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- Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, 1941
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Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. The film is considered by some important polls of critics to be the greatest American film of all time and is particularly praised for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film. The film was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories; it won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Herman Mankiewicz and Welles. It was released by RKO Pictures.
The story is a film à clef that examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a character based upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and Welles' own life. Upon its release, Hearst prohibited mention of the film in any of his newspapers. Kane's career in the publishing world is born of idealistic social service, but gradually evolves into a ruthless pursuit of power. Narrated principally through flashbacks, the story is revealed through the research of a newsreel reporter seeking to solve the mystery of the newspaper magnate's dying word: "Rosebud."
After his success in the theatre with his Mercury Players and his controversial 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, Welles was courted by Hollywood. He signed a contract with RKO Pictures in 1939. Unusual for an untried director, he was given the freedom to develop his own story and use his own cast and crew, and was given final cut privilege. Following two abortive attempts to get a project off the ground, he developed the screenplay of Citizen Kane with Herman Mankiewicz. Principal photography took place in 1940 and the film received its American release in 1941.
A critical success, Citizen Kane failed to recoup its costs at the box office. The film faded from view soon after but its reputation was restored, initially by French critics and more widely after its American revival in 1956. Many film critics consider Citizen Kane to be the greatest film ever made, which has led Roger Ebert to quip: "So it's settled: Citizen Kane is the official greatest film of all time." It topped both the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list and the 10th Anniversary Update, as well as all of the Sight & Sound polls of the 10 greatest films for nearly half a century.
The film was released on Blu-ray on September 13, 2011 for a special 70th Anniversary Edition. Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), an enormously wealthy media proprietor, has been living alone in Florida in his vast palatial estate Xanadu for the last years of his life, with a "No trespassing" sign on the gate. He dies in a bed while holding a snow globe and
utters "Rosebud..."; the globe slips from his dying hand and smashes.
Kane's death then becomes sensational news around the world. Newsreel
reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland)
tries to find out about Kane's private life and, in particular, to
discover the meaning behind his last word. The reporter interviews the
great man's friends and associates, and Kane's story unfolds as a series
of flashbacks. Thompson approaches Kane's second wife, Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore), now an alcoholic who
runs her own club, but she refuses to tell him anything. Thompson then
goes to the private archive of Walter Parks Thatcher (George Coulouris),
a deceased banker who served as Kane's guardian during his childhood
and adolescence. It is through Thatcher's written memoirs that Thompson
learns about Kane's childhood. Thompson then interviews Kane's personal
business manager Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane), best friend Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten), Susan for a second time, and Kane's butler Raymond (Paul Stewart) at Xanadu. Flashbacks reveal that Kane's childhood was spent in poverty in Colorado (his parents ran a boarding house),
until the "world's third largest gold mine" was discovered on the
seemingly worthless property his mother had acquired. He is forced to
leave his mother (Agnes Moorehead) when she sends him away to the East Coast of the U.S. to
live with Thatcher, to be educated. After gaining full control over his
possessions at the age of 25, Kane enters the newspaper business with
sensationalized yellow journalism. He takes control of the newspaper, the New York Inquirer,
and hires all the best journalists. His attempted rise to power is
documented, including his manipulation of public opinion for the Spanish American War; his first marriage to Emily Monroe Norton (Ruth Warrick), a President's niece; and his campaign for the office of governor of New York State, for which alternative newspaper headlines are created depending on the result. Kane's
marriage disintegrates over the years, and he begins an affair with
Susan Alexander. Both his wife and his opponent discover the affair,
simultaneously ending his marriage and his political career. Kane
marries his mistress, and forces her into an operatic career for which she has no talent or ambition. Kane finally allows her to abandon her singing career after she attempts suicide, but after a span of time spent in boredom and isolation in Xanadu, she ultimately leaves him. Kane
spends his last years building his vast estate and lives alone,
interacting only with his staff. The butler recounts that Kane had said
"Rosebud" after Susan left him, right after seeing a snow globe. At
Xanadu, Kane's vast number of belongings are being cataloged, ranging
from priceless works of art to worthless furniture. During this time,
Thompson finds that he is unable to solve the mystery and concludes that
"Rosebud" will forever remain an enigma. He theorizes that "Mr. Kane
was a man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud
was something he couldn't get, or something he lost." In the ending of
the film, it is revealed to the audience that Rosebud was the name of
the sled from
Kane's childhood – an allusion to the only time in his life when
he was truly happy. The sled, thought to be junk, is burned and
destroyed in a basement furnace by Xanadu's departing staff. The
film's end credits read "Most of the principal actors are new to motion
pictures. The Mercury Theatre is proud to introduce them." Welles along with his partner John Houseman had
assembled them into a group known as the Mercury Players to perform his
productions in the Mercury Theatre in 1937. After accepting his
Hollywood contract in 1939, Welles worked between Los Angeles and New
York where the Mercury Theatre continued their weekly radio broadcasts
for The Campbell Playhouse. Welles had wanted all the Mercury Players to debut in his first film, but the cancellation of The Heart of Darkness project in December 1939 created a financial crisis for the group and some of the actors worked elsewhere. This caused friction between Welles and Houseman, and their partnership ended. RKO
executives were dismayed that so many of the major roles went to
unknowns, but Welles's contract left them with no say in the matter. The
film features debuts from William Alland, Agnes Moorehead, Everett
Sloane, Ruth Warrick and Welles himself. An uncredited Alan Ladd appears as one of the newspaper reporters. Orson Welles' notoriety following The War of the Worlds broadcast earned him Hollywood's interest, and RKO studio head George J. Schaefer's unusual contract. Welles made a deal with Schaefer on July 21, 1939 to produce, direct, write, and act in two feature films. The
studio had to approve the story and the budget if it exceeded $ 500,000.
Welles was allowed to develop the story without interference, cast his
own actors and crew members, and have the privilege of final cut – unheard of at the time for a first time director. He had spent the first five months of his RKO contract trying to get several projects going with no success. The Hollywood Reporter said,
"They are laying bets over on the RKO lot that the Orson Welles deal
will end up without Orson ever doing a picture there." First, Welles tried to adapt Heart of Darkness, but there was concern over the idea to depict it entirely with point of view shots. Welles considered adapting Cecil Day - Lewis' novel The Smiler With The Knife, but realized that to challenge himself with a new medium, he had to write an original story. Screenwriter
Herman J. Mankiewicz was recuperating from a car accident and
in-between jobs. He had originally been hired by Welles to work on The Campbell Playhouse radio
program and was available to work on the screenplay for Welles' film.
