In a 1962 international poll among film critics and historians executed by the British film magazine Sight and Sound to formulate a consensus over which motion pictures are universally deemed "the ten best films of all time," Orson Welles' Citizen Kane clearly topped the list, earning the distinction of the best film of all time, if one were to read such listings literally. The same survey is commissioned once every subsequent decade, with Kane topping the list each time, and the film has retained this crown in most other canonical formulations to the present day. Such an honor, however, means less and less when an increasing historical distance (and a growing audience of film fans who have never seen anything older than Star Wars) tends to at the least gloss over critical dialogue surrounding the film, or at most elevate the work to the status of a sacred cow that is beyond criticism.

Many reviewers at the film's premiere and critics in subsequent decades bestowed substantial praise on Welles' satire on the life of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, beatifying the film with charges of visual brilliance and seamless narration, as well as apotheosizing Welles, its co-writer, director, and star. John O'Hara, reporting on the film's opening for Newsweek, insisted that “it lacks nothing...your faithful bystander reports that he has just seen... the best picture he ever saw...(with) the best actor in the history of acting." French writer Jacque Bourgeois was equally benumbed, charging that "Citizen Kane constitutes...a revolution such as dramatic art has scarcely undergone since Aeschylus." Contemporary critics often aggrandize the film to mythical proportions, which often serves to stifle subsequent scholarship on Kane. Peter Travers, however, commemorating Kane’s fiftieth anniversary in a recent issue of Rolling Stone, lamented that "the years have given Kane a musty academic taint that Orson Welles never wanted for his rigorously hip satire of a newspaper tycoon's rise and fall." For new audiences reluctant to embrace the aging “classics” (fearing an experience comparable to the books their high school English teachers forced them to read), it must be understood that "best" does not automatically mean "flawless," and we would do well to revisit the actual critiques upon which Citizen Kane’s initial reputation was built.

Citizen Kane premiered on the first of May, 1941, at the Palace Theater in New York City. All reviewers were unified in praising the film's technical innovations. Cedric Belfrage of the Clipper called Welles’ direction and photographer Gregg Toland's camerawork "a revolution, and a major one, in Hollywood's approach to cinema." Tangye Lean of Horizon argued that "[t]echnically it is perhaps a decade ahead of its contemporaries”; Bosley Crowther of the New York Times agreed, writing that "compared with the average, it is vastly superior ... Everything about it, from a technical point of view, is surpassingly magnificent.” The “extraordinary technical novelties” commonly cited by reviewers are summed up adequately by Lean: "Technically... there are two precise focus over the whole sounds so that two different same time..." The review in Life magazine explains why Welles and Toland broke "all Hollywood's taboos'": "They shoot into bright lights, they shoot into the dark and against low ceilings...even the sound track is new." Time magazine notes the authenticity of the "March of Time" newsreels announcing Kane’s death, the novelty of a vertical jump to the stagehand who pinches his nose at Susan Alexander Kane's operatic debut, the multiple visual messages in the scene of Susan's subsequent suicide attempt, and adds that “[u]nforgettable are such scenes as the spanning of Kane's first marriage in a single conversation.”

The few complaints leveled against the picture’s cinematography illustrated that Kane’s alleged flaws were mostly due to discomfort with its distinctive novelties. Philip Hartung of Commonweal warns that the film "is so intelligently adult that half its audience will miss its point," which "may be Welles' downfall (from a box office; not artistic, point of view)…” Lean supports Hartung in noting that the use of deep-focus photography allows visual hints to be dropped with more subtlety, thus increasing the difficulty for the audience. "[I]t is of the greatest possible relevance that Kane fell in love with Susan immediately after he had seen on her dressing table a crystal ball containing a snow-covered shack and a sledge ... But the crystal has the same lack of prominence on the screen as Susan's hair brushes..." Finally, Hermine Rich Isaacs in Theatre Arts records his displeasure with the overlapping lines that Welles' soundtrack innovation allows. Most other reviewers merely attest to the film's "photographic beauty" but fail to go into further detail.

