Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles's 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 in part upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and Welles's own life.^[3] 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,^[4] which has led Roger Ebert to quip: "So it's settled: Citizen Kane is the official greatest film of all time."^[5] 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.^[6]

Plot

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 catalogued, 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.

Cast and characters

Major characters

• Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane: the titular "Citizen Kane"; a wealthy, megalomaniacal newspaper publisher whose life is the subject of the movie.
• William Alland as Jerry Thompson: the reporter in charge of finding out the meaning of Kane's last word, "Rosebud". Thompson is seen only in shadow or with his back turned to the camera.
• Ray Collins as Jim W. Gettys: Kane's political rival and the incumbent governor of New York. Kane appears to be the frontrunner in the campaign, but Gettys exposes Kane's relationship with Susan Alexander which leads to his defeat.
• Dorothy Comingore as Susan Alexander Kane: Kane's mistress, who later becomes his second wife.
• Joseph Cotten as Jedediah Leland: Kane's best friend and the first reporter on Kane's paper. Leland continues to work for Kane as his empire grows, although they grow apart over the years. Kane fires Leland after he writes a bad review of Susan Alexander Kane's operatic debut.
• George Coulouris as Walter Parks Thatcher: a miserly banker who becomes Kane's legal guardian.
• Agnes Moorehead as Mary Kane: Kane's mother.
• Harry Shannon as Jim Kane: Kane's father.
• Everett Sloane as Mr. Bernstein: Kane's friend and employee who remains loyal to him to the end. According to RKO records, Sloane was paid $2400 for shaving his head.^[2]
• Ruth Warrick as Emily Monroe Norton Kane: Kane's first wife and the niece of the President. She leaves him after discovering his affair with Susan Alexander. She dies in a car accident along with their only child, a son, a few years later.
• Paul Stewart as Raymond: Kane's cynical butler who assists him in his later years. Stewart had discovered Welles when he was a radio producer.^[7]

Minor characters

• Georgia Backus as Bertha Anderson.
• Fortunio Bonanova as Signor Matiste.
• Sonny Bupp as Charles Foster Kane III: Kane's son who later dies in a car accident with his mother (though only the voiceover narration acknowledges this). Bupp was the last surviving principal cast member of Citizen Kane when he died in 2007 (bit player Louise Currie was still alive as of January 2011).^[8]
• Buddy Swan as Young Charles Foster Kane.
• Erskine Sanford as Herbert Carter.
• Gus Schilling as The Headwaiter.
• Philip Van Zandt as Mr. Rawlston.

The film's end credits read "Most of the principal actors are new to motion pictures. The Mercury Theatre is proud to introduce them."^[2] 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.^[9] 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.^[9] This caused friction between Welles and Houseman, and their partnership ended.^[9]

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.

Production

Development

Orson Welles's notoriety following The War of the Worlds broadcast earned him Hollywood's interest, and RKO studio head George J. Schaefer's unusual contract.^[10] Welles made a deal with Schaefer on July 21, 1939 to produce, direct, write, and act in two feature films.^[11] 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.^[11] 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."^[12] First, Welles tried to adapt Heart of Darkness, but there was concern over the idea of depicting 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.^[13]

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's film. The writer had only received two screenplay credits between 1935 and his work on Citizen Kane and needed the job.^[14] 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"^[15]) and Welles's former business partner John Houseman claim that it was Mankiewicz's idea.^[16] 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.^[17]

Mankiewicz had already written an unperformed play about John Dillinger entitled The Tree Will Grow. 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.^[17] Mankiewicz had frequented Hearst's parties until his alcoholism got him barred. The writer resented this and became obsessed with Hearst and Marion Davies.^[17] 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.^[16] 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.^[13]

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,^[18] San Diego Zoo and Oheka Castle in Huntington, New York representing Kane's Xanadu estate.^[19] 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's 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.^[2]

Pre-release controversy

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.^[20] Publicity materials stated the film's inspiration was Faust.^[13] 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.^[20] The next day, the front page headline in Daily Variety read, "HEARST BANS RKO FROM PAPERS."^[21] In two weeks, the ban was lifted for everything except Kane.^[20]

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.^[20] 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.^[22] 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.^[23] 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.^[24] 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.^[25]