The writer had only received two screenplay credits between 1935 and his
work on Citizen Kane and needed the job. There is dispute amongst historians regarding whose idea it was to use William Randolph Hearst as the basis for Charles Foster Kane. Welles claimed it was his idea while film critic Pauline Kael (in her essay "Raising Kane") and Welles' former business partner John Houseman claim that it was Mankiewicz's idea. For
some time, Mankiewicz had wanted to write a screenplay about a public
figure – perhaps a gangster – whose story would be told by the
people that knew him. Mankiewicz had already written an unperformed play entitled, The Tree Will Grow about John Dillinger.
Welles liked the idea of multiple viewpoints but was not interested in
playing Dillinger. Mankiewicz and Welles talked about picking someone
else to use a model. They hit on the idea of using Hearst as their
central character. Mankiewicz
had frequented Hearst's parties until his alcoholism got him barred.
The writer resented this and became obsessed with Hearst and Marion
Davies. Hearst
had great influence and the power to retaliate within Hollywood so
Welles had Mankiewicz work on the script outside of the city. Because of
the writer's drinking problem, Houseman went along to provide
assistance and make sure that he stayed focused. Welles also sought inspiration from Howard Hughes and Samuel Insull (who
built an opera house for his wife). Although Mankiewicz and Houseman
got on well with Welles, they incorporated some of his traits into Kane,
such as his temper. During production, Citizen Kane was referred to as RKO 281. Most of the filming took place between June 29, 1940 and October 23, 1940 in what is now Stage 19 on the Paramount lot in Hollywood. There was some location filming with Balboa Park in San Diego, San Diego Zoo and Oheka Castle in Huntington, New York, representing Kane's Xanadu estate. Welles prevented studio executives of RKO from
visiting the set. He understood their desire to control projects and he
knew they were expecting him to do an exciting film that would
correspond to his The War of the Worlds radio
broadcast. Welles' RKO contract had given him complete control over the
production of the film when he signed on with the studio, something
that he never again was allowed to exercise when making motion pictures.
According to an RKO cost sheet from May 1942, the film cost $ 839,727
compared to an estimated budget of $723,800. Welles ran a closed set, limited access to rushes and managed the publicity of Kane to make sure that its influence from Hearst's life was a secret. Publicity materials stated the film's inspiration was Faust. RKO
hoped to release the film in mid February 1941. Writers for national
magazines had early deadlines and so a rough cut was previewed for a
select few on January 3, 1941. Friday magazine ran an article drawing point - by - point comparisons between Kane and Hearst and documented how Welles had led on Louella Parsons,
Hollywood correspondent for Hearst papers, and made a fool of her in
public. Reportedly, she was furious and demanded an immediate preview
of the film. James Stewart,
who was present at the screening, said that she walked out of the film.
Soon after, Parsons called George Schaefer and threatened RKO with a
lawsuit if they released Kane. The next day, the front page headline in Daily Variety read, "HEARST BANS RKO FROM PAPERS." In two weeks, the ban was lifted for everything except Kane. The Hollywood Reporter ran
a front page story on January 13 that Hearst papers were about to run a
series of editorials attacking Hollywood's practice of hiring refugees
and immigrants for jobs that could be done by Americans. The goal was to
put pressure on the other studios in order to force RKO to shelve Kane. Soon afterwards, Schaefer was approached by Nicholas Scheck, head of MGM's parent company, with an offer on the behalf of Louis B. Mayer and other Hollywood executives to reimburse RKO if it would destroy the film. Once RKO's legal team reassured Schaefer, the studio announced on January 21 that Kane would
be released as scheduled and with one of the largest promotional
campaigns in the studio's history. Schaefer brought Welles to New York
City for a private screening of the film with the New York corporate
heads of the studios and their lawyers. There
was no objection to its release provided that certain changes,
including the removal or softening of specific references that might
offend Hearst, were made. Welles
agreed and Wise was brought in to cut the film's running time from two
hours, two minutes and 40 seconds to one hour, 59 minutes and 16
seconds. This cut of Kane satisfied the corporate lawyers. Richard Carringer, author of The Making of Citizen Kane (1996), described the early stages of the screenplay: Welles's first step toward the realization of Citizen Kane was
to seek the assistance of a screenwriting professional. Fortunately,
help was near at hand. . . . When Welles moved to
Hollywood, it happened that a veteran screenwriter, Herman Mankiewicz,
was recuperating from an automobile accident and between jobs...
Mankiewicz was an expatriate from Broadway who had been writing for
films for almost fifteen years. However, according to film author Harlan Lebo, he was also "one of Hollywood's most notorious personalities." Mankiewicz was the older brother of producer - director Joseph Mankiewicz and was a former writer for The New Yorker and the New York Times and
had moved to Hollywood in 1926. By the time Welles contacted him he had
"established himself as a brilliant wit, a writer of extraordinary
talent, [and] a warm friend to many of the screen world's brightest
artists ... [he] produced dialogue of the highest caliber." Yet Mankiewicz's behavior, according to Welles's close friend and associate John Houseman,
was also a "public and private scandal. A neurotic and homophobic
drinker and compulsive gambler..." Houseman adds, however, that he was
also one of the most intelligent, informed, witty, humane and charming
men I have ever known." Despite
those apparent contradictions in his personality, Welles "recognized
the writer's abilities and trusted him to produce", wrote Lebo. Orson
Welles himself later commented, "Nobody was more miserable, more bitter,
and funnier than Mank – a perfect monument to self - destruction.