It is apparent that most of these reviewers are more experienced with the language of theater than that of cinema, for the focus of their criticism is mostly on the storyline. Eileen Creelman in the Sun revealed her personal tastes by writing that the film was "an interesting one, with decided personality all its own... (but) it is a cold picture, a puzzle rather than a drama. The interest is only intellectual, not dramatic." Otis Ferguson of the New Republic argues that "[t]he real art of movies a concentrates on getting the right story," and Kane "doesn't, quite." Despite the innovative camera work, he writes, there is nothing more than "talk and more talk - it's main problem always is story, story, story." Crowther delivers the most scathing evaluation of the script, as he writes of "some disconcerting lapses and strange ambiguities in the creation of the principal character"; he writes that the story "fails to provide a clear picture of the character and motives behind the man about whom the whole thing revolves . . . just exactly what it is that bears upon him; why it is there, and, for that matter; whether Kane is really a villain, a social parasite, is never clearly revealed."Even the final revelation of "Rosebud," according to Crowther, "sheds little more than a vague, sentimental light upon his character." At the end, Charles Foster Kane "is still an enigma -- a very confusing one."

In a subsequent column, Crowther resumes his attacks on Kane's characterization, and concludes that "this picture is not truly great, for its theme is basically vague and its significance depends on circumstances." Isaacs also expresses dissatisfaction with the film's central character, saying that he is "a man who is really not worth depicting, and here is the film's weakness." He continues:

Citizen Kane depends for its importance on implications which are external to the movie itself. It acquires a sort of reflected significance from the fact that it might be about a living man whom we all know, a man who not only loves power but has it, who wields a sinister influence on millions of people through the medium of his newspapers and his money. In the picture this sway over the multitude is hinted at but never demonstrated; and yet it is only this power which lends the man stature enough to make him a vital subject. Without his power he is an unpleasant rich man, nothing more.

The negative remarks by Creelman, Ferguson, Crowther, and Isaacs are opposed by an almost equal number of reviewers who found no fault with the script. Time magazine deemed the story "as psychiatrically sound as a fine novel." Life called the narrative "powerful," and the Nation described it as '"excellent cinematic material." Belfrage notes that Kane marks a revolution in scriptwriting as well, with the central character's death placed at the beginning, the multiple time skips, and the repetition of scenes from different eyes. "What other mediums could show so forcefully that truth is not merely objective; but subjective also and at the same time?” asks Belfrage. "Not even the novel," he retorts.

Hartung praises Welles' and Herman J. Hankiewicz's intelligence and "subtlety" in scriptwriting, noting that the script ''never once makes concessions to ordinary moviegoers," as it masterfully “jumps forward and back and only drops hints for the tired businessman and Ameche-loving fan to clutch at." Both Belfrage and Lean claim that Kane is fully a three-dimensional character, directly opposing Crowther's earlier criticisms. Lean attempts to fill Crowther in on "what it is that eats upon (Kane)": "We realize that when the child Charlie Kane was snatched away from his mother at her own instructions, a wound was inflicted on him that he didn't forget, that he spent his adult life trying to heal... He developed a megalomania whose roots lay in the situation he had been unable to control." Thus for some reviewers the answers are more easily found.

If there is one thing about which all reviewers were in accord, it is that Kane had received an exorbitant amount of pre-release hype. "There has never been a more exciting press show," Belfrage testifies. Hartung claims that the film received "an unprecedented amount of free ballyhoo." The Nation agreed, writing that “Citizen Kane has probably had more advance publicity of one kind or another than any other picture yet produced." Isaacs attributed "the largest unsought publicity build-up since Gone With the Wind” to newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, whose life the film was reported to mirror. Hearst and his film columnist Louella Parsons had raised Cain over Kane and threats of a lawsuit were afloat, thus affording the film several thousand dollars' worth of free publicity. Upon the film's release, however, Crowther argues that because "it was riding the crest of perhaps the most provocative publicity wave ever to float a motion picture... this extraordinary advance publicity preordered a mental attitude" which negatively influenced viewers' critical faculties.

