The 1000 Greatest Films: Citizen Kane (Act One)

 Citizen Kane (USA 1941) D: Orson Welles

If you are going to write about the greatest achievements in cinema history, there is really no place else to begin other than with Citizen Kane. To describe Orson Welles’ masterpiece as "the greatest film ever made" is not really so much to pronounce a critical judgment as it is to recite a decades-old mythological fact. Beginning with so much fanfare even before its formal conception, triumphing (critically but quietly) in its first, limited, release, continuing to its post-war discovery by (mostly) French film critics, and its subsequent airings on American television, the legendary ground continued to swell steadily underneath its phenomenal reputation, until finally starting around the late 1950s, it had become firmly cemented as the absolute center of the world’s film canon.

And there it remains, despite occasional pesky challengers, securely on top of the cinematic heap - and I, for one, unflinchingly assert that that is precisely where it belongs. The time has long past for the question to be asked whether Kane actually is the ultimate summit of motion-picture possibilities, but we can never cease asking why. And the more we ask the question, it seems that ever-more more answers will eternally be revealed.

I chose the opening quote from the final paragraph in the final essay of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane: A Casebook because it contained a statement that seems to me to finally, after a couple of hundred pages of arguments and observations, to state the case so perfectly and succinctly: "It tries to do everything . . ." What other movie can you even begin to say that about? It appears to me that it is Citizen Kane’s outsized ambition in and of itself that propels it to such extraordinary heights. Of course, it could have missed its targets in many of its efforts, but the sheer fact that it did not seems to pull the entire, crazy-quilt structure into such a perfectly integrated form that its mysteries seem amplified and strengthened upon each viewing - even after hundreds.

And since Citizen Kane seems to be also the most written-about film ever made, it is singularly difficult to add anything unique to the discussion. And that is one reason why I wish to choose it to launch the illustration of a peculiar pet notion that I have long entertained about the nature of cinema. It is certainly not an original notion. However, discovering the idea many years ago set me to thinking about films in a rather special way and eventually led me on a path to developing a formal mode of interpretation that could possibly greatly enhance the process of studying of film as myth.

The cinema as "myth"


Now, "film as myth" is definitely a hot topic, and has been especially so in the last few decades, ever since George Lucas revealed that one of the primal inspirations for his Star Wars series had been found in the pages of mythologist Joseph Campbell’s classic book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). In that highly influential volume, Campbell argues for a concept which he calls the "monomyth" - a mythic structure of ancient and universal application and meaning that appears in many forms throughout history, in different cultural guises:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
Throughout this journey, which can take any form, in any period of time, ancient or modern, the hero inevitably undergoes various archetypal adventures and tests in which he must succeed in order to emerge victorious. A number of academic applications of Campbell’s schematics to classical film genres - not only in Hollywood, but in worldwide cinema - reveal a remarkable consistency of possible interpretation.

While one can only marvel at the remarkable insight of Lucas - precisely the notion that cinema is inherently "mythic" in its very nature - and applaud the diligence of critical analysts applying Campbell’s theory to filmic interpretation, I think it is important that we mark its limitations as well. For while this sort of analytical style definitely opens up new possibilities of meanings in the study of texts, too strict an application of Campbell’s own definitions can ultimately be limiting. For if it is important to understand how different stories resemble one another, thus emphasizing their universal application, should it not be just as important to see how they differ? After all, if we already have our analysis in hand before we approach our subject, are we not fairly certain that we are going to discover what we went looking for?

Perhaps the culmination of this type of critical theory emerged in 2007, with the publication of screenwriter Christian Vogler’s best-selling The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. In this tutorial, Vogler breaks down Campbell’s basic schemata and demonstrates how its fundamental structure (and meaning) can be applied to profitably writing successful screenplays in virtually any genre. While I have no doubt that such a guide could be a meaningful stimulus to a talented and visionary author, the strict application of a such a method has the danger of inevitably resulting in a "paint-by-numbers" kit.

Do we really only have one myth? I truly don’t believe that such was Joseph Campbell’s point of contention in writing his inaugural book, and through long and careful studies of his life’s works, I am convinced that Campbell, more than any other theorist, was aware of the countless variations, mutations, inversions and contradictions that worked their way in the complex world of culturally variegated "collective unconscious." Just as dreams differ from dreamer to dreamer, myths differ from culture to culture, even if there are certain threads of commonality that unite us as members of a particular species.

Please do not think that I am attacking Campbell’s basic initial, inspirational observation, because the recognition of commonality of the human condition is a critically important matter. Nor do I particularly object to Vogler’s use of Campbell’s theories - I am merely cautioning against their overuse, which may blind us to unique and creative discoveries. For if there does indeed exist a "monomyth," it must be stressed that this does not in any way imply that there may be - indeed must be - many other myths as well.

For example, how would we profitably apply the use of Campbell’s formula, as stated above, to an analysis of Citizen Kane? Now, there’s an assignment for a budding writer! At first glance, it seems that the only possible interpretation of the myth in relationship to this picture would be its total inversion. Here we have the hero failing to "win a decisive victory," over "fabulous forces," and emerging not with "boons" for his fellow men, but with disappointments and sufferings. In short, we have a tragedy.

Now, it may prove profitable to delve into Campbell’s (or Vogler’s) scheme to see where our "hero" went wrong during any given point of his "journey," but is there not a sense of diminishing returns for our backtracking through the maze, so to speak? Isn’t tragedy cut clearly from some different kind of cloth from the epic?

But to address a larger question, one that may perhaps be ultimately more important to our topic, regarding both this film and films in general: Is not the use of the idea of the mythic in cinema clearly less important in what it reveals than how it reveals it? That is, isn’t the most important thing in cinema, that which distinguishes it from all the other arts, the way a story appears, up on a screen?

Notice that I have just shifted the emphasis of this discussion to a formal level. And that is because I believe with all my heart and soul that the emphasis of cinema belongs precisely on the topic of form, and always visual form, whose function is (or should be) primary, in this ultimately visual medium, to determine the meaning and function of the content, whether it is to be seen as mythical or not.

Now if that sounds something like a "declaration of principles," that’s probably because it just might be.

The cinema as "dream"
Luis Bunuel was once quoted to the effect that "While cinema seems to have been invented to depict dreams, it almost never attempts that." I agree with the first half of the great director’s statement. For it seems to me, that in its largest allegorical sense, cinema can almost be defined as "the reproduction of dreams."

Think about the vast differences between reading a book (such as a novel) and watching a movie. With a book, you turn on a light - with a movie, the lights go out. With a book, your mind enters into an active engagement with a text - with a movie, a text is projected directly upon your consciousness without your consent. A book communicates thoughts with which you must struggle to interpret its meaning - a movie asserts its own meaning upon you. When reading a book, you must consciously conjure up images in your mind - with a movie, every image is carefully prepared for you: you have no choice in the matter. Reading is a daytime encounter with words and ideas - movies are a nighttime invasion of pictures charged with emotion, sparking fear and desire. Reading makes you think - movies make you dream.

Joseph Campbell was fond of comparing and contrasting myths with dreams. Myths, he asserted, were public and collective versions of the private world we encounter in dreams. They reflect the deeply rooted fears and needs of the entire community, and they are public property. Dreams are myths meant for one person alone. Both come from deep in the subconscious world.

So what happens when a movie, which is something like the experience of a private dream, is shared with thousands, even millions of people all over the world, even across a stretch of generations? Then we have a shared dream. And that, my friends, is the very definition of a myth!

There are a couple of different things to note, however. In a dream, you are consuming a vision which is served up by your own subconscious self. It makes the choices of what you experience, of which you are unaware before you see them. In motion pictures on the other hand, someone else is making the decisions about what you are going to see - and how you are going to see them. And that makes all the difference in the world. That is not only what makes the cinema an art form - it is its chief maxim, its absolute, ineluctable
fact, that distinguishes cinema as fundamentally unique from every other kind of art in the world.