But when the bitterness wasn't focused straight at you – he was the
best company in the world." According to film historian Clinton Heylin, "the idea of Citizen Kane was the original conception of Orson Welles, who in early 1940 first discussed the idea with John Houseman, who then suggested that both he and Welles leave for Los Angeles and discuss the idea with scriptwriter Herman Mankiewicz. He adds that Mankiewicz "probably believed that Welles had little
experience as an original scriptwriter...[and] may even have felt that John Citizen USA, Welles's working title, was a project he could make his own." Orson Welles said that his preparation before making Citizen Kane was to watch John Ford's Stagecoach forty times. Still
incapacitated with a broken leg, Mankiewicz was happy to work with
Welles, and an "alliance" formed, noted Houseman. This combination of a
"brash new director, a nervous studio, and an erratic genius" gave birth
to Citizen Kane, in what Houseman called, "an absurd venture." Houseman
recalled that Mankiewicz, during his convalescence, had "revived a
long simmering idea of creating a film biography in which a man's life
would be brought to the screen after his death through the memories and
opinions of the people who knew him best." And Welles himself, writes
Lebo, also had ideas "that meshed well with this concept and had
considered a newspaper publisher the best subject for the story: I'd
been nursing an old notion – the idea of telling the same thing
several times – and showing exactly the same thing from wholly
different views", Welles said. "Mank liked it, so we started searching
for the man it was going to be about ... some big American
figure ... Howard Hughes was the first idea. But we got pretty quickly to the press lords." Welles
then assigned Mankiewicz, writes Lebo, "to work on an original
screenplay – not an adaptation as his first two projects would have
been." Welles next traveled to New York and desperately "pleaded and
persuaded Houseman to return to Los Angeles to manage Mankiewicz and his
writing schedule." According
to film critic and author Pauline Kael, Mankiewicz "was already caught
up in the idea of a movie about Hearst" when he was still working at the New York Times,
in 1925. She learned from his family's babysitter, Marion Fisher, that
she once typed as "he dictated a screenplay, organized in flashbacks.
She recalls that he had barely started on the dictation, which went on
for several weeks, when she remarked that it seemed to be about William
Randolph Hearst, and he said, 'You're a smart girl.'" In Hollywood, Mankiewicz had frequented Hearst's parties until his alcoholism got him barred. And Hearst was also a person known to Welles. "Once that was decided", wrote author Don Kilbourne, "Mankiewicz, Welles, and John Houseman, a cofounder of the Mercury Theatre, rented a place in the desert, and the task of creating Citizen Kane began." This
"place in the desert" was on the historic Verde ranch on the Mojave
River in Victorville. In later years, Houseman gave Mankiewicz "total"
credit for "the creation of Citizen Kane's script" and credited Welles with "the visual presentation of the picture." Mankiewicz was put under contract by Mercury Productions and was to receive no credit for his work as he was hired as a script doctor.
According to his contract with RKO, Welles would be given sole
screenplay credit, and had already written a rough script consisting of
300 pages of dialogue with occasional stage directions under the title
of John Citizen, USA. One of the long standing debates of Citizen Kane has been the proper accreditation of the authorship of the screenplay, which the credits attribute to both Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles.
Mankiewicz biographer Richard Meryman notes that the dispute had
various causes, including the way the movie was promoted. For instance,
when RKO opened the movie on Broadway on May 1, 1941, followed by
showings at theaters in other large cities, the publicity programs that
were printed included photographs of Welles as "the one - man band,
directing, acting, and writing." In a letter to his father afterward,
Mankiewicz wrote, "I'm particularly furious at the incredibly insolent
description of how Orson wrote his masterpiece. The fact is that there
isn't one single line in the picture that wasn't in writing –
writing from and by me – before ever a camera turned." Film historian Otto Friedrich said it made Mankiewicz "unhappy to hear Welles quoted in Louella Parsons's column, before the question of screen credits was officially settled, as saying, 'So I wrote Citizen Kane.'" According to film critic Pauline Kael,
Rita Alexander, who was hired to be Mankiewicz's personal secretary,
stated that she "took the dictation from Mankiewicz from the first
paragraph to the last ... and later did the final rewriting and the
cuts, and handled the script at the studio until after the film was
shot. ...[and said] Welles didn't write (or dictate) one line of the
shooting script of Citizen Kane. She
added that "Welles himself came to dinner once or twice ... [and] she
didn't meet him until after Mankiewicz had finished dictating the long
first draft." However
Welles had his own secretary, Katherine Trosper, who typed up Welles'
suggestions and corrections, which were incorporated into the final
script; Kael did not interview Trosper before producing her article. Nevertheless, Mankiewicz went to the Screen Writers Guild and
declared that he was the original author. Welles later claimed that he
planned on a joint credit all along, but Mankiewicz claimed that Welles
offered him a bonus of ten thousand dollars if he would let Welles take
full credit." According
to Pauline Kael, "he had ample proof of his authorship, and when he
took his evidence to the Screen Writers Guild ... Welles was forced
to split the credit and take second place in the listing." Kael
argues that Mankiewicz was the true author of the screenplay and
therefore responsible for much of what made the movie great. This
angered many critics of the day, most notably critic - turned - filmmaker
(and close friend of Welles) Peter Bogdanovich, who rebutted many of Kael's claims in an article for Esquire titled The Kane Mutiny, and Robert L. Carringer, who did likewise in an article for the Winter 1978 edition of Critical Enquiry, referring to early script drafts with Welles' incorporated handwritten contributions. Charles Lederer, a screenwriter and a source for Kael's article, insisted that the credit never came to the Writer's Guild for arbitration. In the article written for Critical Inquiry, The Scripts of Citizen Kane,
Carringer mentions the issues raised by Kael rested on the evidence of
an early draft which was mostly written by Mankiewicz. However Carringer
points out that subsequent drafts clarified Welles' contribution to the
script: Fortunately
enough evidence to settle the matter has survived. A virtually complete
set of script records for Citizen Kane has been preserved in the
archives of RKO General Pictures in Hollywood, and these provide almost a
day - to - day record of the history of the scripting... The full evidence
reveals that Welles’s contribution to the Citizen Kane script was not
only substantial but definitive. He
notes that Mankiewicz' principal contribution was on the first two
drafts of the screenplay which Carringer notes was more like "rough
gatherings" than actual drafts. Houseman accompanied Mankiewicz so as to
ensure that the latter's drinking problem did not affect the
screenplay. The early drafts established "the plot logic and laid down
the overall story contours, established the main characters, and
provided numerous scenes and lines that would eventually appear in one
form or another in the film."(The Scripts of Citizen Kane)
However he also noted that Kane in the early draft remained a
caricature of Hearst rather than the fully developed character of the
final film. The main quality missing in the early drafts but present in
the final film is "the stylistic wit and fluidity that is the most
engaging trait of the film itself." According to film critic David Thomson,
however, "No one can now deny Herman Mankiewicz credit for the germ,
shape, and pointed language of the screenplay, but no one who has seen
the film as often as it deserves to be seen would dream that Welles is
not its only begetter." Carringer
considered that at least three scenes were solely Welles' work and,
after weighing both sides of the argument, including sworn testimony
from Mercury assistant Richard Baer, concluded, "We will probably never
know for sure, but in any case Welles had at last found a subject with
the right combination of monumentality, timeliness, and audacity." Harlan
Lebo agrees, and adds, "of far greater relevance is reaffirming the
importance of the efforts that both men contributed to the creation of
Hollywood's greatest motion picture." Carringer notes that Citizen Kane was
unusual in relation to his later films in that it was original material
rather than adaptations of existing sources. He cites that Mankiewicz's
main contribution was providing him with "what any good first writer
ought to be able to provide in such a case: a solid, durable story structure on which to build."(The Scripts of Citizen Kane) French New Wave filmmaker and auteur Jean - Luc Godard said on the topic of Orson Welles, "Everyone will always owe him everything." Welles
never confirmed who the principal source was for the character of
Charles Foster Kane. It is believed that he is a synthesis of different
personalities although main inspiration was the life of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst. The film is seen by critics as a fictionalized, unrelentingly hostile parody of Hearst. According to film historian Don Kilbourne, "much of the information for Citizen Kane came
from already published material about Hearst... [and] some of Kane's
speeches are almost verbatim copies of Hearst's. When Welles denied that
the film was about the still influential publisher, he did not convince
many people." Welles himself insisted that there were also differences between the men. In 1968, he told Peter Bogdanovich,
"You know, the real story of Hearst is quite different from Kane's. And
Hearst himself – as a man, I mean – was very different."