Screenplay

Development

Mankiewicz as co-writer

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.^[26]:16

However, according to film author Harlan Lebo, he was also "one of Hollywood's most notorious personalities."^[27]:12 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."^[27]:12 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."^[27]:12 Despite those apparent contradictions in his personality, Welles "recognized the writer's abilities and trusted him to produce", wrote Lebo.^[27]

Speaking with Peter Bogdanovich in February 1969, Orson Welles said, "Nobody was more miserable, more bitter, and funnier than Mank … a perfect monument of self-destruction. But, you know, when the bitterness wasn't focused straight at you, he was the best company in the world." When Bogdanovich asked how important Mankiewicz was to the Citizen Kane script, Welles responded, "Mankiewicz's contribution? It was enormous."^[28]

Ideas and collaboration

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."^[29]:43 Orson Welles said that his preparation before making Citizen Kane was to watch John Ford's Stagecoach forty times.^[30]

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."^[27]:14

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 had ideas that meshed with that concept, as he described in a 1969 interview in the book, This is Orson Welles:

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 points of view. Basically, the idea Rashomon used later on. Mank liked it, so we started searching for the man it was going to be about. Some big American figure — couldn't be a politician, because you'd have to pinpoint him. Howard Hughes was the first idea. But we got pretty quickly to the press lords.^[31]

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."^[27]

Hearst as story model

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.'"^[32]:269

In Hollywood, Mankiewicz had frequented Hearst's parties until his alcoholism got him barred.^[17] 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."^[33]:221 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."^[27]:32

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.^[17]

Debate over authorship

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."^[34]:270 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.'"^[35]

Controversy over the authorship of the Citizen Kane screenplay was revived in 1971 by film critic Pauline Kael, whose essay, "Raising Kane," was printed in two installments in The New Yorker (February 20 and 27, 1971). According to Kael, Rita Alexander, 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."^[32]:273 However Welles had his own secretary, Katherine Trosper, who typed up Welles's suggestions and corrections, which were incorporated into the final script; Kael did not interview Trosper before producing her article.^[36]

Nevertheless, Kael maintained that Mankiewicz went to the 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."^[35] 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."^[32]:274 Charles Lederer, a screenwriter and a source for Kael's article, insisted that the credit never came to the Screen Writers Guild for arbitration.^[37]

Kael argued 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 Peter Bogdanovich, a close friend of Welles who rebutted Kael's claims in an October 1972 article for Esquire titled "The Kane Mutiny." Other rebuttals included interviews with George Coulouris and Bernard Herrmann that appeared in Sight & Sound (Spring 1972), articles by Joseph McBride (Film Heritage, Fall 1971) and Jonathan Rosenbaum (Film Comment, Spring 1972 and Summer 1972), and remarks in Welles biographies by Barbara Leaming and Frank Brady. Rosenbaum also reviews the controversy in his editor's notes to This is Orson Welles (1992).^[38]

Robert L. Carringer likewise rebutted Kael's conclusions in an article titled "The Scripts of Citizen Kane" for the Winter 1978 edition of Critical Enquiry. Carringer refers to early script drafts with Welles's incorporated handwritten contributions, and 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's 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.

Carringer notes that Mankiewicz' principal contribution was on the first two drafts of the screenplay, which he characterizes as being 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."(ibid)

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."^[39] Carringer considered that at least three scenes were solely Welles's 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."^[26]:17 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."^[27]:32

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." (ibid, '"The Scripts of Citizen Kane")

For his part, Welles stated the process of collaborating with Mankiewicz on the Citizen Kane screenplay in a letter to The Times (London), November 17, 1971:

The initial ideas for this film and its basic structure were the result of direct collaboration between us; after this we separated and there were two screenplays: one written by Mr. Mankiewicz, in Victorville, and the other, in Beverly Hills, by myself. … The final version of the screenplay … was drawn from both sources.^[40]

In his 1982 chronicle of the studio, The RKO Story, scholar Richard B. Jewell concluded the following:

Besides producing, directing and playing the role of Kane, Welles deserved his co-authorship credit (with Herman J. Mankiewicz) on the screenplay. Film critic Pauline Kael argues otherwise in a 50,000 word essay on the subject, but her case against Welles is one-sided and unsupported by the facts.^[41]

