows the full story no one knows that all Charles needed was love or “Rosebud”). All the tragedies such as being born into a more negligent home and having a foster parent that only cared for his success and not for who he was (which is presented via the angry collage of grunts his foster parent has when he wants to own a newspaper).

But although the humanistic aspects are deep enough to display a theme just by the characters’ movements, maybe that alone is not enough to satiate the “Best Movie of All Time” title. The title for those with more experience with film analysis, exemplifies the most top-notch mis en scene, editing, and cinematography. Not only are the more technical aspects pleasing to the eye but they also convey the theme of the story which is something that is lacking in the Hollywood film business. I’m not even sure the great Alfred Hitchcock or some of the other more prominent film directors did this (but then again since Welles was an author maybe I am a little biased).

The mis en scene is the first part I’d like to focus on. If you have been reading my blog you should know what it is but for those that are newer to this ongoing blog, mis en scene is all about how a still shot looks to the audience. The still shot could be aesthetically beautiful but have no meaning (such as some scenes in Diving Bell and Butterflies—a great film by the way) or they could derive meaning from one shot. At the very beginning of the movie, there are literal still shots of this dark mansion beyond a mountain and a sign that says “No Trespassers.” This not only sets the movie in place and conveys the theme but it settles this eerie feeling into the audience and thus prepares us for a more tragic movie. The opening of Citizen Kane opens the window for whatever theme is coming our way aka “No Trespassers” are to come into Kane’s life. “By avoiding crosscutting or other techniques that would move toward a more unrestricted range of knowledge” (Bordwell 331) the theme is also conveyed by not letting us get any personal attachment to Charles Foster-Kane. The style or the mis en scene of the film “requires us to take each narrative’s version as objective within his or her limited knowledge. Welles reinforces this by avoiding shots that suggest optical or mental subjectivity” (Bordwell 311) and by doing this he causes the audience to have to search deeper. The lack of first person shots and voice overs causes the audience to not really empathize with his character as much as say his wife.

The other part is that even his best of friends is far away from him at the end of the movie. The mis en scene in the scene where Charles Foster-Kane writes a bad review for his own wife exemplifies this perfectly. Jedediah walks in as Charles is typing up the rest of Jed’s article. We see a shot that meshed two shots together. The first is with Jed being in the background. He is very far away, distant and in the light while Charles is very close to the camera and is very close up to the camera. The two juxtapose one another and provide a very breath taking dichotomy between the two. The two of them have a silent fight and try not to talk to one another during the course of the movie.

Light and darkness also play a crucial role in Welles’s mis en scene, which provides both foreshadowing and it sheds some light on the theme of the movie. When Charles is creating the Declaration of Principles he is placed within darkness for the whole time while his two cohorts and drowned in light. Although this doesn’t make sense in terms of how light works and how darkness works either, it displays a theme. Those that pick at the scientific realities of the movie (or any movie for that matter) are not asking the right questions. The real question is “what is this movie trying to convey to me as a person” or “how is this movie trying to change me?”

The cinematography within Citizen Kane also exemplifies “an external perspective on the action” (Bordwell 311). The cinematography of the movie serves the same purpose as the mis en scene which is to make the audience more objective than any character in the movie and to make a road block for those that want to empathize with Foster-Kane. The person facilitating the story, a journalist by the name of Mr. Thomson, is made almost anonymous and forgettable through the use of cinematography which is great for the audience. If this failed the rest of the story would have failed. The way they did this was by making him put “his back to us, he is tucked into the corner of the frame, and he usually in darkness” (Bordwell 312). Although this doesn’t contribute to the story, it certainly is a remarkable act to try and get the audience to forget about Thomson and not be interested in a certain character because of how they face and where they are placed.

The editing also provides the audience to have a couple laughs while also being able to analyze Kane in a more objective way as well. At first while the news reel is going on, they say that after losing a couple of the races and losing popularity he turns to things more simple and then they cut to Susan a morbidly stupid woman (but still a character more empathetic in the movie to that of Kane). Comedy though is not the only way that Welles used editing. In the scene where Charles Foster-Kane wrecks the room there are a limited amount of cuts and the limited amount of cuts make the scene seem more edgy and for once we are allowed to look at him and sort of wonder who he is and why he is doing this odd thing. Most of the time when there were long shots where there weren’t cuts, the focus was not on Kane but rather to those that were either talking to him or the focus was on Kane’s back.

As all these things come together they formed what I think is the best movie. It affected the movie industry back then because it shook what it meant to expose others. Newspapers only last for so long (and now they are a dying breed of communication) and movies last forever which is why I think Citizen Kane paved the way for more documentary or expose sort of films like Sicko and Bowling for Columbine. Of course they aren’t fictitious films based on real life but Citizen Kane is what opened peoples’ eyes to the power of film and just how much of an impact it can make on society.