Citizen Kane movie review & film summary (1941) | Roger Ebert (2024)

“I don't think any word can explain a man's life,” says one ofthe searchers through the warehouse of treasures left behind by Charles FosterKane. Then we get the famous series of shots leading to the closeup of the word“Rosebud” on a sled that has been tossed into a furnace, its paint curling inthe flames. We remember that this was Kane's childhood sled, taken from him ashe was torn from his family and sent east to boarding school.

Rosebud is the emblem of the security, hope and innocence ofchildhood, which a man can spend his life seeking to regain. It is the greenlight at the end of Gatsby's pier; the leopard atop Kilimanjaro, seeking nobodyknows what; the bone tossed into the air in “2001.” It is that yearning aftertransience that adults learn to suppress. “Maybe Rosebud was something hecouldn't get, or something he lost,” says Thompson, the reporter assigned tothe puzzle of Kane's dying word. “Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything.”True, it explains nothing, but it is remarkably satisfactory as a demonstrationthat nothing can be explained. “Citizen Kane” likes playful paradoxes likethat. Its surface is as much fun as any movie ever made. Its depths surpassunderstanding. I have analyzed it a shot at a time with more than 30 groups,and together we have seen, I believe, pretty much everything that is there onthe screen. The more clearly I can see its physical manifestation, the more Iam stirred by its mystery.

Itis one of the miracles of cinema that in 1941 a first-time director; a cynical,hard-drinking writer; an innovative cinematographer, and a group of New Yorkstage and radio actors were given the keys to a studio and total control, andmade a masterpiece. “Citizen Kane” is more than a great movie; it is agathering of all the lessons of the emerging era of sound, just as “Birth of aNation” assembled everything learned at the summit of the silent era, and “2001”pointed the way beyond narrative. These peaks stand above all the others.

Theorigins of “Citizen Kane” are well known. Orson Welles, the boy wonder of radioand stage, was given freedom by RKO Radio Pictures to make any picture hewished. Herman Mankiewicz, an experienced screenwriter, collaborated with himon a screenplay originally called “The American.” Its inspiration was the lifeof William Randolph Hearst, who had put together an empire of newspapers, radiostations, magazines and news services, and then built to himself the flamboyantmonument of San Simeon, a castle furnished by rummaging the remains of nations.Hearst was Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates rolled up into an enigma.

Arrivingin Hollywood at age 25, Welles brought a subtle knowledge of sound and dialoguealong with him; on his Mercury Theater of the Air, he'd experimented with audiostyles more lithe and suggestive than those usually heard in the movies. As hiscinematographer he hired Gregg Toland, who on John Ford's “The Long Voyage Home”(1940) had experimented with deep focus photography--with shots whereeverything was in focus, from the front to the back, so that composition andmovement determined where the eye looked first. For his cast Welles assembledhis New York colleagues, including Joseph Cotten as Jed Leland, the hero's bestfriend; Dorothy Comingore as Susan Alexander, the young woman Kane thought hecould make into an opera star; Everett Sloane as Mr. Bernstein, the mogul'sbusiness wizard; Ray Collins as Gettys, the corrupt political boss, and AgnesMoorehead as the boy's forbidding mother. Welles himself played Kane from age25 until his deathbed, using makeup and body language to trace the progress ofa man increasingly captive inside his needs. “All he really wanted out of lifewas love,” Leland says. “That's Charlie's story--how he lost it.”

Thestructure of “Citizen Kane” is circular, adding more depth every time it passesover the life. The movie opens with newsreel obituary footage that briefs us onthe life and times of Charles Foster Kane; this footage, with its portentousnarration, is Welles' bemused nod in the direction of the “March of Time”newsreels then being produced by another media mogul, Henry Luce. They providea map of Kane's trajectory, and it will keep us oriented as the screenplayskips around in time, piecing together the memories of those who knew him.

Curiousabout Kane's dying word, “rosebud,” the newsreel editor assigns Thompson, areporter, to find out what it meant. Thompson is played by William Alland in athankless performance; he triggers every flashback, yet his face is never seen.He questions Kane's alcoholic mistress, his ailing old friend, his richassociate and the other witnesses, while the movie loops through time. As oftenas I've seen “Citizen Kane,” I've never been able to firmly fix the order ofthe scenes in my mind. I look at a scene and tease myself with what will comenext. But it remains elusive: By flashing back through the eyes of manywitnesses, Welles and Mankiewicz created an emotional chronology set free fromtime.

Themovie is filled with bravura visual moments: the towers of Xanadu; candidateKane addressing a political rally; the doorway of his mistress dissolving intoa front-page photo in a rival newspaper; the camera swooping down through askylight toward the pathetic Susan in a nightclub; the many Kanes reflectedthrough parallel mirrors; the boy playing in the snow in the background as hisparents determine his future; the great shot as the camera rises straight upfrom Susan's opera debut to a stagehand holding his nose, and the subsequentshot of Kane, his face hidden in shadow, defiantly applauding in the silenthall.

Alongwith the personal story is the history of a period. “Citizen Kane” covers therise of the penny press (here Joseph Pulitzer is the model), theHearst-supported Spanish-American War, the birth of radio, the power ofpolitical machines, the rise of fascism, the growth of celebrity journalism. Anewsreel subtitle reads: “1895 to 1941. All of these years he covered, many ofthese he was.” The screenplay by Mankiewicz and Welles (which got an Oscar, theonly one Welles ever won) is densely constructed and covers an amazing amountof ground, including a sequence showing Kane inventing the popular press; arecord of his marriage, from early bliss to the famous montage of increasinglychilly breakfasts; the story of his courtship of Susan Alexander and herdisastrous opera career, and his decline into the remote master of Xanadu (“Ithink if you look carefully in the west wing, Susan, you'll find about a dozenvacationists still in residence”).

“CitizenKane” knows the sled is not the answer. It explains what Rosebud is, but notwhat Rosebud means. The film's construction shows how our lives, after we aregone, survive only in the memories of others, and those memories butt upagainst the walls we erect and the roles we play. There is the Kane who madeshadow figures with his fingers, and the Kane who hated the traction trust; theKane who chose his mistress over his marriage and political career, the Kanewho entertained millions, the Kane who died alone.

Thereis a master image in “Citizen Kane” you might easily miss. The tycoon hasoverextended himself and is losing control of his empire. After he signs thepapers of his surrender, he turns and walks into the back of the shot. Deepfocus allows Welles to play a trick of perspective. Behind Kane on the wall isa window that seems to be of average size. But as he walks toward it, we see itis further away and much higher than we thought. Eventually he stands beneathits lower sill, shrunken and diminished. Then as he walks toward us, his staturegrows again. A man always seems the same size to himself, because he does notstand where we stand to look at him.