Because of Hearst's overt interest in the films release, Crowther complains, the audience would automatically assume the character of Charles Foster Kane is indeed a caricature of an unscrupulous Hearst. Crowther's concern is obviously fueled by a belief that Kane bears no resemblance to Hearst, which he passionately argues: "Not a shred of evidence is presented to indicate absolutely that (Kane) is a social scoundrel. As a matter of fact, there is no reason to assume from what is shown upon the screen that he is anything but an honest publisher with a consistently conscientious attitude toward society." Comically, such an argument does not present Hearst in a virtuous light.

Citizen Kane was generally a critical success, and won awards for the Best Picture of 1941 by the National Board of Review and the New York Critics’ Circle. Welles failed to significantly cash in at that year’s Oscars ®, however, winning only one Academy Award ® (for Best Original Screenplay) despite several nominations. And as befits many films that only gained stature over time, Kane was a relative financial failure at its initial theatrical release. In the ensuing years, however, critical scholarship surrounding Kane has been plentiful, which has both better illuminated Kane’s true role in the history of filmmaking and suggested a number of shortcomings not noted by the original reviewers. Despite increased scrutiny over the past half-century, not a single Kane scholar disputes the film's lasting appeal, as explained by Pauline Kael in The Citizen Kane Book and Arthur Knight from Action Magazine in nearly identical statements: Kael confesses that "Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened," while Knight marvels that "...it is astonishing how fresh and original it still appears."

Citizen Kane is regarded by contemporary critics as primarily important in its expressionistic use of the camera. The film's innovations in lighting, camera angles, sound, and editing, and the use of special wide angle and depth-of-focus lenses all aided in carrying out an unprecedentedly complex narrative structure. Kael praises Welles' "coercive use of artificial, theatrical lighting" in which "[h]e used light like a spotlight on stage, darkening or blacking out the irrelevant." This was especially ingenious "in that the pinpoints of light in the darkness conceal the absence of detailed sets (a chair or two and a huge fireplace, and one thinks one is seeing a great room)..." The camera was generally below eye level, shooting upwards; sometimes the camera was even placed under the floor. Such a shooting angle inevitably distorts a person, elongating them, making them appear more important, and intimidating the audience which sits in an inferior position. Andrew Sarris comments on Kane’s montages of sound, which are "used intensively within the flashbacks to denote the interval of time within two related scenes," as "[a] character will begin a sentence and complete it weeks, months, or years later in a different location." This device "results in a constriction of time and an elimination of the transitional periods of rest and calm," maintaining the pace of the film. Arthur Knight calls Kane "a sound man's manual of areas for his special exploration," especially commending the use of musical "bridges" which would introduce music in the middle of a scene, and allow it to subtly change the mood in anticipation of the following scene.

Michael Stephanick argues in Montage that smooth transitions "are the foundation of Kane," and that his editors used "every technique possible" to obtain them (such as "wipe" editing employed between the six breakfast episodes to illustrate the disintegration of Kane's first marriage). Lastly, all critics mention photographer Gregg Toland’s use of deep-focus with a wide-angle lens, and the never-before-filmed ceilings which such a lens accommodated. Deep-focus allowed all areas from foreground to background to be clearly visible to the viewer, which, writes Kael. provided "the startling dramatic effect of having crucial action" going on the background (such as Kane appearing in a distant doorway). Peter Cowie points out, however, that "many of the technical devices used so successfully by Welles had been introduced prior to 1940." Deep-focus photography, for example, had been employed by D.W. Griffith in Musketeers of Pig Alley, and in Jean Renoir's La Regle du Jeu. Kane’s brilliance stems not from radical cinematic discoveries, but rather from Welles' "ability to synthesize and harmonize all possible stylistic methods into a coherent instrument for telling his story."

