The MoFo Movie Club Discussion: Citizen Kane

I'll get round to this in the next couple of days, I promise.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

This one's worth the wait, I'm sure.

My copy's coming today! Woohoo!

I got a hold of this dvd, so that I could watch it for the first time and join in on this discussion. I know that a lot of you love this movie, but I personally couldn't get into it. The first time that I tried watching it, I got so incredibly bored, that I had to cut it off about 20 mins into it. I felt like I was being forced to watch an old history film back in my school days. I really wasn't even interested in giving it another try, but after a week, I put it back in. I still couldn't get far into it.

So I realize that a lot of people enjoy it, but for my personal taste it just doesn't work. If I have to force myself to watch a movie from beginning to end, then that means I don't like it.

So, you couldn't even find ONE thing to like about it? Not even "Rosebud"? You do realize that that fake newsreel at the beginning is all made just for the film, right? You don't like history? One last thing: you do understand that in all those lists you clicked off there under "Movie Lists" that Citizen Kane is ranked #1 in the very first one, don't you? It's not just "us", afterall, who think it's worth discussing.

Oh well, give it a shot later on is about all I can say.

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When I hear people saying they can't get into Kane, I feel the way you guys must feel when I say the same about The French Connection or something like that. So, I understand it, but can't understand how you can't be captivated by Citizen Kane. The script alone is worthy of a nomination for Best Screenplay Ever.

I didn't say it wasn't worth discussing. I'm just saying that it didn't catch my interest, but that's just me. I understand that different people are interested in different things. I gave the movie a shot, and I didn't like it. I was just sharing my opinion.

Of course, I realize the newsreel at the beginning was fake, but I had to fight to keep my eyes open through it. I do like history, but only if it is a topic that I find interesting.

Just because it is on the top of movie lists doesn't meant that I will like it. I wish that was true, because then it would be really easy to find movies that I enjoy, but that isn't the case. I'm willing to give any movie a chance, but there are a lot of movies on the lists, that I don't like, and a lot that I do.

So of course, I think it is worthy of discussion. I believe all movies are, that is why I'm on these forums. I may give it another shot, but it probably won't be anytime soon.

Nobody should be "forced" to watch a film--not even by himself. Look, I'm one of the millions who think Kane is the greatest film ever. To me there's Kane and then there's everything else ever filmed. Kane is the champ, all the rest are just also rans. But I'm constantly getting flamed in the forum for downing Die Hard and "kung phooey" martial arts and Saving Pvt. Ryan and DiCaprio and Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise and the 3:10 to Yuma remake, plus other things that just roll off my knife. So if you don't like my favorite film, that's hunky-dory with me. Stick to your guns. Maybe someday you might get what others like me see in the film. But if you never do, so what? It's only a movie, not the Second Coming. No law says you have to love every film that comes along. I damn sure don't.

Thank you. That was exactly what I was trying to say.

Man, the world's greatest film draws only 47 comments??? What happened to all you folks who were about to see it for the first time? Did it live up to your expectations? Or did we fans oversell it to you?

That's partially my fault; I didn't get my hands on a copy for awhile, then decided to go ahead and buy it, and saw it last week. I already started Ebert's commentary on the film, as well, but only got about halfway through. I haven't read most of the other posts in this thread; I wanted to put some thoughts down relatively unmodified first.



First thing's first: I loved the deep focus. Something about it makes the film seem so very modern. Many classic films, as good as they are in so many other ways, still feel so utterly telegraphed. I'm particularly turned off by an excessive number of closeups on faces to ensure that we don't miss a crucial reaction shot. It's so much more passive.

Kane gives you options, and forces you to make choices about where to look and when, even though it subtly guides you to the "correct" place. In other words, it feels like something you have to earn, and subsequent viewings can grow and change along with your understanding of the film.

What strikes me most about Citizen Kane isn't so much what it gets right, but what it doesn't get wrong. To be sure, it does a great many things right, but I wouldn't stay the raw story is of the quality one might expect from the Greatest Film Ever Made. It is a good story exalted by the tenacity of its scope and the competence of its execution. In other words, I feel that the technical expertise has wrung out one of the best of all possible adaptations of whatever was on the page.



If the sets ever felt as small or unrealistic as they actually were, or if the makeup ever looked unconvincing, the movie would have an entirely different feel. When your task is to create an epic, fictional human life and cause people to forget that it isn't real, a single seam could spoil all. But none of them show.

