Citizen Kane 1941

Citizen Kane Deep Focus: filming a scene with every part in focus: foreground, middle, and background. When the deep focus effect was impossible, Welles would shoot the scene multiple times, focusing on different areas, then layer the film together.

Citizen Kane Montage: series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information.

Production Lived 1915 – 1985 Gained fame in 1938 during a radio broadcast of H.G. Wells science fiction classic The War of the Worlds. He set up his broadcast as a news bulletin, many listeners believed there really was an alien attack in progress, causing small scale panic. While the broadcast was lambasted by newspapers and the FCC, it established Welles as a dramatist. His radio production group, called The Mercury Theater, would later become his film company.

Citizen Kane Released in 1941 Genre: Drama, Biographical Directed by Orson Welles Writers*: Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles

Citizen Kane Cinematographer: Gregg Toland Producer: Orson Welles, Mercury Productions Editor: Robert Wise Composer: Bernard Herrmann Distributer: RKO Pictures

Cast Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane

Cast Joseph Cotten as Jedediah Leland Dorothy Comingore as Susan Alexander Kane

Cast Everett Sloane as Mr. Bernstein George Coulouris as Walter Parks Thatcher

Citizen Kane Filming: June 29 – October 24, 1940 Budget: $500,000 (spent $839,727) Box Office: not a ton Profit: not a ton

Citizen Kane Summary: After newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane’s death, a reporter is assigned to decipher his final word, “Rosebud.” He learns fragments of Kane’s life through the people who were close to him. *Based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper tycoon.

Characters Charles Foster Kane Mr. Thompson (reporter) Susan Alexander Kane (ex-wife) Mr. Thatcher (caregiver) Mr. Bernstein (manager) Jedidiah Leland (friend)

Setting Late 1800s (childhood) – early 1940s (death) New York City

Action Kane dies, reporters want to investigate his final word, “rosebud.” Interview ex-wife Susan Alexander Kane – she is very upset about his death. Read transcripts of Mr. Thatcher to learn about Kane’s childhood. As a young adult, Kane takes over the NY Inquirer and turns it into more of a tabloid than a paper

Action Kane marries Emily (president’s niece), they have a son. He runs for governor, but a news story saying he was “caught in love nest with ‘singer’” was released the morning before election, and he lost. Kane marries Susan and forces her into an opera career. She resents him for his control over her, and eventually leaves him. We discover “rosebud” refers to a sled from his childhood (innocence, carefree).

Problem Reporters research newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane’s final word, “rosebud.” They must interview everyone who was ever close to him.

Outcome Although Mr. Thompson (reporter) doesn’t get answers to what “rosebud” means, the camera shows Kane’s childhood sled being burned with the name “rosebud” across it.

Production 1. Citizen Kane was Welles’ first motion picture. He signed a contract with RKO Productions. 2. Welles had complete control over story, casting, and editing as long as the budget was below $500,000. The contract was to direct two films. Screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz was recovering from a car accident when Welles approached him to write Kane.

Production 3. Mankiewicz & Welles collaborated on a story, deciding to tell a fictionalized account of the life of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. They also added details from the lives of real life tycoons Howard Hughes and Samuel Insull. Mankiewicz had been a friend of Hearst’s, but the two had a falling out. 4. During production the film was referred to as RKO-281 to keep its subject matter secret and avoid lawsuits from the real people on which it was loosely based.

Production Welles prevented RKO executives from visiting the set, knowing they would want to reduce his budget and control the story. The film ended up costing more than $300,000 over their initial budget. 5. Due to his running over budget and offending the studio execs he was never again afforded such creative freedoms.

Cinematography Welles innovated several kinds of camera effects while filming Citizen Kane. Deep Focus – filming a scene with every part in focus, foreground, middle, and background. Also known as “pan focus”. When the Deep Focus effect was impossible, Welles would shoot the scene multiple times, focusing on different areas, then layer the film together.