There are many different contributors to the way a film "dreams" its way into your consciousness. So many choices are made by writers, producers, camera and light operators, costume designers, actors, etc. But in any truly cinematic sense of the word, in the last analysis, it is the director of the film who is responsible for what you eventually experience on the screen. And nowhere is this more true than it is for Orson Welles and Citizen Kane - the young director’s great mythic dream that has now entered the realm of common property, and so rests as a mythic incarnation all of its own, an incarnation that is separate from, but related to, its own internal myths - even the myth that it is The Greatest Film of All Time!

But I am very far from denying that Welles’ great film is less than deserving of this grand mythic title - and that is because of the unprecedented depth and power of its creator’s vision. No movie is as grandiose, as opulent as Kane, none so audacious, daring and so fully filled with the weight of its own, singularly unique importance. And this is the result of the collision of opportunity, ambition, timing and genius.

I will refrain from going into the back-story of Citizen Kane. That information, if unknown to the reader, can be found everywhere - certainly in all the supplemental materials to the Blu-ray or DVD of the movie. Actually, the great myth of Kane the movie is of such epic proportions that it is part and parcel of our common cultural heritage. But even as I say this, I must note, sadly, that a great part of that heritage is in danger of becoming lost to younger generations whose focus may be locked into a wholly other digital elsewhere. So basically, if you don’t know about Orson Welles and the making of Citizen Kane, please look it up on Wikipedia or somewhere. It is an endlessly fascinating saga, and as I alluded earlier, there are entire books on the subject.

No, my assertion is that such is the extraordinary vision of the creator of Kane that not only meets but exceeds every mythic element credited to it. And more. Not only do I believe that Citizen Kane is the "Greatest Movie of All Time," but its greatness is such, that in its brash ostentation, in the very fact that "it tries do everything" - that is to do everything a movie can do - it transcends cinema itself as an example, and simply becomes the Cinema, pure and simple.

Put another way, Citizen Kane displays such a complete understanding and use of film form and film theory, that it in itself has become an archetype. The true wonder of the picture is that it can be watched specifically . . . to teach the viewer exactly what cinema is and how to watch it!

Perhaps you think I make too great a claim for this one motion picture. You may have even watched it and found it to be overrated. Many people do have this opinion. If I am going to try to convince you otherwise, however, I’m going to let the movie itself make my case for me - it is much more eloquent and persuasive than anything that I can say about it.

But for all of us, it helps to have details pointed out, to have a guide to show us things that we ourselves might be prone to miss, especially in a cursory overview. Therefore, I’d like anyone reading this to get a copy of the Citizen Kane disc with the commentary by the late Roger Ebert on the soundtrack.

First, watch the movie itself. Then, perhaps the next day, or at least very soon after, watch it again, listening to Ebert’s commentary. Citizen Kane was his favorite film as well, and he has literally hundreds of enlightening observations to give about the movie as it proceeds.

Finally, come back and read the comments that I have added below. Yes, I have decided to do a commentary on a film with a commentary because, believe it or not, there really is that much going on and that much to think about.

And we won’t exhaust the film. No, we will only open up just a little bit more room for some other new viewer to come along and to begin to add their own interpretations. No, my goal is not to definitively analyze this, the mother of all motion pictures. I can’t do that.

My ultimate agenda is actually a both a little less daunting and a great deal more audacious in its intention: I want to demonstrate how Citizen Kane can be used to understand how to watch a movie.

For convenience’s sake, I have labelled the different sections I discuss about the film with the "Chapter Name" of the Scene Selections on the DVD/Blu-ray.

"Dreaming Citizen Kane" 

Final word

First of all, who are we?

After the logo and the title, the film’s first shot is a dark fade-in to a sternly forbidding sign which reads "NO TRESPASSING." We hold there for a moment, and then the camera begins a slow pan upwards across the dark criss-crosses of a wire fence at night. We are trespassers. The first choice of the movie has been to grant us, the audience, the dubious privilege of being nocturnal spies into a strictly forbidden world. As Alfred Hitchcock would no doubt point out, we are all natural voyeurs, and it is voyeurism that is at the essence of cinema. We want to see things - and we especially want to see things that we are not supposed to see, the world of the forbidden.

In any shot in any film, the camera’s perspective represents a particular point of view in relationship to what is being shown on the screen. Generally, we are often a casual onlooker, but often we are brought in close - so close to action that if we stop to think about it, we are actually violators. If we were really placed in such intimate contact with strangers (or even friends) in many scenes, we would be intruding indeed. Thus, cinema gives us a privileged, secretive position that even theater does not supply. It is as though we are invisible. In short, it is as though we were in a dream.

Now, we do not have any scruples about invading anybody’s privacy when we watch a movie, any more than we do when we see images in a dream. And like a dream, the images that we witness are not selected by us, but are chosen for us. We submit to them without question. But the fact remains that when we are tempted by the unknown, we become curious - and if our curiosity is gratified we become excited. Thus, we are not innocent. Even if we have not consciously chosen to violate a forbidden place, we experience the movement as if we have, and thus implicitly give our consent to become snooping violators in the world of others.

But we are not always outsiders. Through the careful use of camera positioning and editing, directors of films are able to force us to see through other character’s eyes, so to speak. When this happens, we lose our anonymous general perspective, and at such moments, we become that character, no matter who they are, whether we like them or not. Some films (particularly Hitchcock’s) are often structured around such a strong identification with a character, so that we will follow him or her throughout the entire duration of a movie. In Citizen Kane, however, though we take other people’s points of view from time to time, we rarely see what Kane sees - we (almost) never look through his eyes. We are always looking at him. We are forced to judge his character and his actions by what we see from those around him. And as the movie begins, we are completely detached from anybody at all, like a disembodied spirit, free to wander at will toward any destination that catches our fancy.

And so we do.

Ominous music accompanies our progression. After a pair of dissolves, we reach the top of high iron gate, ornately styled and topped with a giant, encircled "K." Beyond the gate, up high in the remote distance, an enormous house sits atop a towering massive hill - almost looking like a castle on a mountaintop, seen through fog or low clouds. There is one light visible through a window on an upper floor. It is an imposing sight.

How like a dream already! Here we are, rising up, floating in space, either through our pure will or simply a magical force, when suddenly we come upon a vast, ghostly vision. What can it be? If we are thinking quickly, we may associate the "K" with the name "Kane," as it is the title of the movie, and we may even go on to presume ownership of the giant house with by the possessor of that name. For just as in a dream, we bring elements of the waking world we know into that strange land, we usually will bring at least some information about the nature of the movie we are watching - we will have read or heard something about it, and we will at least know the title, if not the premise.

Still, this vision is deliberately strange. It poses a mystery. What is this place, and who or what is this "Kane?" And in the next few series of shots, as we move inexorably closer and closer to the house itself, it will become stranger still. And that is because even as the object of our curiosity moves, like magic, ever-nearer to our vision, its curious surroundings make it ever more inexplicable and unreal.

Although the camera remains motionless, each dissolve to the next shot brings us closer to the house. (This is a piece of visual trickery in itself, as we do not move, yet we are being magically spirited onward toward our goal.) We pass monkeys in cages, Venetian gondolas resting in water near a dilapidated dock, a Gothic bridge with huge stone archways at either end, the remote putting green of a disused golf course, a fog-covered swimming pool with steps leading to a massive stone monument, and finally a shot up over the fog looking up closer to the gigantic mansion itself.

As Ebert points out, the light in the window remains in the same place throughout each shot, singling it out as our focal point and our destination. What or who is up there? We are simultaneously intrigued and a little frightened. In movies, as well as dreams, the conjurations of such powerful edifices implies a presence whose unknown intentions could very well be threatening, or revealing - or both.

Finally, when the frame of the scene reaches the Gothic arches of the window itself, suddenly the light from behind the glass goes out - and the music halts as well. It stops us literally and figuratively. What has happened? What is about to happen?

Now we have a very strange image that momentarily disorients us. Slowly, the light comes back up, and we see that we are now on the other side the window itself, facing out. We have somehow magically appeared inside the room we have been approaching. And if that is not the work of a dream, then I don’t know what is.

