Okay, Review No. 1, let’s go!
As an old man dies surrounded the decaying grandeur of deserted his home, he utters a single word: “Rosebud”. This man, we are told through a newsreel documentary, was Charles Foster Kane, a former newspaper tycoon with a media empire that once spanned the entirety of the United States. A man of failed political ambition, he was married (and divorced) twice, and in his later years he embarked on a series of self-indulgent building projects that either remain unfinished or unused. Having lived his life in the public eye, generating headlines as he went, Kane’s story after his death is hardly viewed as news, and so a journalist is assigned the task of interviewing Kane’s friends and associates to discover the meaning behind his mysterious final word. Maybe “Rosebud” can prove to be the key to truly understanding the man, the legend, the citizen that was Charles Foster Kane.
First off, I didn’t realise before watching Citizen Kane that I had absolutely seen Citizen Kane before… sort of. Directed by Orson Wells in 1941, Citizen Kane has been parodied so many times (check out nearly every episode of The Simpsons featuring C. Montgomery Burns if you don’t believe me) that even if you’ve never seen this film, trust me, you’ve actually seen this film at least twice over.
As this is purportedly a review, I think it’s important to say that I really enjoyed Citizen Kane and I would wholeheartedly recommend watching it if you haven’t already (there is a reason that nearly 80 years after its release it is still viewed as one of the greatest films of all time). Now full disclaimer here, I am not a Film Historian, nor have I ever studied film studies in any meaningful way. However, I am an opinionated, lapsed Classicist who has watched a lot of films I’ve hated (and even more that have just made me tired), so I’m going to have a crack at telling you exactly why I enjoyed this film and anything that stuck out to me particularly along the way.
One of the things that really pulled me in to the film straight off was the plot structure. It begins in medias res (a favorite narrative device of mine… thank you Classics) only to give you all the information you need to know about the eponymous Citizen Kane in the first thirteen minutes of run-time. Even the mysterious Rosebud gets a mention if you know what to listen out for (and seriously, pompous banker Thatcher being assaulted by the metaphorical representation of Kane’s lost innocence just gets funnier the more I think about it). This kicks of a cyclical plot structure which I found actively engaging as several characters (Kane’s ex-wife, his accounts man, his former best friend) all offer their own points of view about Kane through overlapping time periods. Although we are being several of the same plot details again and again, each new window into Kane allows us in the audience to fill in a bit more of the puzzle.
This also nicely sets up one of the major themes of the movie, personal vs. public experience. We may have seen Kane’s actions through his life in the news, but that yields no clues to the forces driving those decisions. This message is only reinforced throughout the rest of the film. It is only as journalist, Jerry Thompson, interviews those closest to Kane and the “important” moments of Kane’s life are thrown into a personal context, that audience is able to distinguish Kane, the man from Kane, the media personality.
On mentioning the journalist… In preparation for this post, I read Roger Ebert’s review of the film, where I feel that William Alland’s Jerry Thompson, the journalist that triggers every personal flashback about Kane’s life is bafflingly dismissed. Ebert called the role of Thompson a “thankless performance” as the audience barely sees his face despite his importance within the plot. I feel this misses the point of Thompson’s character somewhat as surely Thompson, a clear audience stand in, is important because we never see his face. Without him the audience would have no reason to be interested in Kane’s life, and by never seeing his face (he is mostly filmed from behind or in deep shadow) we can pretend that we are are part of the narrative thus increasing our investment in the mystery of Kane’s last words. At the end of the film Thompson is asked about his thoughts on the private life of Charles Kane:
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 have explained 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.
And that’s it, the endeavor is being given up as a lost. At this point the camera moves away from Thompson, finally reminding us that we, the audience, are outside the story and can in fact be shown this missing jigsaw piece. Among the massive piles of junk and superfluous wealth a simple sled is shown, first seen in Thatcher’s memory of Kane’s childhood and emblazoned with the word “Rosebud”. It is being put in an incinerator and we in the audience know that while Kane may have been fabulously rich, his life was consumed (completely futilely in the end) by his desperate longing to regain his childhood happiness. (whoo!)
One of the most well talked about themes of the film, the one everyone talks about is the loss of childhood innocence and the overriding certainty that money cannot buy you happiness. This is reflected in Kane’s growing resentment of everyone as he grows older and his desperate attempts to reclaim his lost childhood throughout the film. Both his crumbling marriages and his frantic attempt to acquire more and better stuff demonstrate how Kane fruitlessly expects that hurling money at a problem will help when it really, really doesn’t. Nor will he ever recapture his forgotten youth even as he jealously hoards relics from his childhood only to be so removed from the person he was that he lets the objects be swallowed by his massive house containing the loot of nations. Kane’s personality is simply lost and his legacy is left that of a hollow, eccentric billionaire who has no friend, just the cold comfort of money.
It is clear to me that Wells meant this to be a cautionary tale of sorts, and it is one that is still applicable today. A couple of nights ago I was having supper at my brother’s. We were discussing friends of his that work in banking, work insanely long hours, make those fat stacks and suffer from enormous amounts of buyer’s remorse. “They are,” he said as he poured more wine into my glass “the epitome of the phrase ‘Money can’t buy you happiness'”. Oh, I thought, just like in Citizen Kane, glad to know that hasn’t changed in the world then.
I want to talk more about this film, I want to keep going, but I think I’m going to call it here. I’m going to reiterate that if you haven’t watched this film, you really should (if only because that one episode of The Simpsons about Mr Burns’ teddy now makes a lot more sense). For me, it has made me consider the imprint we leave behind us for other people to see. Charles Kane lived his life in the public eye and no one, in the end, could say they really knew him. In today’s society we all live our lives in the public eye to some degree and I do wonder that if I were to die tomorrow what exactly my lasting public impression would be. Man, I hope it’s a good one and doesn’t get too coloured by people reading this stupid blog.
Bye now.
On to Review 2: ‘Tusk’ by Fleetwood Mac
Review Thirty-Six 