Hearst's biographer, David Nasaw, finds the film's depiction of Hearst
unfair: Welles' Kane is
a cartoon - like caricature of a man who is hollowed out on the inside,
forlorn, defeated, solitary because he cannot command the total
obedience, loyalty, devotion, and love of those around him. Hearst, to
the contrary, never regarded himself as a failure, never recognized
defeat, never stopped loving Marion [Davies] or his wife. He did not, at
the end of his life, run away from the world to entomb himself in a
vast, gloomy art - choked hermitage. Citizen Kane is in part based on the life of Samuel Insull and his wife Gladys. Playwright Herman J. Mankiewicz based Susan Alexander's catastrophic operatic debut in Citizen Kane on Gladys Wallis Insull's New York role as Lady Teazle in a charity revival of The School for Scandal. Jed Leland's review of Susan Alexander's debut in Kane echoes
Mankiewicz's actual 1925 review of Gladys Insull. His 1925 review
began: "As Lady Teazle, Mrs. Insull is as pretty as she is diminutive;
with a clear smile and dainty gestures. There is a charming grace in her
bearing that makes for excellent deportment. But Lady Teazle seems much
too innocent to lend credit to her part in the play."
There
are autobiographical elements to the film. Orson Welles lost his mother
when he was nine years old and his father when he was 15. After this,
he became the ward of Chicago's Dr. Maurice Bernstein; Bernstein is the
last name of the only major character in Citizen Kane who receives a generally positive portrayal. Movie tycoon Jules Brulatour's second and third wives, Dorothy Gibson and Hope Hampton,
both fleeting stars of the silent screen who later had marginal careers
in opera, are believed to have provided inspiration for the Susan
Alexander character. Welles also claimed that business tycoon Harold Fowler McCormick's lavish promotion of his second wife, Ganna Walska,
was a direct influence on the screenplay. McCormick spent thousands of
dollars on voice lessons for her and even arranged for Walska to take
the lead in a production of Zaza at
the Chicago Opera in 1920. Like the Susan Alexander character, she had a
terrible voice, pleasing only to McCormick. But unlike Alexander,
Walska got into an argument with director Pietro Cimini during dress
rehearsal and stormed out of the production before she appeared. Roger Ebert, in his DVD commentary on Citizen Kane, also suggests that the Alexander character was based on Walska, and had very little to do with Marion Davies. The film's composer, Bernard Herrmann, also suggested that Kane is based on McCormick but also in great part on Welles himself.
The character of political boss Jim Gettys is based on Charles F. Murphy, a political leader in New York City's infamous Tammany Hall political
machine, who was an enemy of Hearst. In one scene Gettys admonishes
Kane for printing a cartoon showing him in prison stripes. This is based
on the fact that Murphy, who was a horse cart driver and owned several
bars, was depicted in a 1903 Hearst cartoon wearing striped prison
clothes. A caption, referring to the restaurant Murphy frequented, said: "Look out, Murphy. It's a short lock - step from Delmonico's to Sing Sing." According to Welles author David Thomson, "Rosebud is the greatest secret in cinema..." Orson
Welles, explaining the idea behind the word "Rosebud", said, "It's a
gimmick, really, a rather tawdry device, a dollar - book Freudian gag." Three "Rosebud" sleds were used in production, of which only one was not burned. According to Louis Pizzitola, author of Hearst Over Hollywood, "Rosebud" was a nickname that Orrin Peck, a friend of William Randolph Hearst, gave to his mother, Phoebe Hearst. It
was said that Phoebe was as close, or even closer, to Orrin than she
was to her own son, lending a bitter - sweet element to the word's use in a
film about a boy being separated from his mother's love. In 1989, essayist Gore Vidal cited contemporary rumors that "Rosebud" was a nickname Hearst used for his mistress Marion Davies; a reference to her clitoris, a claim repeated as fact in the 1996 documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane and again in the 1999 dramatic film RKO 281. Film critic Roger Ebert has
been a bit more specific than Vidal about the source, saying on his
commentary track for the September 2001 DVD release that "Herman Mankiewicz, the co-author with Welles of the screenplay, happened to know that "Rosebud" was William Randolph Hearst's pet name for an intimate part of Marion Davies' anatomy." A resultant joke noted, with heavy innuendo, that Hearst and / or Kane died "with 'Rosebud' on his lips." Another theory of the origin of "Rosebud" is the similarity with the dying wish of Basil Zaharoff (who is one of the inspirations for the central character), to be wheeled "by the rosebush" Film scholars and historians view Citizen Kane as Welles' attempt to create a new style of filmmaking by
studying various forms of movie making, and combining them all into
one. However, in an interview in March 1960 with the BBC's Huw Wheldon, Welles stated that his love for cinema began only when he started the work on Citizen Kane,
and when asked where he got the confidence from as a first time
director to direct a film so radically different from contemporary
cinema, he responded, "[From] ignorance... sheer ignorance. There is no
confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a
profession that you are timid or careful." The most innovative technical aspect of Citizen Kane is the extended use of deep focus. In
nearly every scene in the film, the foreground, background and everything in between are all in sharp focus. This was done by
cinematographer Gregg Toland through
his experimentation with lenses and lighting. Specifically, Toland
often used telephoto lenses to shoot close-up scenes. Any time deep
focus was impossible – for example in the scene when Kane finishes a
bad review of Alexander's opera while at the same time firing the
person who started the review – an optical printer was
used to make the whole screen appear in focus (visually layering one
piece of film onto another). However, some apparently deep focus shots
were the result of in-camera effects, as in the famous example of the scene where Kane breaks into Susan
Alexander's room after her suicide attempt. In the background, Kane and
another man break into the room, while simultaneously the medicine
bottle and a glass with a spoon in it are in closeup in the foreground.
