wunder beta📘 Citizen kane explained
A man dies alone and says one word, and the film spends two hours failing to find out what it meant. What a 24-year-old was allowed to sign, who actually wrote it, why half the famous deep focus is not deep focus at all, and how it stopped being the greatest film ever made.
What you’ll learn
- Nobody in the RoomExplain how the film is built and why its own investigation is designed to fail.A man dies with no witness, an obituary tells you everything and explains nothing, and five interested parties give five incompatible accounts. The reporter gives up; you are the only one who is shown the answer, and even the answer does not settle it.
- A Boy with Final CutExplain the contract and the company that made this particular film possible.A radio panic in 1938 bought a twenty-four-year-old the most permissive contract in Hollywood — including the right to keep the executives out until he was finished. He brought his radio company with him, and the film sounds like it.
- Who Wrote ItExplain the authorship dispute and what the surviving drafts actually show.The first draft was dictated at a desert ranch by a writer with a broken leg and no access to drink. The credit was fought over in January 1941, refought by Pauline Kael in 1971, and largely settled in 1978 by the first person to read all seven drafts.
- The Photography, and What It Actually WasExplain what Toland actually did, and where the film's technical reputation overstates it.Ceilinged sets, a trench in the floor and a cinematographer who wanted a director who did not know what was impossible. But roughly half the film's shots carry optical effects, and a fair amount of the famous depth of field is assembly rather than optics.
- HearstExplain how the suppression campaign worked and what it cost the film.A January screening for the wrong columnist produced an advertising blackout across a newspaper empire, an offer to buy the negative for roughly what it cost and burn it, and a picture that lost money. Hearst never sued. Somebody else did, and won.
- The Greatest Film, Until It Wasn'tExplain how the reputation was built abroad, held for fifty years, and then handed on.Eleventh in 1952, first from 1962 to 2002, second in 2012, third in 2022 — a reputation made in Paris by critics watching a flop. The original negative is gone, and the one apology Welles ever made for the film he made to Marion Davies.
Questions this course answers
Why does the film open with a newsreel that summarises Kane's entire life?
News on the March is a close parody of The March of Time and is narrated by William Alland, who then appears as the reporter. The editors watch it back, judge it dead on the screen, and send Thompson out for an angle. The film hands you the summary first so it can spend two hours demonstrating that the summary is useless.
Kane dies alone in the room. So how does anyone know he said the word?
The film does patch the hole, with its least reliable witness. Raymond tells Thompson he was there, and asks for a thousand dollars. So the investigation that structures the entire picture rests on a servant's unsupported and purchased word — in a film whose subject is that testimony cannot be trusted.
Which clause in Welles's 1939 RKO contract mattered most?
The AFI Catalog records a carte-blanche deal at $150,000 a film plus a percentage of the gross, with the stipulation that nobody could interfere or see the work in progress. Studios controlled directors through the daily rushes; removing that removed the lever. Welles was twenty-four, had never made a film, and never had terms like these again.
What is unusual about the cast of Citizen Kane?
Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, Paul Stewart and William Alland came from Welles's Mercury company on stage and radio, most of them appearing in a feature for the first time. Nobody in the film arrives carrying a screen persona — and Welles himself was known to 1941 audiences chiefly as a voice.
Where was the first draft of the screenplay written?
Herman Mankiewicz was installed at Victorville under John Houseman's supervision, with a nurse for the leg and a secretary, Rita Alexander, and no drink on the premises. He dictated the draft, then titled American. Kane's second wife is named Susan Alexander — the typist's surname went straight into the film.
How did the authorship argument actually get resolved?
Carringer's "The Scripts of Citizen Kane" appeared in Critical Inquiry in 1978, based on a virtually complete set of RKO script records. He gives Mankiewicz the story frame, the characters and much of the dialogue, and Welles what he calls the narrative brilliance — including the newspaper montages and the breakfast sequence, and the reworking of Kane from a Hearst caricature into something stranger.
Grounded in trusted sources
- Citizen Kane (1941), AFI Catalog of Feature Films, American Film Institute — the source for principal photography 29 June to 23 October 1940 and additional work to 4 January 1941, the 1 May 1941 Palace Theatre premiere and 8 May El Capitan opening, the 5 September 1941 general release, the 119-minute running time, the $839,727 production cost against a $723,800 estimate, the carte-blanche RKO contract at $150,000 a picture plus gross with no interference or viewing before completion, the 9 January 1941 Parsons screening and the resulting order to Hearst editors, the 11 and 22 January 1941 credit documents and the 111-days memo — https://catalog.afi.com/Film/27624-Citizen-Kane
- Gregg Toland, "The Motion Picture Cameraman", Theater Arts, September 1941, quoted at Wellesnet — the verbatim source for "the most exciting professional adventure of my career", the two years developing pan-focus, the eighteen inches to two hundred feet claim, and the complete-ceiling statement — https://wellesnet.com/gregg-toland-on-working-with-orson-welles-on-citizen-kane/
- Michael Kerbel, "Film Notes: Citizen Kane", Yale University Library — for Linwood Dunn's estimate that around half of the film's shots involved visual effects, the list of techniques Welles orchestrated rather than invented, Hearst's warning to theatres about future advertising, and the film's 1952 and 1962 poll placings — https://web.library.yale.edu/film/notes/fn00082
- "20 inspired visual moments in Citizen Kane", British Film Institute — for the ceilinged sets, the special trench dug for the film's lowest-angle shot, the matte drawings of the opera audience with holes cut for light, the miniature used in the rising theatre shot, and the whip pans of the breakfast montage — https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/20-inspired-visual-moments-citizen-kane
- "The Greatest Films of All Time… in 1952", Sight and Sound poll archive, British Film Institute — 63 critics voting, Bicycle Thieves first with 25 votes, and Citizen Kane joint eleventh with 9, outside the top ten — https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/polls/greatest-films-all-time/1952
- "Revealed: the results of the 2022 Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll", British Film Institute — Citizen Kane third among critics behind Jeanne Dielman and Vertigo, an electorate of over 1,600 against 846 in 2012, and second place in the directors' poll behind 2001: A Space Odyssey — https://www.bfi.org.uk/news/revealed-results-2022-sight-sound-greatest-films-all-time-poll
- The 14th Academy Awards, 1942, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — the ceremony of 26 February 1942, Citizen Kane's nine nominations and single win for Original Screenplay, and How Green Was My Valley's Best Picture — https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1942
- New York Film Critics Circle awards, 1941 — Citizen Kane named Best Film, with Best Director going to John Ford for How Green Was My Valley, the film that would beat it at the Academy Awards two months later — https://www.nyfcc.com/awards/?awardyear=1941
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