Shaded toward the back of the room lies a large human figure on an enormous bed. It is quite dark in there despite the light, and we cannot yet interpret this apparition. Suddenly, fading into view, is a vision of snow, covering the room, which itself quickly disappears, along with its inhabitant, and the entire screen is completely suffused by a thick snowstorm. Whatever it is that we have been drawn to, someone or something has intervened - we are not ready to see it yet.

Finally, through the snow, we are able to make out the image of a small house or cabin, its roof heavily covered in snow. A very fast zoom out reveals that the house is actually a tiny model situated in the middle of a large glass snow bowl.

These are dream visions. We are taken to a place we do not understand, and suddenly what we see begins to transform, to metamorphize into different things, through impossible perspectives as in a sense of almost random association. Just as our unconscious minds deliver series of strange, shifting images in our slumber, so does the filmmaker here conjure up a vast world of disorienting sequences. But just as the symbols that inhabit our dreams contain hidden meanings for us, so do the images of the film. We are simply not able to interpret their significance yet, but we are being sucked in, seduced by the magical cinematic art of playfully manipulating reality.

We cut to an enormous close-up of a man’s mouth - we know it is a man because there is a white moustache covering the upper lip. The mouth moves, and whispers a single word, which echoes quietly on the soundtrack. If this is our first time to see the film, and we know nothing about it, it is probably unlikely that we will understand that the word is "rosebud." But even if we do, this isolated non sequitur fills the screen with even more of the surreality of a dream.

We cut to an overhead medium close-up of the man’s hand holding the snow globe. It is being revealed to us through a very highly defined black and white photography; scene somehow looks realer than reality - a kind of hyper-reality, that once again, we associate with our dreams. (And yet, magically, the snowflakes are still impossibly filling the air of the room.) The hand relaxes, and the globe tumbles out of it, off of the bed, and out of sight. Since it is a beautiful and fragile glass object, and we instinctively recoil, waiting for a crash. We see the globe come back into view, rolling forward, down two carpeted steps, and just before it hits the floor, we move to an immediate close-up of the ground just as the ball lands and shatters into pieces - soundlessly.

The lack of a sound - the crashing void we can only hear in our heads startles us more than the actual sound of breaking glass would, because it is so unexpected. Still, we are in a dream world, a world of images full of implication, suggestions of hidden meaning, rather than the every-day world of cause and effect.

Suddenly we see a distorted vision of a door opening. The next shot show us why - we are on the floor, looking through the broken concave glass of the bowl. As the door swings wide, we see the figure of a nurse enter the room. Why do we have this perspective? What are we doing on the floor? Remember, we followed the snow globe when it fell and crashed. We are still outsider, intruders. And now we are hiding, and we are watching this scene play out from the natural vantage point we have reached. And the vision through the broken glass distorts and twists everything in a wide, curving manner like a fun-house mirror. We are still in a dream.

The nurse exits the frame. Where has she gone? Finally, our curiosity pulls us up from the floor, and we cut to a shot of the nurse standing over the man on the bed. We cannot see their faces. The nurse carefully folds the man’s arms over his chest. He is dead. But who is he? What did he say and why? What did it have to do with the snow and the snow globe?

We do not know. And it all happens so quickly, so smoothly, that we probably do not have time to think to ask. Just as in a dream, things happen with such strange rapidity that we truly don’t try to question them. It is only when we are awake that we reflect, ask ourselves what something might have meant.

The nurse slowly covers the dead man’s head with a sheet. The screen goes dark. Then slowly, silently, the light comes up on the window, the way it did before. We have apparently stepped back to take in the whole scene now. We see the dead man stretched out before us, the strange light revealing the scene so we can take it all in for a moment. Then slowly, the light goes back down, and the screen goes to black silence.

News on the March
Wham! We are suddenly slapped awake by the bright image of flags and the sound of loud, marching band music. We jump in our seats. A large garish title fills the screen, as the annoyingly caustic shouting of a faceless voice intones: "News . . . on the march!"

Alright, what has happened? In one of the most meticulously planned openings to a film ever made, we have been seduced and pulled into a secret world, a world that is,as I keep repeating, the aesthetic and psychological equivalent of a dream. We arrive at Citizen Kane, moving deeply and irrevocably into the inner subconscious of the film itself. It has us there, and we are not about to leave until this film - this dream - is over, and we can go back to our waking world where we can reflect upon it.

This highly stylized and strange opening (lasting about three minutes) is abruptly and shockingly interrupted by the gaudy blare of the newsreel that tells us basically the entire public story of Charles Foster Kane’s life. We quickly realize that this is the man we saw die, and that the strange gigantic house and its environs were the rich man’s enormous estate, which he mythically named "Xanadu."

Orson Welles was particularly fond of shock techniques, and the blasting interruption of the newsreel seems, on the surface, to be a metaphorical "wake-up call," shocking us out of the quiet dream-world we have been inhabiting into a waking state. The reality is, however, we have simply been shifted to another realm of dream-consciousness - we’ve "rolled over," so to speak, since as we watch the newsreel depicting Kane’s life and death we settle in to an equally passive state, as words and images roll past us, constructed by their own internal logic.

The newsreel lasts for just over nine minutes, though it seems shorter, probably due to all the information given, the length and detail of the story told, and the wide variation and number of images that are shown. It is, of course, a remarkable and bold stroke of genius to use this "film within a film" to tell the entire outline of the plot of the movie before it even begins. This, of course, is another of Welles’ more radical "tricks," and it serves a number of functions.

First of all, as Ebert points out, the film is going to be confusingly structured, particularly for the time, due in part to its continual use of "flashbacks" to tell the story. As Ebert says, the audience can use the newsreel as a kind of "roadmap" to help them through the film a a source of reference.

Even more ingeniously, however, the newsreel works on deeper, more important levels. First of all, although it shows the entire life of Kane, it only shows the "external," outer, public aspect of the man. His personal, "internal" self is something that is completely left out of the newsreel picture - and it is precisely that which we are going to be searching for and studying for the rest of the movie.

This dichotomy between "external" and "internal" mirrors the basic theme of the difficulty of ascertaining the ultimate truth about an individual. It also reflects the dichotomy between waking and dreaming which we have been discussing. The newsreel is the waking daylight story of a man which the general public gets to see, and it is all that it knows. A serious film like Citizen Kane, however, is designed precisely to bore deep down inside to the reach the "inner man." The actual plot of Kane itself will be a reporter digging down, trying to uncover the truth of this "inner man."

On an even deeper level, however, this structuring device serves as a metaphor for the way film in general - and this film in particular - operates. Using the camera as a searching tool, an instrument for exploring the subconscious, it seeks out to discover the hidden, inner truth behind experiences. Analogously, when a film is projected back, it enters the consciousness of the viewer in such a way that it imprints this inner reality directly on his or her mind. Just as in a dream, the movie viewer has no choice in the images he receives. They cannot be questioned - they can only be interpreted.

Getting back to the mythic element of film again, the newsreel is an extraordinary device to conjure up for us - in a very short time - a fully formed mythic American character. And it does so in a very typically American manner - through the medium of film itself.

The newsreel section is not merely a brilliant device for rapid exposition of a great deal of information. It is a demonstration, an actualization really, of the power of the film medium to paint an iconic image of an historical character and to place him squarely within the boarders of his time. The fact that the "newsreel" here (which was put together, as Ebert notes, by the RKO newsreel department itself,) is a testament not only to the brilliance of this particular film, but of the inherent power of cinema on the cultural imagination. By the time the newsreel ends, we have a fully formed biography of a purely fictional character indelibly etched in our minds. His life and its public meaning have been carefully and inextricably interwoven with decades of the life of the nation itself. In the space of just a few minutes, we accept the legend of Charles Foster Kane as an authentic part of our own collective sense of history.

Audiences in 1941 would have been more than familiar with such newsreels, such as the famous "March of Time" series, which is how so many Americans got their visual apprehension of the day’s news before the advent of television. The newsreel form has its own rules and logic, and Welles’ "fake" newsreel follows it so close to form, so flawlessly, that the viewer magically forgets that he is watching a phony, and gets caught up in the rhythm of the story being told. After a couple of minutes, there is no question in the viewer’s mind about the verisimilitude of the featurette, and there we sit, passively, allowing this grandiose story to unfold before our eyes - and once again - be directly imprinted upon our subconsciousness.