Cinematography Other times he would use a matte shot Film the foreground with the background in darkness . . . . . . Then darken the foreground to film the enlightened background . . . . . . Then combine the two shots. 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.

Storytelling The events in Citizen Kane do not happen in chronological order. The story is told as a series of flashbacks as people who lived and worked with Kane are questioned by a reporter. The reporter is trying to figure out the significance of Kane’s final word before his death, “Rosebud”. 6. Welles used the montage style of editing to illustrate the passage of long expanses of time.

Reception Welles kept a closed set, restricted access to dailies, and put out false publicity materials saying the film was the story Faust. RKO hoped for a mid-February 1941 release. 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. Soon after, Parsons called George Schaefer and threatened RKO with a lawsuit if they released Kane.

Reception 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. 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.

Reception 7. Upon its release, Citizen Kane was a modest success. 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.

Reception 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.

Reception The day following the premiere of Citizen Kane, The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote that "... it comes close to being the most sensational film ever made in Hollywood." Count on Mr. Welles: he doesn't do things by halves. ... Upon the screen he discovered an area large enough for his expansive whims to have free play. And the consequence is that he has made a picture of tremendous and overpowering scope, not in physical extent so much as in its rapid and graphic rotation of thoughts. Mr. Welles has put upon the screen a motion picture that really moves.

Reception Critic James Agate was decidedly negative in an October 1941 review, countering the superlatives given Citizen Kane by critics C. A. Lejeune and Dilys Powell. "Now imagine my horror, which includes self-distrust, at seeing no more in this film than the well-intentioned, muddled, amateurish thing one expects from high-brows. (Mr. Orson Welles's height of brow is enormous.) ... I thought the photography quite good, but nothing to write to Moscow about, the acting middling, and the whole thing a little dull.” Agate continued his review two weeks later: Citizen Kane has entirely ousted the war as conversation fodder. Waiters ask me what I think of it, and the post is full of it. ... You know now that all the vulgar beef, beer and tobacco barons are vulgar because when they were about seven years of age somebody came and took away their skates. That is one explanation of this alleged world-shaking masterpiece, Citizen Kane. Another point of view is that Citizen Kane is so great a masterpiece that it doesn't need explaining. ... In the meantime I continue to steer a middle course. I regard Citizen Kane as a quite good film which tries to run the psychological essay in harness with your detective thriller, and doesn't quite succeed.

Awards Citizen Kane received nine Academy Award nominations Outstanding Motion Picture – RKO Radio Pictures (Orson Welles, Producer) Best Director – Orson Welles Best Actor – Orson Welles Best Writing (Original Screenplay) – Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration (Black-and-White) – Perry Ferguson, Van Nest Polglase, A. Roland Fields, Darrell Silvera Best Film Editing – Robert Wise Best Cinematography (Black-and-White) – Gregg Toland Best Music (Score of a Dramatic Picture) – Bernard Herrmann Best Sound Recording – John O. Aalberg

Awards 8. Citizen Kane received 9 Academy Award nominations, but received only one: Best Original Screenplay.

Awards Citizen Kane was ranked number one in the American Film Institute's polls of film industry artists and leaders in 1998 and 2007. "Rosebud" was chosen the 17th most memorable movie quotation in a 2005 AFI poll. The film's score was one of 250 nominees for the top 25 film scores in American cinema in another 2005 AFI poll. The film currently has a 100% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 66 reviews by approved critics.

Journal #109 5/16/16 What do you think the significance of Kane’s last word, “Rosebud,” might be?

Journal #110 5/17/16 Name 3 things you know about Charles Foster Kane’s personality from what we’ve seen so far.

Journal #111 5/18/16 What aspects of the film (think narrative structure, cinematography, editing, etc) do you think make this one of the best films of all time? Be specific.

Journal #112 5/19/16 If this screenplay idea were recreated in the present day, choose one public figure who’s life you’d like to see on screen.