Orson Welles really does look like three different versions of himself throughout the film, and he adjusts his voice and mannerisms accordingly. What's more, his more youthful incarnation is every bit as charming as his older incarnation is not. I suspect George Lucas was taking notes; Anakin's story is almost Kane-esque in that we get to see the spoiled end result before we see the young and vigorous version of the man, and half the fun is seeing how the two will eventually converge. The film's non-linear structure allows Kane to be the hero and the villain simultaneously.



I like that Citizen Kane continually resists a single answer or interpretation. Its titular character is a complicated man, and Thompson (the reporter charged with tracking down "Rosebud") comes to realize that, whatever Kane meant by his dying words, it would not explain a life that defied description. For all the focus on the film's final shot, the ones just before it are far more important:

I can't say much more without devolving into superfluous gushing, I suppose. It really is as brilliant as they say.

Now, to read the other contributions here!

I agree the scene you describe is important. And there's a lot of truth in Thompson's summary and if the film had ended with that shot it would be a whole different picture, taking for granted the apparent truth that a man's life can't be summed up in one word.

But the next shot that reveals Rosebud makes it a different story because it ties back to the beginning when Kane was happy the way he was. At that moment he has no ambition of greatness or public service or running a newspaper. As far as he knows, he hasn't even any prospects of going to college or ever wandering far from his current home.

Obviously Rosebud has meaning to Kane--when he picks up the glass figurine it distracts him from his rage and he's still holding it at the moment of his death, and "Rosebud" is the last word he utters. So while it does not fully explain Kane's life, I think that particular ending raises the question--in my mind, anyway--of what might have happened if Kane as a boy had not lost Rosebud, had not had his happy world disrupted. Would his life have been better or worse if his mother had not done what she "thought was right" for him. Did her action for what she thought was best for her son set in motion circumstances that led to his unhappy end? What would have been his future if he had remained in that idyllic environment? How was his future altered by his new environment of private schools and colleges and life in the big city? Did the banker who his mother placed in charge of Kane's upbringing have a better or worse effect on the boy than his real father who the mom wanted to get him away from? If he had remained poor would he have done more or less for society? He was anxious to help and represent the masses when he started his newspaper but was satisfied later to manipulate them--did he do more good or harm in the process?

The revelation of Rosebud seems to me doesn't explain his life so much as open all sorts of questions about how Kane might have been.

Or have I devolved into superfluous gushing?

I am so sorry I read this! That has a way of ruining the whole Rosebud theme, doesn't it?

PW, I've always felt this film left me cold, too. Yet, just last night, we were discussing it at dinner. I was telling Matt, my son, all about the amazing shots, explaining deep focus, and talking about Rosebud and what it meant. So it seems that even if the film leaves one "cold," there is a lot to talk about. I even get why people are "bored" with it.. there's something about it that seems antiseptic. It's like its too "perfect."

This is a great discussion here. I am very surprised to read rufnek's statement about Welles saying it wasn't really based on Hearst. Is that true? I've always thought that. Does Ebert address that?

Far from it - I think you distilled the film down to it's most basic concepts quite elegantly. I was sitting here trying to come up with the right way to word these concepts, but I shan't bother now, as it can't get better than your description. These are the concepts in the film that interested me the most, aside from the brilliant technical achievements.

I do want to watch it again, so I can focus more attention on the character study, now that I know the score in regards to story and production a bit more - I just kept getting distracted by the innovations Welles has packed into this piece form the first frame to the last.

I mean, I picked up on the importance of him being sent off with some stranger right away, and I knew it would play an important part in the story, but I think on subsequent viewings, I will have more time to mull things over.

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I'm really of two minds about the whole Rosebud thing. On one hand, it really doesn't technically explain much, as (I think) we agree. On the other hand, it's clearly meant to be important, as the timing of it, and the swell of music that accompanies it, both tell us.

The fact that it's meant to be important makes me think that well-worn cliches about money not buying happiness and people feeling nostalgic for their childhood is too simple a message to take from it, though perhaps I only feel this way because I was raised post-Kane and these things have become tired memes because of this film's fame. I feel like it has to be subtler if it's going to be the final element in such a thoughtful film.

The closest I can come to an explanation or interpretation that feels satisfying is to think that the word itself is not the significant part; what's significant is that nobody knows what it means. Kane is supposed to be one of the most most famous men who has ever lived; his entire life was spent under a microscope, and yet somehow nobody knows what "Rosebud" means. That says far more than the word itself.