Rosebud dead or alive
Welles, the master magician, in a stroke of brilliant audacity, immediately and dramatically pulls us out of this artificial trance. The extreme shock of the sight and sound of the newsreel stopping in the projection room awakens us momentarily from that dream, so to speak, and powerfully shifts us to a higher level of reality. This abrupt action signals to us that we have been actually watching a movie - that is, something that is manufactured and unreal. The ultimate irony, of course, is that while we are now conscious - that is, we feel more awake - we immediately begin accepting this new level of vision and action as reality. It is, of course, still a film, and hence, merely another level of dream consciousness. However, we are not given time to reflect on this, as we are plunged directly into this new world and fight to catch up with what is going on.

This picture is still only twelve minutes old, and it has already jerked the rug out from under us twice,both stylistically and psychologically. Welles is self-consciously using the language of film to playfully manipulate us while demonstrating for his audience exactly what the nature of film actually is. Yet still he holds us firmly in his grasp. His purpose has not only been to disorient us, but to put us in a kind of trance, to trick us, so to speak, into buying into what he will be presenting next to us as the true reality.

The scene in the projection room is not only radically different from anything that has come before in the film, but it is astoundingly different from anything movie-goers in 1941 were used to seeing in movies. The scene is a strange study in contrasts: on the one hand, it is lit so dramatically that it seems to take place in an unreal, expressionistic world. As Ebert notes, Welles wanted the reporters’ faces to be obscured so that they would remain anonymous. And when the chief speaker, the newsreel producer, steps in front of the projector’s light, he gives off what Ebert calls a "demonic" glow. There is a strong sense of unreality here.

Yet at the same time, the rapid, overlapping dialogue of the scene is highly realistic - much more realistic, in fact than movies were at that time. There are mumbles, jokes, laughs - everything you would probably expect to hear in that actual setting. We sometimes only hear phrases or parts of sentences. This is how people actually sound when they are talking together in a group - not cleanly and clearly divided like in a movie.

This combination of visual strangeness and extreme audio realism convinces us simultaneously of the reality of the scene, while at the same time it places us in its dark context. We are one of the reporters in the room, sitting and squinting through the darkness and the smoke, and we are straining to follow the statements of the producer, as he is talking very quickly and often has to rise above the general hubbub to be heard. We are immediately immersed in this world, and we become part of it.

Though this scene is very short and quick, it introduces us to the central idea that will be guiding us throughout the entire picture. It also, through the producer’s criticism of the newsreel, implies a great deal about the meaning of cinema.

The producer’s complaint is that the newsreel does not provide enough depth of information. In a way, this can almost be seen as Orson Welle’s implicit criticism of the way Hollywood makes movies - they are too superficial, they do not use the full potential of the medium to reach the inner meaning of which they are capable. The producer complains that all we saw up on the screen was that a man was dead. Actually, we saw quite a bit more than that, but in general, the producer is quite right. The newsreel only told the outward story of the man Charles Foster Kane. It did not reach inside to begin to tell who this man really was. In short, the film is shallow, and film should reveal the depths within.

The producer remembers that the word that Kane uttered right before he died was "Rosebud." This clarifies for us, in retrospect, what the giant lips uttered in the earlier scene, in case we did not hear it clearly enough. His assignment to one of his reporters, a Mr. Thompson, is to find out what this dying word means. He hopes that it will deliver an insight into the private life of this most public of men.

As Ebert points out, we will see Thompson from behind and in shadow for most of the rest of the film. There is a very good reason for this. For Mr. Thompson is not only going to be our guide through the labyrinthine world of Citizen Kane, he is going to be our representative. That is, through seeing the world of the film through his eyes, we are, in essence, going to become him in his search for the meaning of the life of Charles Foster Kane. We sit in the shadows with him, at the corners of the screen, and his questions are our questions. We hear and see what he does. And when the visions of the stories from the past come alive in the consciousness of Mr. Thompson’s imagination, that is where our visions come to life. For most of the rest of the film, we will be dreaming through the mind of this almost anonymous reporter.

She won’t talk
The stage has been set. Now the "real" action of the film will begin, some fourteen minutes into the movie. Welles introduces us to the beginning of this narrative - Mr. Thompson’s search for the - with another seat-jumping shock. Just as the producer finishes his ironic last statement to Thompson ("It’ll probably turn out to be a very simple thing."), suddenly lightning flashes to a crashing roar of thunder, and we immediately cut to a rain-spattered poster of a smiling blonde. This unexpected and disorienting move thrusts us directly into the story without giving us time to think.

As the lightning fades and darkness falls on the poster, the camera begins a slow pan up the side of the wall until it reaches the roof. Note that this is the same sort of move that began the film, climbing up the fence from the "No Trespassing" sign, and indeed we have resumed our position in the film as the disembodied, free-floating voyeur. The film has already established this as our primary point of view, and it will return us to this privileged position, time and again, throughout the film.

On top of the roof is a neon sign for a nightclub advertising the nightly performance of "Susan Alexander Kane." We associate the name with the face we saw on the poster below, and if we have good memories, we shall recall that Susan Alexander was the name of Charles Foster Kane’s second wife, and that she was a singer. The camera begins moving forward, towards the sign, putting us in the same position we found ourselves in before, as we moved forward, slowly, across the abandoned grounds of Xanadu, to finally invade at a window near the top of the house. While that motion was established with dissolves, here the camera actually moves forward - but the meaning is the same. We are snoops. We are the ghostly disembodied psyche of a dream moving forward in order to find the meaning of something that is hidden within.

As Ebert points out, the sign is designed to pull apart, so we can seemingly go right through it. We tilt downward, looking through a skylight at the interior of a barroom, hear the music playing from below, then casually pass through the glass, entering the room from above and moving slowly down to the scene below. There is a woman sitting alone at a table. She seems distraught, and as we move closer to her, she coughs, then rests her head face-down on her hand. Once we finally stop, a few feet away from her, a man enters from the right side of the screen facing towards her. It is Mr. Thompson, and we immediately merge with him, as we will throughout the film, as we share his point of view and let him ask the questions we want to hear answered.

A waiter in a tuxedo addresses her. This is Susan Alexander Kane. She is upset, she is crying, and she has been drinking. As Mr. Thompson moves in to sit down (and we move with him), she becomes angry. She doesn’t want to talk - she wants to be left alone. "Get out!" she shouts at him (us). Thompson rises, and we slowly follow until we are looking over his shoulder, behind his back. The waiter makes a motion with his eyes to Thompson (us), and we follow him where we can here him privately. "She just won’t talk to nobody, Mr. Thompson." Thompson leaves the scene, and we are left standing there alone, staring at two waiters now. We are thus by ourselves when the other waiter asks about Mrs. Kane: "Another double?"

We want to keep up with Thompson, however, and the next cut places us inside a phone booth, behind his darkened figure. He is making a call, and we listen closely to him. Here, if we are not Thompson himself, we are his shadow (his "double"). We must stay with our guide if we are ever going to find out what is going on. The first waiter approaches him (us) at the door to the phone booth, where he says that "She’ll snap out of it. Why, until he died, she’d just as soon talk about Mr. Kane as about any-", and he is suddenly cut off by Thompson on the phone. The waiter lingers, and Thompson closes the door of the phone booth, separating him from the privacy of "our" conversation. (We are left in the booth with Thompson.) Thompson tells his boss that Mrs. Kane won’t talk - "about ‘Rosebud’ or anything else." He is in Atlantic City, and tells him that he will next go to the Thatcher Library in Philadelphia, followed by a trip to New York, after which he’ll come back here. These details aren’t important to us, but his summation is: "Yeah, I’ll see everybody - that’s still alive."

He hangs up and re-opens the door, calling the waiter over. He asks him if Mrs. Alexander had ever said anything about "Rosebud," and slips him a tip. The waiter tells him that he had asked her about it, and "she never heard of rosebud." The screen darkens. Our first adventure forth has taken us to a dead end.