The shot was an in-camera matte shot. The foreground was shot first,
with the background dark. Then the background was lit, the foreground
darkened, the film rewound, and the scene re-shot with the background
action. Another unorthodox method used in the film was the way low angle shots were used to display a point of view facing upwards, thus allowing ceilings to be shown in the background of several scenes. Since movies were primarily filmed on sound stages and not on location during the era of the Hollywood studio system, it was impossible to film at an angle that showed ceilings because the stages had none. In some instances, Welles' crew used muslin draped above the set to produce the illusion of a regular room with a ceiling,
while the boom microphones were hidden above the cloth and even dug a
trench into the floor to allow the low angle shot to be used in the
scene where Kane meets Leland after his election loss. Toland had approached Welles in 1940 to work on Citizen Kane.
Welles' reputation for experimentation in the theatre appealed to
Toland and he found a sympathetic partner to "test and prove several
ideas generally being accepted as radical in Hollywood". Citizen Kane eschews
the traditional linear, chronological narrative and tells Kane's story
entirely in flashback using different points of view, many of them from
Kane's aged and forgetful associates, the cinematic equivalent of the unreliable narrator in literature. Welles
also dispenses with the idea of a single storyteller and uses multiple
narrators to recount Kane's life. The use of multiple narrators was
unheard of in Hollywood movies. Each narrator recounts a different part of Kane's life, with each story partly overlapping. The
film depicts Kane as an enigma, a complicated man who, in the end,
leaves viewers with more questions than answers as to his character,
such as the newsreel footage where he is attacked for being both a communist and a fascist. The technique of using flashbacks had been used in earlier films such as Wuthering Heights in 1939 and The Power and the Glory in 1933 but no film was so immersed in this technique as Citizen Kane.
The use of the reporter Thompson acts as a surrogate for the audience,
questioning Kane's associates and piecing together his life. One of the narrative voices is the News on the March segment. Its stilted dialogue and portentous voiceover is a parody of The March of Time newsreel series which itself references an earlier newsreel which showed the 85 year old arms czar Sir Basil Zaharoff getting wheeled to his train. Welles had earlier provided voiceovers for the March of Time radio show. Citizen Kane makes extensive use of stock footage to create the newsreel. One of the story telling techniques used in Citizen Kane was
the use of montage to collapse time and space. Using an episodic
sequence on the same set while the characters changed costume and
make - up between cuts so that the scene following each cut would look as
if it took place in the same location, but at a time long after the
previous cut. In the breakfast montage, Welles chronicles the breakdown
of Kane's first marriage in 5 vignettes, which takes 16 years of story
time and condenses it into two minutes of screen time.
Welles
also pioneered several visual effects in order to cheaply shoot things
like crowd scenes and large interior spaces. For example, the scene
where the camera in the opera house rises dramatically to the rafters to
show the workmen showing a lack of appreciation for the second Mrs.
Kane's performance was shot by a camera craning upwards over the performance scene, then a curtain wipe to
a miniature of the upper regions of the house, and then another curtain
wipe matching it again with the scene of the workmen. Other scenes
effectively employed miniatures to make the film look much more
expensive than it truly was, such as various shots of Xanadu. A loud, full screen closeup of a typewriter typing a single word ("weak"), magnifies the review for the Chicago Inquirer.
The make - up artist Maurice Seiderman created the make - up for the film. RKO
wanted the young Kane to look handsome and dashing, and Seiderman
transformed the already overweight Welles, beginning with his nose,
which Welles always disliked. Welles was as made up as a young man as
he was as an old man, and could barely move. For the old Kane,
Seiderman created a red plastic compound which he applied to Welles,
allowing the wrinkles to move naturally. Kane's
mustache was made of several hair tufts. Transforming Welles into the
old Kane required six to seven hours, meaning he had to start at two in
the morning to begin filming at nine. He would hold conferences while
sitting in the make - up chair; sometimes working 16 hours a day. Even
breaking a leg during filming could not stop him from directing around
the clock, and he quickly returned to acting, using a steel leg brace. Welles
brought his experience with sound from radio along to filmmaking,
producing a layered and complex soundtrack. In one scene, the elderly
Kane strikes Susan in a tent on the beach, and the two characters
silently glower at each other while a woman at the nearby party can be
heard hysterically laughing in the background, her giddiness in
grotesque counterpoint to the misery of Susan and Kane. Elsewhere,
Welles skillfully employed reverberation to create a mood, such as the
chilly echo of the monumental Thatcher library, where the reporter is
confronted by an intimidating, officious librarian. In
addition to expanding on the potential of sound as a creator of moods
and emotions, Welles pioneered a new aural technique, known as the
"lightning - mix". Welles used this technique to link complex montage sequences
via a series of related sounds or phrases. In offering a continuous
sound track, Welles was able to join what would otherwise be extremely
rough cuts together into a smooth narrative. For example, the audience
witnesses Kane grow from a child into a young man in just two shots.
