25 American Classics - Citizen Kane (1941)
This is part 4 of a 25-movie series called “American Classics” – a survey of 25 influential and iconic American films from the past 100 years.
Citizen Kane (1941)
Dir. Orson Welles
Rating (Out of 5 Stars): ★★★★★
The most respected “Top Films” list is the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound Magazine Critics’ Top 250 list. The iMDB Top 250 may represent a certain type of online movie buff, but the Sight and Sound poll is comprised of a variety of professional film critics from around the world. Every decade, the magazine polls the top critics. For five straight decades, Citizen Kane took the top spot as the greatest film of all time. In 2012, it was finally dethroned by Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which will also make an appearance in this blog series on 25 American Classics.
Saying Citizen Kane is the greatest movie of all time is like saying that Michael Jordan is the best basketball player or Babe Ruth is the best baseball player—it’s safe, predictable, and probably right.
Kane is legendary for a number of reasons—chiefly among them, it’s technical achievements and filmmaking style. It pioneered a deep focus lens look (where everything on screen is in focus), production design (you never saw ceilings in the room before Kane), makeup and hairstyling, visual storytelling, and covert special effects. The legend of Kane is partly the legend of Orson Welles, the film’s director and star, who made the movie at only 26 years old (!!) with his troupe of theater actors.
Kane is also legendary and universally beloved because of its story—the film is an essential story of American capitalism, fame, and excess. If The Wizard of Oz is the hero’s journey, then Citizen Kane is the anti-hero’s journey. Anti-heroes have become iconic staples in American entertainment; from The Godfather saga’s Michael Corleone to Tony Soprano and Walter White, America is interested in telling the story of power, money, and the fall from grace.
Citizen Kane follows Charles Foster Kane, a rich newspaper tycoon, as he’s taken from his family and childhood and rises up the ranks in both society and politics. He’s a cultural icon, an eccentric billionaire, a powerful leader, and an aspiring politician running for office. (That would never happen today, right?) The film opens with the death of Charles Foster Kane and his last word, “Rosebud.” The search begins by several journalists to discover the meaning of this word and perhaps the missing puzzle piece to an enigmatic man. The film is then told through flashbacks as the audience journeys together with the journalists to discover the meaning of a man’s life.
Kane was happily married, and then lost love. He was rich and lost many of his newspaper circulations. He was a promising politician and lost his potential because of pride and infidelity. His end was loneliness and unhappiness. Kane’s story is an example of the emptiness of the American Dream. The original title of the screenplay was actually The American. Kane’s story is a cautionary tale of the fleeting and unsatisfactory nature of fame and power. In overwhelming irony, Donald Trump cites it as his favorite movie. The film is as current and relevant as ever.
(Spoilers ahead)
In the end, we find out the meaning of Rosebud—his favorite sled from childhood. What does Rosebud mean? While that is open for interpretation, I understand it as the simple love of and in childhood—the love he could never find after leaving home despite having everything he could possibly want. Critic Roger Ebert writes, “Rosebud is the emblem of the security, hope and innocence of childhood, which a man can spend his life seeking to regain. It is the green light at the end of Gatsby's pier; the leopard atop Kilimanjaro, seeking nobody knows what; the bone tossed into the air in ‘2001.’ It is that yearning after transience that adults learn to suppress.”
In the last months of 2019, there will be many “Best Films of the Decade” lists written and published. On many of these top 10s will include David Fincher’s The Social Network, the (true?) story of Facebook founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. The trajectory and themes of the film and Zuckerberg’s life mirror that of Kane. In The Social Network, Zuckerberg’s rosebud turns out to be his ex-girlfriend who dumped him. In his brokenness and loneliness, Zuckerberg creates Facebook; in the end of the film, he’s left where he started, wanting his beloved back. Facebook and fame did nothing to fix this. Regardless of the film’s historical accuracy, the story elements and message remain the same—love is greater than wealth and power. On this, the New Testament agrees.