Thatcher Library
Pompously mocking horns play as the screen lightens to reveal the ponderous statue of an old man seated in a chair, underneath what looks like a high dome. We are down below the statue, looking up at it in what is designed to give us a sense of awe. The camera pans down slowly - that is, we as observers, move down our heads and eyes, to see the name "WALTER PARKS THATCHER" chiseled in Marble. We begin to hear a woman speaking softly as if in a cavernous echoed hall, and the words "Thatcher Memorial Library"come to us. Thus, we have materialized in this strange place, as Welles has once more utilized a very clever and dramatic method of setting a scene, while at the same time, arousing our curiosity.

Ebert’s explanation of the simple but brilliant devices used to create this library (and to give it a mock seriousness) are fascinating. The camera quickly pulls down and back to reveal Mr. Thompson’s back as he is looking down at the lady talking. We are looking over his shoulder and our eyes virtually parallel his point of view. Thus, we are one with him again. For most of the rest of the picture, Thompson is us - or he is our spirit guide through this strange, maze-like world. He wants what we want - to find out about "Rosebud," and we will carefully follow him, seeing and hearing only what he sees and hears.

As he enters the inner chamber of the library, he sees, as we do, the heavenly cascade of light pouring onto the table, and his reaction to the entire scene is presumably exactly the same as our own: a combination of wonder and bafflement at all of this sanctimonious solemnity. He sits down at the large book so seriously laid out for him, and the large door ominously closes in our faces, shutting us out.

Leaving home
Not to worry, though - we are floating dream ghosts, and we pass easily through the door and move forward to join Thompson in his reading. As we look over his shoulder, the handwritten characters he is reading dissolve into our view. We see the name, "Charles Foster Kane," and we know we are on the right track. We follow Thompson’s eyes as they move across the page: "I first encountered Mr. Kane in 1871." (If we are very astute and quick at math, we will realize that this is exactly 70 years prior to the present day of 1941.) As the camera glides off the page, the screen is suddenly engulfed in snowflakes, and the music swells to suggest a return to a magical, distant and happy time. We see a boy slide down a hill on a sled. He stands, picks up a snowball and throws it. We cut to a sign above a house porch that reads, "MRS. KANE’S BOARDING HOUSE" just as the boy’s snowball hits it, emphasized by the glissando of a harp.

It would take a very astute first-time viewer indeed to piece all of this information together and connect it with the opening sequence of the film. But Citizen Kane is not designed primarily for one-time viewers: many viewing of the film are needed to appreciate everything that is being placed before the viewer’s eyes. On first screening, we probably will not remember the vision of snowflakes and the snow-globe with the cabin that breaks at Kane’s death. But the film, like our subconscious, knows more and can connect more quickly than our conscious thinking can. Once again, Kane gives us all the information we need, but in a subtle, dreamlike manner.

We return to the boy playing in the snow. We are witnessing the beginning of the first "flashback" of the film. Citizen Kane is highly unusual in structure, both in the sense that the story is not told strictly chronologically, and from the fact that different parts of the narrative are told from different perspectives. Thus, while we already have a broad overview of the film’s plot that we received from the newsreel, different stages in Charles Foster Kane’s life will be sometimes presented in non-linear sequence - and sometimes the story will actually back-track and go over ground it has covered before. The audience will be required, therefore, to navigate the chronology of events. (Generally, however, the flashbacks are shown in a relatively chronological fashion, and the movie is not difficult to follow.)

The second aspect of the structure - the fact that we acquire information from different narrative sources - is a more subtle and problematic aspect of the film’s overall narrative. Each flashback is a reminiscence, each one told by a different character. Each of these characters had a different relationship with and perspective of Kane the man. Their opinions about him vary widely, and the question naturally emerges as to how great of a degree the individual flashbacks can be trusted in view of both accuracy and in terms of personal prejudice.

This problem does not emerge while viewing the picture, however, as the different flashbacks do not come into direct conflict with one another. As we watch each one, each of these individual sections of the film are presented with the omniscient authority of the narrative view of the movie as a whole. It is only after we view the film that we can reflect upon what we have been shown and critically appraise whether and to what degree each flashback can be trusted. Each flashback is "framed" by the attitude that the teller has towards Kane, and it is only in subsequent viewings that we can develop a critical perspective toward them. We will have much more to say about this aspect of the film as the flashbacks unfold.

This particular flashback is unusual, first of all, because it is being narrated by a dead man. We shall see that Walter P. Thatcher, a millionaire Wall Street banker, had a particularly agonistic and personally frustrating relationship with Mr. Kane covering a period of many years. (If we can remember Thatcher from the newsreel, we will recall that in his old age, he publicly denounced Kane as a "communist.") We should expect, therefore, that Thatcher’s narrative about Kane should be colored by his disapproval - which it is. But that is not to say that Thatcher’s memories of Kane’s life are inaccurate - they are only one side of the story, so to speak.

As we see the young Charles Foster Kane playing in the snow, the camera pulls back to reveal that we are looking at him through an open window. As we continue moving inside, the back of a woman’s head emerges on the left side of the screen, and she shouts at the boy to be careful. This is Kane’s mother (played by Agnes Moorehead) and as soon as she comes into view, we are seeing Charles - indeed the entire scene - through her perspective. As we continue to pull back, we see the young Mr. Thatcher (George Coulouris) standing on the right of the window, talking to Mrs. Kane about the boy, who remains in the center frame of the window between them.

Thatcher’s presence at the window explains how we can have the viewpoint of Mrs. Kane while we are in the context of Thatcher’s own flashback. Associatively speaking, Thatcher can both observe Mrs. Kane looking out the window, as well as her view of Charles outside. A simple act of mental empathy on Thatcher’s part, then, could legitimately allow him to show us her point of view. But we must remember that the film will not always follow such strict logic.

As in a dream, perspectives can shift quickly, so with Citizen Kane, can the omniscient narration of the film move surreptitiously to various points. The camera shot - and therefore the director - is in control of what we see in a film and how we see it. Just as it is in a dream, we are not allowed to choose what we get to see or experience. It is, rather, something that simply happens to us. But as the film evolves, we will see that Welles’ strategy is to stick so closely to the perspectives of his established authorities that when he does pull away from them, the result will be, almost magically, invisible to the audience.

As we continue to track backwards into the interior of the cabin, Mrs. Kane faces us, walking straight ahead with a very determined look. Though we are looking at her, our movement mirrors hers, and we automatically associate ourselves with her. As a matter of fact, our association is going to be primarily with the mother throughout this entire sequence, despite the fact that this is the beginning of Thatcher’s narrative.

When Harry Shannon, who plays Kane’s father, emerges into the background of the scene and begins complaining, our sympathy naturally remains with the mother. And our sympathy will stay with her throughout the scene, in large part to the support and attention she receives from Thatcher, who basically ignores the father’s rantings. This perspective is also reinforced by Mrs. Kane’s sitting down in the lower right corner of the screen, making her the central point of focus, as Ebert notes. Ebert goes on to discuss the remarkable deep-focus photography which is accentuated in the shot by having the adults in the foreground discuss the future of the young Charlie Kane, who remains fully focused and inframed by the window.

Much has been written about Welles’ and cinematographer Gregg Toland’s extraordinary use of deep-focus techniques throughout Citizen Kane. One of the earliest and most vocal critics to praise this approach was the French theorist and writer Andre Bazin (1918-1958), who argued that it gave a much greater sense of realism to cinema than traditional editing techniques. While Bazin may have been correct, I feel as if I have to point out that such extreme shots as this one tend to draw attention to themselves, making the audience more cogently aware of the fact that they are indeed watching a film. The overall impression of such shots throughout Citizen Kane seem to me to amplify the strangeness of the particular scene, charging it with a meaning that is clearly intentional. The result, for me at least, is not so much realistic as surrealistic, and it serves to enhance the sense of otherness - once again, as we might find in a dream.