As Kane's guardian hands him his sled, Kane begrudgingly wishes him a
"Merry Christmas". Suddenly we are taken to a shot of his guardian
fifteen years later, only to have the phrase completed for us: "and a
Happy New Year". In this case, the continuity of the soundtrack, not the
image, is what makes for a seamless narrative structure. Welles
also carried over techniques from radio not yet popular in the movies
(though they would become staples). Using a number of voices, each
saying a sentence or sometimes merely a fragment of a sentence, and
splicing the dialogue together in quick succession, the result gave the
impression of a whole town talking – and, equally important, what
the town was talking about. Welles also favored the overlapping of
dialogue, considering it more realistic than the stage and movie
tradition of characters not stepping on each other's sentences. He also
pioneered the technique of putting the audio ahead of the visual in
scene transitions (a J-cut); as a scene would come to a close, the audio would transition to the next scene before the visuals did. In common with using personnel he had previously worked with in the Mercury Theatre, Welles recruited his close friend Bernard Herrmann to score Citizen Kane. Herrmann was a longtime collaborator with Welles, providing music for almost all his radio broadcasts including The Fall of the City (1937) and the War of the Worlds (1938) broadcast. The film was Herrmann's first motion picture score and would be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score, but would lose out to his own score for the film All That Money Can Buy. Herrmann's
score for Citizen Kane was a watershed in film soundtrack composition
and proved as influential as any of the film's other innovations,
establishing him as an important voice in film soundtrack composition. The
score eschewed the typical Hollywood practice of scoring a film with
virtually non - stop music. Instead Herrmann used what he later described
as '"radio scoring", musical cues which typically lasted between five
and fifteen seconds to bridge the action or suggest a different
emotional response. One of the most effective musical cues was the
"Breakfast Montage." The scene begins with a graceful waltz theme and
gets darker with each variation on that theme as the passage of time
leads to the hardening of Kane's personality and the breakup of his
marriage to Emily. Herrmann
realized that musicians slated to play his music were hired for
individual unique sessions; there was no need to write for existing
ensembles. This meant that he was free to score for unusual combinations
of instruments, even instruments that are not commonly heard. In the
opening sequence, for example, the tour of Kane's estate Xanadu,
Herrmann introduces a recurring leitmotiv played by low woodwinds, including a quartet of bass flutes. Much of the music used in the newsreel was taken from other sources; examples include the News on the March music which was taken from RKO's music library, Belgian March by Anthony Collins, and accompanies the newsreel titles; and an excerpt from Alfred Newman's score for Gunga Din which is used as the background for the exploration of Xanadu. In
the final sequence of the film, which shows the destruction of Rosebud
in the fireplace of Kane's castle, Welles choreographed the scene while
he had Herrmann's cue playing on the set. For
the operatic sequence which exposed Kane's protege Susan Alexander for
the amateur she was, Herrmann composed a quasi - romantic scene, Aria from Salammbô. There did exist two treatments of this work by Gustave Flaubert's 1862 novel, including an opera by Ernest Reyer and an incomplete treatment by Modeste Mussorgsky.
However, Herrmann made no reference to existing music. Herrmann put the
aria in a key that would force the singer to strain to reach the high
notes, culminating in a high D, well outside the range of Susan
Alexander. Herrmann said he wanted to convey the impression of "a terrified girl floundering in the quicksand of a powerful orchestra". On the soundtrack it was soprano Jean Forward who actually sang the vocal part for actress Dorothy Comingore. In 1972 Herrmann said "I was fortunate to start my career with a film like Citizen Kane, it's been a downhill run ever since!" Shortly before his death in 1985, Welles told director Henry Jaglom that the score was fifty per cent responsible for the film's artistic success. However,
Herrmann was vocal in his criticism of Pauline Kael's claim that it was
Mankiewicz, not Welles, who made the main thrust of the film, and also
her assumptions about the use of music in the film without consulting
him: Pauline Kael has written in The Citizen Kane Book (1971),
that the production wanted to use Massenet's "Thais" but could not
afford the fee. "But Miss Kael never wrote or approached me to ask about
the music. We could easily have afforded the fee. The point is that its
lovely little strings would not have served the emotional purpose of
the film." Opera
lovers are frequently amused by the parody of vocal coaching that
appears in a singing lesson given to Susan Alexander by Signor Matiste.
The character attempts to sing the famous cavatina "Una voce poco fa"
from Il barbiere di Siviglia by Gioachino Rossini, but the lesson is interrupted when Alexander sings a high note flat. An uncredited Nat King Cole is
believed to provide the music in two key scenes in the film. He can be
heard playing piano, but not singing, "This Can't Be Love" (actually
sung by Alton Redd), in the scene where Susan fights with Kane. Welles heard him playing at a bar and created the scene around the song. Unconfirmed
reports suggest he can also be heard playing in the scene where
Thompson questions a down - at - heel Susan in the nightclub she works; however, Bernard Herrmann denied any knowledge of this to musicologist David Meeker. Citizen Kane was supposed to open at Radio City Music Hall but did not because Parsons told Nelson Rockefeller that if the film was screened, Hearst's American Weekly magazine would run a negative article about his grandfather. Other
exhibitors feared retaliation and refused to handle the film. Schaefer
lined up a few theaters but Welles grew impatient and threatened RKO
with a lawsuit. Hearst papers refused to accept advertising for the
film. Kane opened at the RKO Palace on Broadway in New York on May 1, 1941, in Chicago on May 6, and in Los Angeles on May 8. Kane did
well in cities and larger towns but fared poorly in more remote areas.
RKO still had problems getting exhibitors to show the film. For example,
one chain controlling more than 500 theaters got Welles' film as part
of a package but refused to play it, reportedly out of fear of Hearst. As a result, the film lost $ 150,000 during its initial run. The
reviews for the film were overwhelmingly positive, although some
reviewers were challenged by Welles' break with Hollywood traditions. Kate Cameron, in her review for the New York Daily - News, said that Kane was "one of the most interesting and technically superior films that has ever come out of a Hollywood studio". In his review for the New World Telegram, William Boehnel said that the film was "staggering and belongs at once among the greatest screen achievements". Otis Ferguson, in his review for The New Republic, said that Kane was "the boldest free - hand stroke in major screen production since Griffith and Bitzer were running wild to unshackle the camera". John O'Hara, in Newsweek, called it "the best picture he'd ever seen" and Bosley Crowther writing in The New York Times wrote that "it comes close to being the most sensational film ever made in Hollywood". In a 1941 review, Jorge Luis Borges called Citizen Kane a
"metaphysical detective story", in that "... [its] subject (both
psychological and allegorical) is the investigation of a man's inner
self, through the works he has wrought, the words he has spoken, the
many lives he has ruined..." Borges noted that "Overwhelmingly,
endlessly, Orson Welles shows fragments of the life of the man, Charles
Foster Kane, and invites us to combine them and reconstruct him." As
well, "Forms of multiplicity and incongruity abound in the film: the
first scenes record the treasures amassed by Kane; in one of the last,
a poor woman, luxuriant and suffering, plays with an enormous jigsaw
puzzle on the floor of a palace that is also a museum." Borges points
out, "At the end we realize that the fragments are not governed by a
secret unity: the detested Charles Foster Kane is a simulacrum, a chaos of appearances." Citizen Kane, with 9 nominations, was the 16th film to get more than six Academy Awards nominations. It was nominated for: It was widely thought the film would win most of the awards it was nominated for, but it only won the Best Writing (Original Screenplay) Oscar. Film editor Robert Wise recalled each time Citizen Kane's name was called out as a nominee, the crowd booed. Most
of Hollywood did not want the film to see the light of day, considering
the threats that William Randolph Hearst had made if it did. According
to Variety, bloc voting against Welles by screen extras denied him Best Picture and Actor awards. British film critic Barry Norman attributed this to Hearst's wrath. In December 2007, Welles' Oscar for best original screenplay came up for auction at Sotheby's in New York, but failed to reach its estimate of $ 800,000 to $ 1.2 million. The Oscar, which was believed to have been lost by Welles, was rediscovered in 1994 and is owned by the Dax Foundation, a Los Angeles based charity. At the same sale, Welles' personal copy of the last revised draft of Citizen Kane before the shooting script, did sell for $ 97,000.