Sources

Charles Foster Kane

Orson Welles never confirmed a principal source for the character of Charles Foster Kane. It is believed that Kane is a synthesis of different personalities, although the main inspiration was the life of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst.^[43] The film is commonly regarded 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."^[33]:222

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.^[44]

Kane's profligate collection of possessions was directly taken from Hearst. "And it's very curious — a man who spends his entire life paying cash for objects he never looked at," Welles said. "He just acquired things, most of which were never opened, remained in boxes. It's really a quite accurate picture of Hearst to that extent."^[45]

Welles himself insisted that there were marked differences between his fictional creation and Hearst. He acknowledged that aspects of Kane were drawn from the lives of two business tycoons familiar from Welles's youth in Chicago — Harold Fowler McCormick and Samuel Insull.^[46] Like Kane, McCormick divorced his aristocratic first wife, Edith Rockefeller, and lavishly promoted the opera career of his only modestly talented second wife, Ganna Walska.^[47]

Insull built the Chicago Civic Opera House and was married to a Broadway ingenue nearly 20 years his junior. Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz had the experience of reviewing a performance by Gladys Wallis Insull; in 1925, she appeared in a charity revival of The School for Scandal in New York. Jed Leland's review of Susan Alexander's debut in Citizen Kane echoes that of Mankiewicz, which began as follows: "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."^[48]

There are also autobiographical elements to the film. 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. Although Dr. Bernstein was nothing like the character in the film, Welles said, the use of the name "Bernstein" was a family joke. "I used to call people 'Bernstein' on the radio, all the time, too — just to make him laugh. … Mank did all the best writing for Bernstein. I'd call that the most valuable thing he gave us."^[49]

Jedediah Leland

In Hollywood in 1940, Orson Welles invited longtime friend and Mercury Theatre colleague Joseph Cotten to be part of a small group reading the script aloud for the first time. They got together around the pool at the Beverly Hills home of Herman Mankiewicz, Cotten wrote:

"I think I'll just listen," Welles said. "The title of this movie is Citizen Kane, and I play guess who." He turned to me. "Why don't you think of yourself as Jedediah Leland? His name, by the way, is a combination of Jed Harris and your agent, Leland Hayward." "There all resemblance ceases," Herman reassured me. These afternoon garden readings continued, and as the Mercury actors began arriving, the story started to breathe.^[50]

"I regard Leland with enormous affection," Orson Welles said to filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich.^[51] He told Bogdanovich that the character of Jed Leland was based on drama critic Ashton Stevens, George Stevens's uncle and a close boyhood friend of Welles:

What I knew about Hearst came more from him than from my father — though my father did know him well … But Ashton had taught Hearst to play the banjo, which is how he first got to be a drama critic, and, you know, Ashton was really one of the great ones. The last of the dandies — he worked for Hearst for some 50 years or so, and adored him. A gentleman … very much like Jed.^[52]

Regarded as the dean of American drama critics, Ashton Stevens (1872–1951) began his journalism career in 1894 in San Francisco and started working for the Hearst newspapers three years later. In 1910 he moved to Chicago where he covered the theatre for 40 years and became a close friend of Orson Welles's guardian, Dr. Maurice Bernstein.^[53]

Susan Alexander

The common assumption that the character of Susan Alexander was based on Marion Davies was a major reason William Randolph Hearst tried to destroy Citizen Kane.^[55] In his forward to Davies' autobiography, published posthumously in 1975, Orson Welles draws a sharp distinction between the real-life actress and his fictional creation:

That Susan was Kane's wife and Marion was Hearst's mistress is a difference more important than might be guessed in today's changed climate of opinion. The wife was a puppet and a prisoner; the mistress was never less than a princess. Hearst built more than one castle, and Marion was the hostess in all of them: they were pleasure domes indeed, and the Beautiful People of the day fought for invitations. Xanadu was a lonely fortress, and Susan was quite right to escape from it. The mistress was never one of Hearst's possessions: he was always her suitor, and she was the precious treasure of his heart for more than 30 years, until his last breath of life. Theirs is truly a love story. Love is not the subject of Citizen Kane.^[56]