After Mrs. Kane quickly settles matters with her husband and signs the boy over to Thatcher, she returns to the window, and we follow her. She opens it and calls out to Charles. As we cut to a shot of her looking out the window at her son that practically fills the screen, her eyes and facial expression are extraordinarily resonant and ambiguous. She does not tell us, and we do not understand, precisely what she is feeling, or even exactly why she is sending Charles away. Mrs. Kane, the mother, is the film’s silent sphinx, its ghostly presence that haunts the rest of the picture (and the main character’s psyche) right up to the last frame. As she speaks of Charles’s trunk: "I’ve had it packed for a week now," we sense an extraordinary depth of contradictory feelings submerged in the deepest reservoirs of pain. It is a deeply moving moment - and terribly unnerving.

The following scene, where the three adults tell young Charles of his immanent departure from home holds the inner horror and violence of separation anxiety, a childhood malady that often recurs to us in our dreams. It is this threat of removal, of helpless loss that triggers Charles’ attack upon Thatcher - and presumably colors his relationship with the banker for the rest of his life.

One thing that I think is striking is Charles’ natural affection for his father, his movement towards him (which is called back by the mother), and his perfect ease around him. This stands in contradiction to the mother’s final statement in the scene: "That’s why he’s going to be raised where you can’t get at him." Our explanation for Mrs. Kane’s motivation in sending her son away is to protect him from his father - but Charles’ apparently good relationship with his "Pop," (as he excitedly calls him) suggests no such tension is really present. Even when Mr. Kane declares "What that kid needs is a good thrashin’" after Charles attacks Thatcher, one doesn’t really get a sense of menace. It’s the kind of thing any old-fashioned country or blue-collar dad might say in the heat of the moment.

It is in this context that what Mrs. Kane says and does here is so strange and incongruous. And Welles emphasizes this strangeness with a very bizarre close-up to the mother’s face as she speaks her line and turns her head forward toward the screen and tilting down toward Charles below her. Intentional or not, her voice does not sound real - it doesn’t quite match the visual (perhaps we expect her quiet voice to get louder when we move so dramatically close to her). The camera tracks down and ends focusing upon young Charles’ face, staring up at Thatcher with angry tears in his eyes, and our perspective and sympathy shifts immediately from hers to his. Neither we, nor the boy, know exactly what all this means, but it is a horrific, disruptive scene, and it sears its damaging power all over him (and us).

Newspaper fun
As dramatic music plays, the scene dissolves to a shot of Charles’ sled lying alone, being covered by snow. Another dissolve gives the illusion of a time-lapse-shot, as we see a much larger stack of snow upon the toy.

This is an image that is obviously fraught with meaning. On a literal level, it tells us that Charles is now gone, has left his home behind. Emotionally, it suggests an abrupt and brutal end to his childhood innocence and happiness. The sled itself, of course, will return at the end of the film to be the most potent image in the entire picture, and Welles is burning it, and all its implications into our consciousness now, without telling us why. The time-lapse with the larger mound of snow suggests not only passage of time, but finality - perhaps even death. And the fact that the entire sleigh is covered is a sure indication that this entire event is being buried deep in the consciousness of the boy - as well as the consciousness of the viewer, and even the film as well. It is, in short, one of the most potent dream-images one could imagine.

It should be pointed out, that even though this shot appears in Mr. Thatcher’s "flashback," there is no way he could have seen this sled lying covered in snow, as he was long gone, along with Charles. Here Welles reminds us of the camera’s independent and ultimately superior omniscience. The point is that just as it is the dreamer’s interior self that is in (even if unconscious) control of what is dreamed, the director is ultimately the determiner of what will be seen on the screen. Welles does not wish to press this point too closely here, however, and we will almost immediately return to Thatcher’s point of view.

The very next shot, however, gives us young Charles’ point of view, as he opens Christmas wrapping to discover the gift of a new sled (to his obvious disappointment, and even anger - life with Thatcher is no replacement for his own home.) As the camera moves up, and we see a very tall Mr. Thatcher from Charles’ perspective on the floor, we get a brief sensation of how trapped the boy feels in his new environment.

The camera cuts immediately to Thatcher’s point of view, looking down at Charles, and we will remain with Thatcher, for the most part, throughout the rest of this part of the movie.

Charles utters his sarcastic "Merry Christmas," and we have the magical jump cut that Ebert describes that takes us forward nearly twenty years in time. This a brilliant strategy in story-telling: not only does it allow the narrative to move forward much more quickly, establishing key points and relationships with extraordinary brevity, but it adds a shocking stylistic flair as well. Such a cut is so unexpected that it is a shock to the system, and it adds a cinematic exclamation point to the proceedings. (No one watching Citizen Kane will be allowed to get bored or lulled into complacency - it continually keeps the audience involved.

The focus of the next two scenes are completely centered on Thatcher, and provides us with his point of view regarding Kane as an irresponsible young man. First we see him dictating a letter to him, detailing his wealth and stressing the responsibility he must assume. The second scene shows us his reaction to Charles’ reply. The opening shot of Charles’ sloppy handwritten letter is a delayed perspective of Thatcher’s, as he will quickly see it, once he grabs it angrily when he hears its contents.

There is an immediate dissolve from Thatcher’s exasperated face into the montage of him angrily reading the headlines from Kane’s newspaper. Not only do we get a good glimpse of his shocked and disgusted face from each one, but Welles actually has his voice reading the headlines aloud in mounting choler. Thus, we see in this brief series of shots the establishment of conflict, the passage of time, and the mounting of Mr. Thatcher’s indignation.

When the last headline is read, the paper is pulled down from the camera to reveal the face behind all these newspaper stories: the 25-year-old Charles Foster Kane. As Ebert notes, it is a most dramatic entrance for an actor who simply adored to be viewed with a great deal of power and authority. Here, the young Orson Welles himself mythically merges with the vision of his mythical creation, and there is no mistaking that this appearance of the title character nearly 25 minutes into the movie is definitely designed to be a definitive author’s stamp of total artistic control.

Notice we are still looking over Mr. Thatcher’s shoulder, down at Kane, so we still maintain Thatcher’s perspective. As soon as the handsome, boyish, smiling young Kane calmly and wittily responds to the outraged older man, our sympathy immediately shifts to him. Although Orson Welles was famous across the nation as a radio voice, this was the first time most of the American public had actually seen the actor. Orson Welles was unquestionably one of the finest, and most flamboyant American actors of the 20th century, and his portrait of the cocky young liberal upstart newspaper man, the self-effacing jokester planting his foot in the door of propriety, the Robin Hood millionaire, betraying his class to fight for the underprivileged - this is not only a man we immediately love and root for, this is a genuine American hero. There are few film actors who have so brilliantly managed to indelibly etch a performance into such iconic glory as Welles does in this film for his Kane. (For me, at least, the only greater embodiment of a complete persona in a film is Marlon Brando’s genre-defining performance of Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather.)

Welles is in complete control of this film, both in front of the camera and behind it. He wants us to begin the arc of the movie by embracing Kane, and we do, emphatically. There is something absolutely irresistible about this smirking, self-bemused character who is having difficulty in holding back laughter in the face of Thatcher’s outpouring of self-righteous pomposity. Perhaps it is the very good-natured casualness with which Welles imbues the figure of Kane that makes him so universally attractive. And his stern transformation, when he finally confronts Thatcher, into a powerfully charged and emotionally emphatic idealist seals the deal, so to speak. His final statement in the scene, reverting to the calm, canny and ultimately triumphant defiance of youth in the face of trembling propriety (and greed) is a joke (I’ll have to close this place down . . . in 60 years.); but it is also a threat. It is an absolute shut-down to shut down all shut-downs. We may see Kane from Thatcher’s point of view, but we are unquestionably on Kane’s side.

And this is essential for the film’s strategy to work. If we, the audience, did not love and care about Charles Foster Kane - if we in fact, had never looked up to the man as great figure, at once larger-than-life, yet at the same time undeniably human, we could never experience the depth of the tragedy that we are going to experience throughout the course of the film. The story might beguile or intrigue us, but it wouldn’t touch us. We have to care about Kane, and the arc leading up to us rooting for this man begins here. It will increase throughout the first part of the film until it reaches doubts that ultimately become self-doubts. And when we finally see the man’s capacity for cruelty and his horrific fall, we will be affected deeply - it will touch something deep within us.