The National Board of Review gave 1941 "Best Acting" awards to Orson Welles and George Coulouris, and the film itself "Best Picture." That same year, the New York Times named it one of the Ten Best Films of the year, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for "Best Picture" also went to Citizen Kane. Hearing
about the film enraged Hearst so much that he banned any advertising,
reviewing or mentioning of it in his papers, and had his journalists libel Welles. Following lobbying from Hearst, the head of Metro - Goldwyn - Mayer, Louis B Mayer,
acting on behalf of the whole film industry, made an offer to RKO
Pictures of $ 805,000 to destroy all prints of the film and burn the
negative. Welles used Hearst's opposition to Citizen Kane as
a pretext for previewing the movie in several opinion making screenings
in Los Angeles, lobbying for its artistic worth against the hostile
campaign that Hearst was waging. When George Schaefer of RKO rejected Hearst's offer to suppress the film, Hearst banned every newspaper and station in his media conglomerate from
reviewing – or even mentioning – the movie. He also had many
movie theaters ban it, and many did not show it through fear of being
socially exposed by his massive newspaper empire. The documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane lays the blame for Citizen Kane's
relative failure squarely at the feet of Hearst. The film did decent
business at the box office; it went on to be the sixth highest grossing
film in its year of release, a modest success its backers found
acceptable. Nevertheless, the film's commercial performance fell short
of its creators' expectations. In The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst, David Nasaw points out that Hearst's actions were not the only reason Kane failed,
however: the innovations Welles made with narrative, as well as the
dark message at the heart of the film (that the pursuit of success is
ultimately futile) meant that a popular audience could not appreciate its merits. In a pair of Arena documentaries about Welles' career produced and broadcast domestically by the BBC in
1982, Welles claimed that during opening week, a policeman approached
him one night and told him: "Do not go to your hotel room tonight;
Hearst has set up an undressed, underage girl to leap into your arms
when you enter and a photographer to take pictures of you. Hearst is
planning to publish it in all of his papers." Welles thanked the man
and stayed out all night. However, it is not confirmed whether this was
true. Welles also described how he accidentally bumped into Hearst in
an elevator at the Fairmont Hotel when Kane was
opening in San Francisco. Welles' father had been friends with Hearst,
so Welles tried to comfortably ask if Hearst would see the film. Hearst
ignored him. "As he was getting off at his floor, I said 'Charles Foster
Kane would have accepted.' No reply", recalled the director. "And Kane
would have you know. That was his style." Although Hearst's efforts to suppress it damaged the film's success, they backfired in the long run,
since almost every reference to Hearst's life and career made today
typically includes a reference to the film's parallel to it. The irony
of Hearst's efforts is that the film is now inexorably connected to
him. This connection was reinforced by the publication in 1961 of W. A. Swanberg's extensive biography, Citizen Hearst. By 1942 Citizen Kane had
run its course theatrically and, apart from a few showings at big city
art house cinemas, it largely vanished from America until 1956. In that
period, Kane's and Welles' reputation fell among American critics. In 1949 critic Richard Griffith in his overview of cinema, The Film Till Now, dismissed Kane as "tinpot if not crackpot Freud." Due to World War II, Citizen Kane was little seen in Europe. It was not until 1946 that it was shown in France, where it gained considerable acclaim, particularly from film critics such as André Bazin and from Cahiers du cinéma writers, including future film directors François Truffaut and Jean - Luc Godard. In his 1950 essay "The Evolution of Cinema", Bazin placed Citizen Kane centre stage as a work which ushered in a new period in cinema. In
the United States, it was neglected and forgotten until its revival on
television in the mid 1950s. Three key events in 1956 led to its
re-evaluation in the United States. RKO was one of the first studios to
sell its library to television and early that year Citizen Kane started
to appear on television. Around the same time the film was rereleased
theatrically to coincide with Welles return to the New York stage where
he played King Lear. That year American film critic Andrew Sarris wrote "Citizen Kane: The American Baroque" for Film Culture and described it as "the great American film," further enhancing the film's status. During the Expo 58, a poll of over 100 film historians named The Battleship Potemkin the greatest film ever made, while Kane was
part of the top ten. When a group of young film directors cast their
vote for their top six, they were booed at the announcement for not
including the film. In the decades since, its critical status as one of the greatest films ever made has grown with numerous essays and books on it including influential books like Peter Cowie's The Cinema of Orson Welles, Ronald Gottesman's Focus on Citizen Kane, a collection of significant reviews and background pieces, and most notably Kael's essay, "Raising Kane", which promoted the value of the film to a much wider audience than it had reached before. Despite its criticism of Welles it further popularized the notion of Citizen Kane as the great American film. The rise of art house and film society circuits also aided in the film's rediscovery. The British magazine Sight & Sound has
produced a Top Ten list surveying film critics every decade since 1952
and is regarded as one of the most respected barometers of critical
taste. Citizen Kane was a runner up to the top 10 in its 1952 poll but was voted as the greatest film ever made in its 1962 poll and it has retained the top spot in every subsequent poll. The
film has also ranked number one in the following film "best of" lists:
Editorial Jaguar, FIAF Centenary List, France Critics Top 10, Cahiers du
cinéma 100 films pour une cinémathèque
idéale, Kinovedcheskie Russia Top 10, Romanian Critics Top 10, Time Out Magazine Greatest Films, and Village Voice 100 Greatest Films. Roger Ebert called Citizen Kane the greatest movie ever made. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Despite its status as a revered classic, Citizen Kane is not entirely without its critics. Boston University film scholar Ray Carney,
although noting its technical achievements, criticized what he saw as
the film's lack of emotional depth, shallow characterization and empty
metaphors. Listing it among the most overrated works within the film
community, he accused the film of being "an all - American triumph of
style over substance." The Swedish director Ingmar Bergman once
stated his dislike for the movie, calling it "a total bore" and
claiming that the "performances are worthless." He went on to call Orson
Welles an "infinitely overrated filmmaker." Similarly, James Agate wrote,
"I thought the photography quite good, but nothing to write to Moscow
about, the acting middling, and the whole thing a little dull... Mr.
