MEDI 311 – FILM ABOUT MEDIA
Trevor Olafson
FILM DIARY #10 – Citizen Kane
Given the task to analyze how Orson Welles constructed Citizen Kane, both technically and thematically as a statement on power, corruption and loss is not an easy one – but we will explore it here, however briefly.
First I must confess, this was the first time I had seen this film in its’ entirety – my knowledge had consisted up to this point of twenty or so minute snippets caught at two in the morning (waking up to the late show, falling asleep again) – or references made to the film in the Simpson’s for example, sad but true. So, with that out of the way let’s talk about Citizen Kane.
Brilliantly shot and edited, Welles used every method available at the time to construct this classic. The film opens with a posthumous newsreel about the fictitious Charles Kane, it effectively sets up what will become the story line as told by the people in his life through flashbacks – appropriately triggered when being interviewed by a tenacious reporter who is tasked to find ‘Rosebud’ (Kane’s last words) dead or alive, it is material the producers of the newsreel want to add to it before release. It is through this mechanism of an investigative reporter that Welles’ takes us into the life of Charles Kane and the people affected by it.
A major part of the effectiveness of this film are the fantastic sets, and the intricately woven soundtrack, both music and background sounds are used to set each scene and the mood in it. Transitions between the story as the reporter searches for ‘Rosebud’ begin with the introduction into the life of Charles Kane as told in a memoir written by Walter Thatcher, the man who is the catalyst for change in boy Kane. Being read by the reporter ‘Thompson’, the scene itself begins with the manuscript having to be pulled from a secured vault, and as with each successive flashback it begins with a narration which dissolves into the point in time being referenced.
Kane’s story of loss is recurrent from the start, and as we jump from the period in time when young Charles is taken to Chicago by banker Walter Thatcher from the family homestead, to the end when he dies alone in the unfinished and by then derelict monument Xanadu – never finding fulfillment through the accumulation of objects and people as objects. I feel Welles makes this statement beginning with a literal and allegorical parental rejection – the parents being a representation of western society, which through its’ very nature has created generations of people cut-off yet seeking to attain a kind of ‘parental approval’ from the same power on the other hand that works within to keep us cut-off from our rightful inheritance.
By the end of Kane we become privy to the secret of ‘Rosebud’ – the sled represents the loss of innocence, and that it really was ‘just a simple thing’. The implied irony of the fiery destruction of ‘Rosebud’ is that we are living in a system that institutionalizes from birth, separates us from our joy, and grooms us to play our role as decided by our handlers.