That, perhaps, is the true genius of Citizen Kane. Kane's failure, the toppling of his ideals must become our failure, our disillusionment. We cannot learn without feeling pain. And we cannot feel pain without first learning to love. And that process is what begins all in this one remarkable, short scene.

Might have been great
We return to the handwritten journal that Mr. Thompson is reading - had we forgotten that these word are what we have been watching depicted? If we have, we are reminded now. There are so many depths of perspective in Citizen Kane that we require a great deal of reinforcement to remember precisely where we are in the layers of the film.

Thompson’s (our) eyes stop on the year "1929," which freezes for us, and likewise automatically conjures up everything that that year represents: the stock market crash, the beginning of the Great Depression. We dissolve to an image of a man reading a legal document. This is Bernstein, Kane’s business manager, but as Ebert points out, we have not been properly introduced to him yet, although we did see him (along with Jedediah Leland) in the previous scene. I believe that Welles’ strategy was to show us these two key characters before we actually find out who they are, so that when we actually do meet them, they will already be familiar to us, and they will flow into the story seamlessly, since they were already present in our subconscious.

Bernstein is reading - what we don’t understand. But it doesn’t matter. We hear Kane’s voice break it down simply to all we need to know: "Which means we’re bust!" This is another beautiful scene, and I cannot add any more to Ebert’s wonderful description of the optical-illusion trick of Kane’s walking to the windows and becoming visually "diminished."

I would like to briefly comment upon how unusual such a flash-forward would have been in a motion picture in 1941 and remark upon how magnificently convincing the make-up artists have made our characters age. We don’t really see Kane until he returns from the window, and the audience must marvel at the extraordinary change that age can place upon a man’s appearance and bearing. Some forty years have passed in an instant - a dream knows no logic of time.

But perhaps the most remarkable thing about the scene is that despite the heavy care brought on by years and disappointments, we can still recognize in this older man the young idealist of the previous scene. He is ironic, self-deprecating, appreciates the humor of his unhappy situation - he still shows us that little smirk. But the most remarkable moment comes at the end, when the aged Thatcher asks him what he would have like to have been. Kane stares hard at him, but his words come easy and with the same fierce conviction of youth: "Everything you hate."

This verbal exclamation point marks the end of the flashback, and it solidly reinforces our admiration and love for Kane, even in his defeat. At this point of the movie, he is solidly our hero, and it is going to take a great deal to bring him down in our eyes.

The camera dissolves back to Mr. Thompson reading. In case we have forgotten, we are reminded that everything we have just witnessed about Kane’s origins and his eventual later state are directly taken from Mr. Thatcher’s memoirs - the testimony of a dead man. Thompson closes the book in disgust. He can’t find anything about "Rosebud," and he jokingly asks about the name when he leaves the library. Neither he nor we have found what we were looking for, but we have established the basic character upon which our story will be based. It is time to move on.

Bernstein’s memory
Thompson leaves his frustrated interview with a dead ghost to a more promising one with a living ghost - the very elderly and amiable Mr. Bernstein (magnificently played by Everett Sloane), Kane’s long-time general manager. As we gather from what he says, he is now "chairman of the board," having inherited the mantle of the great man himself, who looks down and over him from behind on a wall. Mr. Bernstein unconditionally idolized Charles Foster Kane, and the story that we (and Thompson) are about to receive from him will build Kane’s character up into an even greater mythic figure.

As Ebert points out, there is something very beautifully poignant and ephemeral in the old man’s reminiscence of the girl he saw on the ferry. It is a brilliant point of writing, seeming to come out of nowhere, but pointing with great evocative power to the ever-elusive nature of true happiness.

The New York Daily Inquirer
Bernstein’s flashback is filled with the exuberant joy he experienced as he witnessed - and was a key part of - the beginning of Kane’s newspaper career. Bernstein feeds off Mr. Kane’s energy and his irreverent and chaotic approach to everything. This entire sequence is filled with motion, nonstop overlapping dialogue and the comic confusion of the old fuddy-duddy editor, Mr. Carter, played by the appropriately bewildered Erskine Sanford.

Ebert does a marvelous job talking about the sets, the mattes and the lighting of the newspaper headquarters, as well as the camera positioning. Notice that when we do not have a definite "witness" whose point of view we can share, the "omniscient view" tends to come from a low angle that emphasizes the magnitude and power of the characters, particularly Kane and Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten). This is a strategy that Welles will use later in the film to take a very extreme position, and it is clever to introduce its basic form and acclimatize us to it now.

Jed Leland and Charlie Kane are introduced as equals here, paired together both visually and textually (as Sanford confuses Cotton for Kane). It is very important that their friendship and standing together is emphasized right from the beginning, as it is through the developing relationship between these two men that our vision of Kane will largely be colored.

Here they are both school-chums out on a lark, playing with running a newspaper as if it were a great toy that they could make fun with and manipulate for laughs. (One might think of Orson Welle’s reaction of first being given a tour of RKO studios, as he was being handed a key to do anything he wanted to with it.) It is, indeed one of the most fun sequences in the movie, though one can’t help feeling a little sorry for the old editor whose life has just been upset by these impudent young upstarts, as he takes to the streets in indignation. It is obvious that these two lads had planned to run the old man out as quickly as possible.

Declaration of Principles
Now we come to the famous scene where Kane writes his "declaration of principles" to be placed on the front page of the first edition of his paper. This is a solemnly mythical moment, and it lays the foundation for all the idealism that we shall ultimately see Kane unable to live up to. Bernstein is our primary witness to this event, which is only appropriate, as he will forever idealize the man. Jed Leland is the other witness, and we see him, also, from Bernstein’s view. Leland will prove to be the more critical of these two witnesses, and it is appropriate that we have some distance from him now.

As Ebert points out, Kane’s face goes into shadow as he reads his solemn declarations. This suggests an ambiguity. Does he really mean what he is saying here, or is he merely propping himself up as a figure to be admired? I once read in an interview with Orson Welles that Kane never meant a word of what he is saying here - but odd as it may sound, that is only Welles’ interpretation. The film he created is ultimately more ambiguous, and our vision of this oath is given more power since we share it from Bernstein’s worshipful point of view.

Why does Jed Leland want the declarations back after they have been printed? Why does he want to hold onto them? In the context of the scene, he might be feeling great pride in his friend, and he actually believe that he was witnessing something historically (or at least personally) momentous - something worth holding onto. Looking back, from a later point in the film, we might suspect that Leland is distrustful and wants to keep the declarations as a totemic reminder of Kane’s self-stated responsibilities. Jed Leland functions as Charles Kane’s superego throughout the course of the film, but as we shall see, even that is an over-simplified and problematic generalization.

What we must remember when analyzing the film - just as when we reflect back to analyze a dream - we do not always see things precisely as they are, but rather, precisely as they seem. And here we must keep in mind that all throughout this flashback, we are delving back into the past through the eyes of Mr. Bernstein. Everything that occurs here has the power of a creation myth, as Bernstein remembers through glorifying eyes the powerful and relentless laying down of the foundation of the great Kane story. Hence, our perspective will be shaped by his, and we will not only see Kane as a great young layer of foundations, but as an epic hero. This is all part of a careful strategy designed by Welles and co-author Herman J. Mankiewicz to build up our identification with Kane as a hero in the first part of the film. We already like him, and now we look up to and admire him as well. He’s our man - and we want him to prove to be the great public champion that he so audaciously proclaims himself to be here.

Newspaper party
We now travel with Bernstein and Leland on a little jaunt to the front window of a rival newspaper. Here again, we have one of Kane’s famous "magic tricks," as the photo of the journalist staff transforms into a live shot of the same group, sitting and posing for a portrait of Kane’s paper, six years later. The shocking strangeness of Kane walking into the shot of what we regarded as a still photo and talking gloatingly is once again, disorienting and dreamlike. Why does Welles choose such complex and innovative storytelling devices that draw one’s attention to the fact, once again, that we are watching a film?