Welles's high - brow direction is of that super - clever order which
prevents you from seeing what that which is being directed is all
about." The composited camera negative of Citizen Kane was destroyed in a New Jersey film
laboratory fire in the 1970s. Subsequent prints were ultimately derived
from a master positive (a fine - grain preservation element) made in
the 1940s and originally intended for use in overseas distribution. Fortunately, the sound track had not been lost. Modern techniques were used to produce a pristine print for a 50th Anniversary theatrical revival reissue in 1991 (released by Paramount Pictures). The 2003 British DVD edition is taken from an interpositive held by the British Film Institute.
The current US DVD version (released by Warner Home Video) is taken
from another digital restoration, supervised by Turner's company. The
transfer to Region 1 DVD has been criticized by some film experts for
being too bright. Also, in the scene in Bernstein's office (chapter 10),
rain falling outside the window has been digitally erased, probably
because it was thought to be excessive film grain. These alterations are
not present in the UK Region 2, which is also considered to be more
accurate in terms of contrast and brightness. In 2003, Orson Welles' daughter Beatrice sued Turner Entertainment and RKO Pictures, claiming that the Welles estate is the legal copyright holder
of the film. Her attorney said that Orson Welles had left RKO with an
exit deal terminating his contracts with the studio, meaning that Welles
still had an interest in the film and his previous contract giving the
studio the copyright of
the film was null and void. Beatrice Welles also claimed that, if the
courts did not uphold her claim of copyright, RKO nevertheless owed the
estate 20% of the profits, from a previous contract which has not been
lived up to. On
May 30, 2007, the appeals panel agreed that Beatrice Welles could
proceed with the lawsuit against Turner Entertainment; the opinion
partially overturns the 2004 decision by a lower court judge who had
found in favor of Turner Entertainment on the issue of video rights. In the 1980s, this film became the catalyst in the controversy over the colorization of black and white films. When Ted Turner told members of the press that he was considering colorizing Citizen Kane,
his comments led to an immediate public outcry. About two weeks before
his death, and almost a year before Turner acquired the rights to the
MGM catalog, Welles had asked filmmaker Henry Jaglom, "Please do this for me. Don't let Ted Turner deface my movie with his crayons." The
uproar was for nothing, as Turner could not have colorized the film had
he wanted to. Welles' original contract prevented any alteration to the
film without his, and eventually his estate's, express consent. Turner
later claimed that this was a joke intended to needle colorization
critics, and that he had never had any intention of colorizing the film. Despite the critical success of Citizen Kane it nevertheless marked a decline in Welles' fortune. In the book Whatever Happened to Orson Welles?, Joseph McBride argues that the problems in making Citizen Kane caused lasting damage to his career. The damage started with RKO violating their contract with him by taking his next film The Magnificent Ambersons away from him and adding a happy ending against his will. Hollywood's
treatment of Welles and his work ultimately led to his self imposed
exile in Europe for much of the rest of his career where he found a more
sympathetic audience. The documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane points out the great irony that Welles's own life story resembled that of Kane far more than Hearst's: an overreaching wunderkind who ended up mournful and lonely in his old age. Citizen Kane's editor Robert Wise summarized:
"Well, I thought often afterwards, only in recent years when I saw the
film again two or three years ago when they had the fiftieth
anniversary, and I suddenly thought to myself, well, Orson was doing an
autobiographical film and didn't realize it, because it's rather much
the same, you know. You start here, and you have a big rise and
tremendous prominence and fame and success and whatnot, and then tail
off and tail off and tail off. And at least the arc of the two lives
were very much the same..." Peter Bogdanovich, who was friends with Welles in his later years, disagreed with this on his own commentary on the Citizen Kane DVD,
saying that Kane was nothing like Welles. Kane, he said, "had none of
the qualities of an artist, Orson had all the qualities of an artist."
Bogdanovich also noted that Welles was never bitter "about all the bad
things that happened to him", and was a man who enjoyed life in his
final years. In addition, critics have reassessed Welles’ career after
his death, saying that he wasn’t a failed Hollywood filmmaker, but a successful independent filmmaker. Film critic Kim Newman believed the film's influence was visible in the film noir that followed, as well as the 1942 Hepburn - Tracy film Keeper of the Flame. Film directors Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola, Bryan Singer, Stephen Frears, Brian De Palma, John Frankenheimer, the Coen brothers, Sergio Leone and Luc Besson are all fans of Citizen Kane and it influenced their work. In 1982 Spielberg spent $ 60,500 to buy the Rosebud sled, and paid homage to the film in the final shot of the government warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg commented, "Rosebud will go over my typewriter to remind me that quality in movies comes first." The film's structure influenced the biographical films Lawrence of Arabia and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters – which begin with the subject's death and show their life in flashbacks – as well as Welles' thriller Mr. Arkadin. The film, for its topic of mass media manipulation of public opinion,
is also famous for having being frequently presented as the perfect
example to demonstrate the power that media have on a society in
influencing the democratic process. This examplary citation of the film
lasted till the end of the 20th century, when the paradigm of mass media
depicted in Citizen Kane needed
to be updated to take into account more globalized and more
internet - based media scenarios. Since the film was based on Randolph
Hearst's actions in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, that model of
media influence lasted for almost a century. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is sometimes labeled as a latter - day Citizen Kane.
14th Academy Awards (Oscars) – 1941
