The early career of Orson Welles was prodigious in every sense of the word. By his twentieth birthday, he was acting on stage and in radio productions like The Shadow. In 1937, he founded the Mercury Theatre with John Houseman; a year later, the company broadcast an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds as a Halloween prank. The broadcast caused a sensation when thousands of listeners were convinced that a Martian invasion was actually underway. Welles was subsequently lured to Hollywood after RKO Radio Pictures promised him creative control over his first feature. In 1941, at the age of 25, he produced, directed, co-wrote and starred in what is widely considered to be the greatest film ever made.
“For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his soul?”
(Matthew 16:26)
Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ spellbinding dark fable of one man’s rise and fall, begins with one of the most famous sequences in movie history, proceeds through a consummately assured and brilliantly realized nonlinear narrative, and concludes with an unforgettable gut-punch of a twist ending. Six decades later, the echoes of its innovative storytelling and cinematography are still being seen.
The film opens as the camera approaches an opulent but foreboding palace. Inside, an old man lies alone in a darkened bedroom. He utters one last word—”Rosebud”—before dying. A snow globe falls from his hand to the floor, shattering the idyllic winter scene within. So ends the life of Charles Foster Kane, newspaper tycoon and American icon. Hoping to spice up an obituary newsreel with the meaning of Kane’s last word, a journalist interviews the great man’s second wife and several of his associates, who reveal much about Kane but nothing about the mysterious Rosebud. The reporter leaves Kane’s mansion empty-handed, but Rosebud is finally revealed as the film ends.
Welles’ genius as both actor and director elevates Charles Foster Kane to a tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions, a man whose relentless pursuit of power, influence, and material objects corrupts his youthful idealism and leads to his downfall. Adopted at an early age by a callous banker, Kane has learned how to be greedy and manipulative, but not how to love or be loved. The vast emptiness of his palatial mansion is a physical manifestation of the ego that further alienates him from the world. He collects countless art treasures, but hoards them in his castle without even looking at them. As the film’s ironic title makes clear, he’s the personification of America’s most deeply held values—capitalism and imperialism. (Luckily for Welles, Joseph McCarthy was just a circuit judge when Citizen Kane was released.)
Much has been made of the fictional Kane’s close resemblance to real-life newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, but Orson Welles’ own preoccupations come through as well. Kane’s seemingly predestined fate and lonely-at-the-top isolation reflect the director’s fascination with the Bard’s favorite themes; in the same way, likening Kane to Kublai Khan is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s opium-dream ode to the double-edged nature of greatness, a theme Welles must surely have appreciated.
Aside from its boldness and depth of characterization, the film is remarkable for the groundbreaking methods used to reveal all the facets of Kane’s personality. The combination of Welles’ vision and the inventive expressionism of Gregg Toland’s cinematography results in deep-focus compositions that are like moving chiaroscuro masterpieces. Often—as in the final part of the celebrated “kitchen table” montage depicting the disintegration of Kane’s first marriage—it is only the postures of the actors and their position in the frame that tell the story. Equally impressive are the overlapping dialogue and extended flashbacks (seen through the eyes of different characters at different times) that shine light on Kane’s psyche from different angles, not to mention the revelation that ties everything together to end the film. The influence of these landmark techniques cannot be overstated, as generations of filmmakers have used them ever since.
Citizen Kane was greeted with critical acclaim but commercial indifference during its initial run. Less indifferent was William Randolph Hearst, who tried to undermine the film in his newspapers. Although it lost money for RKO Radio Pictures, it was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won for Best Original Screenplay. The following year, Orson Welles directed a similarly unsuccessful adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons, causing his Hollywood fortunes to decline. Relocating to Europe in the late ’40s, he continued to act, direct, and develop numerous film projects, many of which never came to fruition. His late career featured various film and television roles, and his distinctive voice became a fixture in documentaries and commercials until his death in 1985. The reputation that was tarnished in his prime has been restored as his work has been rediscovered by critics, film scholars, and fans. He was honored with Lifetime Achievement awards by the American Film Institute (1975), Los Angeles Film Critics Association (1978), and Directors Guild of America (1984). In 1998, the AFI named Citizen Kane the greatest American film of all time.