First of all, of course, there is the "showman’s touch" to which Orson Welles was so naturally attracted. As a performer, he loves to "astound" his audience. But there is also a set of rich implications in this particular brand of stunt cinematography. What the oblique jump-cut and the "magical" transition lets us experience and understand is not simply the passage of time and a change in circumstances. Kane’s cockiness and his smirking presence in the center of all this demonstrates the ease with which this man can get whatever he wants - essentially all it takes is money.

The party scene that flows from the pop of the flashbulb is one of the most extraordinary sequences in the film. On a purely technical level it is astonishing. Ebert’s commentary draws into focus some of the many things that had to be done with the set and the lighting, but I would also like to point out how many things are simultaneously going on. There are conversations in the foreground with dancing girls in the background, and Kane himself serves as an intermediate figure that allows us simultaneous entry into both.

The psychological implications of the party scene are just as rich. The entire affair seems to flow directly from Kane’s own inflated ego, and culminates, as Ebert points out, in the man singing along with the song that celebrates his own wonderful qualities. The whole party, just like the entire newspaper staff, has been bought with Kane’s money. He is nothing but an out-of-control reckless child, out to get anything that catches his eye - and practically everything does.

We are still in Mr. Bernstein’s flashback, so we see through his eyes. But since Jedediah Leland is there as well, we can observe his perspective of the events, and this is what ultimately comes through in the interpretation of the scene. We are beginning an arc to Leland’s point of view, which will dominate the next section of the film, as it is seen through his flashback. And as Ebert points out, Leland is beginning to become very concerned about his old friend.

As he voices these concerns to Leland, they are amplified by contrast with Kane cavorting and dancing with the girls, as well as his casual attitude towards war with Spain. Leland, the superego of the film, is viewing an id growing out of control. And as Ebert makes clear in his discussion of the reflective shot of Kane "playing" in the reflection of the mirror, we are brought back to the image of the same man as a boy, "playing" outside in front of his mother’s house. It is our fist hint that Charles Foster Kane’s entire adult life will be an attempt at compensation for that lost childhood. Citizen Kane will ultimately be, to a large degree, the story of a little boy that never grows up.

This insight will have enormous social and political implications as well. For Kane is not just an individual, he is a "Citizen" - a powerful public figure who has it in his mind and scope to bend others to his will. Remember that the original title for the film was The American. What the film is allowing us to do is to probe into the inner psyche of this public expression of American power to show us the strange and frightening world that shapes it from within. Cinema, working like a dream, bores to the inside of the consciousness, it goes behind the walls of representation and shows what lurks inside. It cannot - indeed it often does not - explain it. Like a dream, it merely reveals the hidden, naked images that reveal the truth, and leaves us to interpret them as best we can.

Social announcement
The following scene between Bernstein and Leland allows us in a bit closer to see Jedediah’s character in a rare glimpse of someone else’s perspective. As Bernstein confirms that Leland is a "starched shirt," etc., it becomes obvious that these are epithets that Kane himself has thrown at his friend. Hence, it plants a small seed in our mind that Jed Leland may not be the most reliable of witnesses. If we really want the truth in a story, we must always remember who it’s coming from. And if Mr. Bernstein’s view is biased, who is to say that Mr. Leland’s is not as well?

This scene also begins to show the compulsive collecting that Kane is beginning to develop as a personality syndrome. As Jedediah goes around, sorting the statues that his friend has sent back from Europe, he absent-mindedly sings Kane’s song from the party. We must not forget that Jed Leland is not only completely devoted to Kane, but is dependent upon him as well. He may come from the same class, but he has no money, and he must rely on his schoolchum’s welfare not only to survive, but to live in style. Could there not be some buried guilt and resentment that comes with that situation?

I feel compelled to come right out here and say that what I will call the "objective narrative reading" of Citizen Kane is carefully mapped out to come as an interpretation of Jed Leland’s perspective, combined later with Susan Alexander’s. But multiple viewings of the film will reveal some hints that things may not be so absolutely straight-forward as they may seem. This is just one of the first hints that we need to watch out that we might be being intentionally mis-directed.

Why does Kane compulsively collect things such as statues? This is a foreshadowing of what will eventually become the all-consuming project of building Xanadu (which we already know about because we’ve seen it in the newsreel). The obvious answer is that this is a psychologically compensatory act to replace his lost childhood and his mother’s love. And of course, this is true, as far as it goes. But what drives the wealthy to consume, what pushes the great capitalist nation of America to mindlessly acquire more and more relatively useless things?

My only answer at this point is that is a pathetic attempt at a substitute for a real and meaningful life of purposeful actions and relationships. The all-encompassing consumerism of modern America is, I believe, a subtle but very real subtext of Citizen Kane, and as the film develops, I plan to point out just how important of an undercurrent this theme actually is.

As for now, we are informed that "Charlie" has bought the world’s biggest diamond. And as Mr. Bernstein explains, "He’s collecting somebody that’s collecting diamonds." Does this man’s compulsion to collect - to hoard, to keep - extend to human beings as well? In essence are they really no more than mere objects themselves to him? Once again, this is only a subtle implication here, but its explicit development as a major theme of the film will be gradually enlarged upon until it will come to dominate our attitude towards Charles Foster Kane.

The next scene begins with the wonderful shot of Mr. Bernstein reading the "Welcome home" message inscribed on the beautiful loving cup the staff has purchased for their boss. The air rings with excitement as Kane enters, all dressed in playboy-ish white with a dashing moustache. But he cannot even stop long enough to accept their well-wishes and bask in the moment of his achievements. He hands his "little social announcement" over and leaves practically running, dragging the cup with him. He is on to bigger game.

He is marrying Miss Emily Monroe Norton, "the president’s niece." Bernstein announces that she’ll someday be "a president’s wife." From Mr. Bernstein’s perspective - and momentarily from ours as well, there is nothing that can stop the dramatic upward trajectory of the phenomenon that is Kane. As we look out the window, down to the couple in the coach below, we are one with all of Kane’s worshippers. The camera cuts to the outside of the newspaper building as the carriage pulls away, and all of the excited faithful wave goodbye from the building which is really an unreal matte drawing. And we, ourselves, are left up there with them.

We dissolve back to the old Mr. Berstein’s office and resume our observer status with Thompson in the corner. This is the perfect place for Bernstein’s narrative to end, because it is on an absolute high point. Everything about Mr. Kane is larger than life, he creates all possibilities, and there seems no possible limit to the heights he can achieve. Mr. Bernstein does not wish to go farther than this, because he knows it is all downhill from there. The old man does not blame his idol for any failures, however. "Miss Emily Norton was no ‘Rosebud.’"

As Mr. Bernstein moves back toward the towering portrait of Kane, he considers that perhaps "Rosebud" was something the man lost. "Mr. Kane was a man who lost almost everything he had." This is a very cryptic and strange statement. What does Mr. Bernstein mean?

Well, Kane lost his newspaper empire, lost his political aspirations, lost both of his wives, and finally lost contact with the world. We suspect, if we do not already know, that he lost things that were even more humanly essential than that. In Mr. Bernstein’s eyes, however, Charles Foster Kane will ever remain a great man - for him, probably, one of the greatest man of all time. What happened to Kane from Bernstein’s view is not so much the tragedy of a flawed individual, but rather the brutal injustice of terrible luck.

As for himself, the aged Bernstein seems to exist merely as a monument to his fallen hero. He seems to have no identity for himself, and as his last words to Thompson indicate, he is merely waiting to die. Bernstein is one of the richest and most poignant portraits of any individual in the film. And that is precisely because he is able to love unconditionally. Perhaps, somewhere deep down inside of him, he knows that Kane was his own worst enemy. As we shall see, he will be the witness to many of Kane’s later follies. But he holds firmly and true to his worshipful attitude of the man he will ever see as the great idealist, the man who gave meaning to his own life - the man who could move mountains.

As we dissolve away from Mr. Bernstein’s famous last words about death, we essentially end the first act of the movie. The portrait of Charles Foster Kane has begun to take form across our consciousness and it is basically a very positive, yet troubled portrait. We know that the man’s story will ultimately in sadness, but we do not know why.

Nor do we know who "Rosebud" is.


COMING SOON: CITIZEN KANE: ACT TWO

- petey