Critics in the past few decades have had more time to uncover what they charge to be significant holes in the script. Charles Higham leads the attack by calling Welles on what he terms "artistic cheats" in the main structure of the narrative: primarily, that the five narrators, acting as witnesses to Kane's career, "describe visually things they cannot possibly have seen." For example, "we cannot accept that Leland would have been able to describe in detail the confrontation between Kane, Mrs. Kane, Susan, and Gettys at which he was not an interloper; nor can we swallow the device whereby Susan is able to describe what Jedediah Leland did with his program in his seat in the stalls, or that Bernstein went to sleep in the balcony." Kael makes the same complaint, but feels that the smoothness and unity of the film compensates for the flaw: "...one is aware that the narrators are telling things they couldn't have witnessed, (but) one accepts this as part of the convention." Beyond the unrealistic narration, Higham goes even further, finding fault with the narration itself, as he asks

How much do we really know after Thatcher, Bernstein, Leland, Susan, and Ravmcnt have filled in their own sections of the puzzle? . . . The portrait is a generous one; but it is not altogether in the round: it is a brilliant sketch with the defects and virtues mapped by dashing strokes, yet the essence of the man is not quite there. We know, despite all the commentaries, too little about Kane: and here we see the limitations of the film.

Thus Higham in essence agrees with Crowther's 1941 review which criticized "Kane" for "some disconcerting lapses and strange ambiguities in the creation of the principal character."

Kael proceeds to chip away at the second pillar of the storyline, the film's central image of "Rosebud.” She says it serves as little more than a "gimmick," claiming that "[l]ooking for the secret of a famous man's last words is about as phony as the blind-beggar-for-luck bit, yet it does work for some people; they go for the idea that Rosebud represents lost material bliss and somehow symbolizes Kane's loss of the power to love or be loved." Kael explains that "Kane's separation from his parents ...seems to be used to explain Kane," but "there is an explicit disavowal of any such intention toward the end." This disavowal comes in the film from the mouth of Thompson, the journalist who interviews the five narrators, who says that to discover the identity of "Rosebud" "wouldn't have explained anything," and that no single word "can explain a man's life." "Nevertheless," continues Kael, "the structure of the picture -- searching for the solution to a mystery - and the exaggerated style make it appear that Rosebud is the key to Kane's life..." As a coup de grace, she makes the point that in the first place, "there was no one in the room to hear the dying Kane say ‘Rosebud.’” Thus she attempts to undermine the logic of the narrative from its beginning.

What truly distinguishes Kane is its being the first film to truly combine the cinema’s dual strengths, to speak through an exclusive film language which recognizes that style is as important as content. Dilys Powell, a British film reviewer present at the film's transatlantic premiere, notes astutely that its true innovation centers around "a question of a man with a problem of narrative to solve, using lighting, setting, sound, camera angles, and movement much as a genuine writer uses words, phrases, cadences, rhythms." These expressionistic filmmaking methods are Kane’s forte, and every critic has acknowledged a debt to them for their influence on subsequent films.

Welles' innovative techniques have woven their way into the fabric of contemporary film language; unfortunately, Welles' guiding enthusiasm and vitality have not. His boyishness and excitement with the discovery of the possibilities of movie-making have been diluted out of Hollywood, but continue to preserve within Kane a freshness unchanged since its release fifty years ago. As Louis Giannetti and Scott Eyman write, "what distinguished Kane at the time, and what continues to preserve it, is its energy, its air of command combined with youthful vivacity." Though the canon needs to be shaken up regularly in order to preserve its vitality, and the inherent subjectivity of film spectatorship makes it virtually indefensible to ascribe to any single film the title of "the best film ever," there would be little resistance in granting Kane the distinction of "most influential."

February 1992

Bibliography

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Anonymous. "Citizen Welles Raises Kane." Time 37 (January 27, 1941): 69-70.

Anonymous. "Kane Case." Time 37 (March 17, 1941): 90-1.

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Gianetti, Louis, and Eyman, Scott. A Brief History of Film. New Jersey, Prentice-Hall, 1986.

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Hartung, Philip T. "In Xanadu Did Kubla Kane." The Commonweal 34 (May 9, 1941): 65.

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