The film ‘Citizen Kane’, directed by Orson Welles, revolves around the life and identity of the character, Charles Foster Kane. Welles pointed out, “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through love and friendship can we create the illusion that we’re not alone”. Welles explores this notion through the character study of Kane. In the original trailer for the film, Welles tells the audience that he does not know what to tell them about Kane, “He is a hero, and a scoundrel, a no-account and swell guy, a great lover, a great American citizen, and a dirty dog. It depends on who’s talking about him”. He invites the audience to decide for themselves, however, Welles believed: “Kane was a very great man and a mediocre individual”. As a wealthy tycoon, Kane had the superficial trappings of a great man, yet inside he was tragically plagued by the struggles of an extremely lonely person. Rather than seeing him as a sociopathic fraud, Welles looks deeper into the man. Welles suggests that Kane is a misunderstood loner throughout the film with how he tells the story, the profound hidden message of Kane’s life, and the powerful use of symbolism.
There are many ways to tell a story. The most obvious and straightforward is simple chronological order. Welles, however, chooses a very different sequence. By beginning the film with Kane’s death, he engages the audience emotionally and intellectually with the mystery of the meaning of his final words. Who or what is ‘Rosebud’. Further, he engages the audience with the question as to who is Kane? The clever use of a reporter engages the audience in investigating these questions by creating not only a puzzle to be solved, but more importantly laying down the terms of the investigation. The terms are really an exploration of a character who superficially has wealth, power and whatever money can buy, yet inside is plagued by isolation, unhappiness and longing. By sequencing things in reverse chronological order and piece by piece, he is able to dramatically engage his audience in this quest. The sequence of story enhances the impact of the message that his great childhood loss of family and love was more important than money. Using the tool of sequencing the story to enhance impact is one of the criteria of a quality of a movie.
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Another feature of the way in which the story unfolds which heightens engagement is a series of interviews with various people who only see pieces of Kane, at times conflicting. ‘Citizen Kane’ is a jigsaw puzzle that pieces together multiple narrators and multiple perspectives. The obvious irony is that this technique reveals slowly, smoothly, and indirectly that no one really knew him well. This mysterious presentation again supports the idea that Kane was misunderstood, which is shown to the audience rather than told, an important aspect of dramatic storytelling quality. While some of the evidence presented suggests Kane is at times self-serving and fraudulent, since he would buy things for the sake of people not having them. However, his obsessive spending and collecting uncover that he is trying to fill a void inside himself with objects instead of people. Which also sets the stage for the impact of revealing his deeper, and less malevolent struggle to recapture his childhood state of feeling loved.
Welles was able to create a profound message from Kane’s life story that would haunt the audience long after the film had ended. The film’s message could be tritely summed with various profound aphorisms such as, ‘Money can’t buy happiness’, or ‘Money can’t buy love’, which are statements of distilled wisdom carefully and craftily delivered in ‘Citizen Kane’. An article on Charles Foster Kane described his life as follows: “Youth stolen, massive fame and fortune, making headlines everywhere, eccentricities galore, a massive estate epitomizing excess, a fall from grace followed by a slow descent into obscurity and madness, an end shrouded in mystery” (Nextable). Moreover, this movie impacts the audience with the tragedy of a sad, lonely, deeply wounded little boy who desperately tried to compensate for a loss he could never recover. This is a deeply profound and important existential message that great stories and movies attempt to explore.
In an interview Orson Welles stated, “I wished to make a motion picture which was not a narrative of action so much as an examination of character. For this I desired a man of many sides and many aspects”, and in ‘Citizen Kane’ he succeeded (Wellesnet). Like most great stories the audience need to be shown, not told, the deeper meaning. A focus on plot and storyline would likely have distracted from what is in fact a relatively simple story, cleverly told, which focuses on a deeply flawed and misunderstood loner. By keeping this aspect constantly in focus, Welles deepens the impact of this core message.
The effective and appropriate use of symbolism helped Welles create more background and meaning as to why Kane behaved the way he did. ‘Citizen Kane’ is rife with visual symbols, rhymes, and archetypal scenes that suggest and underscore various themes; especially the theme of Kane being a misunderstood loner. Throughout the entire film, a reporter is trying to search for the true meaning of “Rosebud,” Kane’s dying words. At the end of the film, it is revealed to the audience that ‘Rosebud’ was Kane’s childhood sled. This lost piece proves to be precisely the puzzle’s most important one- it’s the key to putting Kane’s fabulous financial success together with his desperate pursuit of happiness. “‘Rosebud’ is the trade name of a cheap little sled on which Kane was playing on the day he was taken away from his home and his mother. In his subconscious it represented the simplicity, the comfort, above all the lack of responsibility in his home, and also it stood for his mother’s love which Kane never lost” (Wellesnet). Another example would be the recurrent windows and window frames are recurrently used to isolate Kane from other people. This was most noticeable in the scene where one could watch Kane through his home window him playing alone outside in the falling snow while his parents were preparing to send him away. The cold, falling snow of course suggests the coldness of isolation and echoes references to the snow globe to which he is attached; a material manifestation of childhood love he loses and craves the rest of his life. Such detail in shot composition is an objective mark of care and cleverness seen in high quality movies, especially as it does not occur in isolation and increases focus on the central theme.
Another example of Welles’ obvious use of symbolism is the marriage montage scene. Orson Welles is quite clear in his intent with his attempt to portray Kane’s Freudian like attempt to replace his lost mother’s love with a wife. As he said, “From the point of view of the psychologist, my character had never made what is known as ‘transference’ from his mother. Hence his failure with his wives” (Wellesnet). The tragedy of this failed attempt is highlighted visually by the progression through time of the physical distance between husband and wife over time. Thus, the audience can literally see the gradual failure of his attempt to get close to someone. The exclamation mark in this failure to connect is the two of them reading different newspapers at the same time, hers being given to her by someone else. Again, this underscores the sense of Kane as a misunderstood loner. Some may argue that this symbolism is overplayed and may make the audience more conscious of the movie as a movie and thereby less impactful; it still would win high marks for originality and focus. Still others may see the physical distancing as true to life for many married couples in which case it would effectively underscore the profound meaning of progressive isolation.
‘Citizen Kane’ quite often tops lists of the greatest movies of all time. There are, of course, many reasons for this. Among them are that it objectively ranks high at meeting the marks of many of the criteria classically used to evaluate movie quality. In particular, this movie uses many of the techniques and hallmarks of a quality movie, not just as devices, but as focused mechanisms to seamlessly underscore the deep evaluation of Kane’s character. By cleverly telling the story out of chronological order and as a mystery investigation Welles engages the audience in this adventure of participation in uncovering what makes Kane tick. He also interests the audience by picking a profoundly meaningful and universal theme and character issue which he explores deeply. Finally, he underscores the misunderstood loneliness and tragedy of Kane’s life by the clever and careful use of symbolism and visual imagery.
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