Welles cited Samuel Insull's building of the Chicago Opera House, and business tycoon Harold Fowler McCormick's lavish promotion of the opera career of his second wife, as direct influences on the screenplay.^[57] McCormick divorced Edith Rockefeller and married aspiring opera singer Ganna Walska as her fourth husband. He 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. Contemporaries said Walska had a terrible voice; New York Times headlines of the day read, "Ganna Walska Fails as Butterfly: Voice Deserts Her Again When She Essays Role of Puccini's Heroine" (January 29, 1925), and "Mme. Walska Clings to Ambition to Sing" (July 14, 1927).

"According to her 1943 memoirs, Always Room at the Top, Walska had tried every sort of fashionable mumbo jumbo to conquer her nerves and salvage her voice," reported The New York Times in 1996. "Nothing worked. During a performance of Giordano's Fedora in Havana she veered so persistently off key that the audience pelted her with rotten vegetables. It was an event that Orson Welles remembered when he began concocting the character of the newspaper publisher's second wife for Citizen Kane.^[58]

The film's composer, Bernard Herrmann, also suggested that Kane is based on McCormick but also in great part on Welles himself.^[59]

Charles Lederer, Marion Davies's nephew, read a draft of the script before filming began on Citizen Kane. "The script I read didn't have any flavor of Marion and Hearst," Lederer said. "Robert McCormick was the man it was about."^[60] (Lederer confuses Walska's husband Harold F. McCormick with another member of the powerful Chicago family, one who also may also have inspired Welles — crusading publisher Robert R. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune.) Although there were things based on Marion Davies — jigsaw puzzles and drinking — Lederer noted that they were exaggerated in the film to help define the characterization of Susan Alexander.^[61]

"As for Marion," Orson Welles said, "she was an extraordinary woman — nothing like the character Dorothy Comingore played in the movie."^[62]

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 also believed to have provided inspiration for the Susan Alexander character.^{[citation needed]}

Jim Gettys

The character of political boss Jim Gettys is based on Charles F. Murphy,^[63] 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.^[63] A caption, referring to the restaurant Murphy frequented, said: "Look out, Murphy. It's a short lock-step from Delmonico's to Sing Sing."

Rosebud

According to Welles author David Thomson, "Rosebud is the greatest secret in cinema..."^[39]:801[64] Three "Rosebud" sleds were used in the production, of which only one was not burned.

In This is Orson Welles, Welles credits the "Rosebud" device — the journalist's search for the enigmatic meaning of Kane's last word, the device that frames the film — to screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. "Rosebud remained, because it was the only way we could find to get off, as they used to say in vaudeville," Welles said. "It manages to work, but I'm still not too keen about it, and I don't think that he was, either." The dialogue eventually reflects the screenwriters's desire to diminish the importance of the word's meaning; "We did everything we could to take the mickey out of it," Welles said.^[65]

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.^[66] 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,^[67][68] 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, "Some people have fallen in love with the story 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."^[69][70]

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"^[71]

Filmmaking innovations

Cinematography

Film scholars and historians view Citizen Kane as Welles's 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."^[72][73]

The most innovative technical aspect of Citizen Kane is the extended use of deep focus.^[74] 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.^[75] 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's 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.^[76]

Toland had approached Welles in 1940 to work on Citizen Kane. Welles's 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".^[2] Welles credited Toland on the same card as himself. "It's impossible to say how much I owe to Gregg. He was superb," Welles said.^[77]

Storytelling techniques

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.^[78] 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.^[78] Each narrator recounts a different part of Kane's life, with each story partly overlapping.^[79] 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.^[78] 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.^[79]

One of the narrative voices is the News on the March segment.^[78] Its stilted dialogue and portentous voiceover is a parody of The March of Time newsreel series^[80] 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.^[81]

Special effects

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.^[82]

Makeup

The make-up artist Maurice Seiderman created the make-up for the film.^[10] 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.^[10] 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.^[10]

Soundtrack

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 screaming in the background, conveying Susan's horror at being struck. 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.^[83]

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.

Music

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.^[84] 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.^[85] The film was Herrmann's first motion picture score^[84] 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.^[84<