Either way, it fits the metaphor nicely; the world at large will never find out what "Rosebud" was because it was literally buried in a sea of expensive collector's items, just as Kane's own pain and regret were buried under his decadence. His used these things to avoid opening up to anyone or confronting any of these issues psychologically, but they also physically stopped the same sort of thing after he died. It's a really lovely bit of symmetry.

"It's a really lovely bit of symmetry" just about says it all.

Most of the really great films--Kane and Elmer Gantry just to name two we've recently discussed--invite audience participation. We bring our own experiences, our own beliefs, our own interpretations, and try somehow to work them into the story in a satisfying manner, with the result that we sometimes come away with different takes on the same scenes we both saw.

Kane never says, "Gee, I had such a great childhood." He never says he misses his mom or dad--never really mentions them once he goes away. The cold deliberate banker becomes his family, and for awhile Kane seems like the black sheep, never respecting or pleasing the stiff-necked banker, always treating him as something like a joke. Yet at the end, Kane and the banker become another piece of symmetry. The banker loves money too much; Kane if anything loves money too little likely because he has so much of it and no need to "invest wisely" as the banker would do. Yet in the end, they are both joyless and loveless bitter old men.

I also like the ironic symmetry of the concept of the mom, in trying to "save" her son and give him the best of her good fortune, sets in motion the very things that lead to his ruin. Like they say about good intentions paving the way to hell.

I thnk one thing that makes the final Rosebud scene so meaningful to me is having raised three children. Now that they're grown, we sometimes talk about how it was when they were growing up and I'm often surprised to learn that some of the things that they remember best and treasure most are not always the big events I remember, but sometimes something simple and small but still a precious memory to them. Rosebud reminds me of that.

I believe that Rosebud's use is two-fold. It's obviously meant to humanize Kane at the end of the film. At the beginning, we have no idea what Rosebud could be although we are given the clue of the snow globe falling out of Kane's hands when he says it. The beginning uses Rosebud as the entire basis of what turns out to be the "plot" of the movie. How are we going to go about trying to find out the soul of this dead man who the world knows a lot of but cannot really understand what makes him tick. Therefore, Rosebud is the clothesline from which the various witnesses are strung in an attempt to crack the nut of Citizen Kane. The fact that no one surviving or studied is able to illuminate Rosebud's meaning is significant but actually fades well into the background for a while until the film reaches its conclusion. It's only in the film's final moments, after we've seen Kane at his most-selfish-and-despotic, that Rosebud returns as something important to show that the man may truly have been just a child at heart. Rosebud certainly relates to Kane's innocence and is also somewhat explainable as the reason why he initially runs his newspaper as if he were a kid in a candy store. Kane did start out as someone who just seemed to have fun with all the things he inherited but eventually he thought of them and all his friends and employees more as possessions rather than toys or things for him to entertain himself, his cohorts and hopefully the world.

You see, I don't believe that Kane ever lost "Rosebud". After all, it was at Xanadu and he could have found it if he truly desired that. What he lost was the meaning of Rosebud and he only recalled it on his deathbed. It's as if Kane's life flashed before his eyes (sort of like the newsreel which immediately comes on directly after his death) and the thing which made him happiest of all was Rosebud. At the end of the movie we see that Kane and Rosebud are both going to the same place -- to ashes. It's tragic, yes, but what it really means is that Kane is just another man. No matter how rich and influential you are during life, you can't take it with you and you'll never really separate yourself from the simplest, humblest soul on Earth, except that perhaps that person may live a life filled with his/her Rosebud and not need to try to find a substitute by collecting objects and people. It may not be profound but it still turns the movie and the man into a tragic figure. Think about it. If we never learned what Rosebud was, most people wouldn't think as highly of the film. At least that's my opinion.

I don't think I've ever heard or read a description of Kane as "a child at heart," but it makes sense. He's a spoiled child, an over-indulged child in his early adulthood, dancing with chorus girls, using his newspaper to push the country into war, indulging himself with any desire of the moment, which is what leads to the binge-buying on his European trip, his plunge into a race for political office, And like a stubborn child, he refuses to take the out his political opponent offers him--withdraw from the race and he'll bury the scandal with the girlfriend. Kane refuses and is subjected to both scandal and his first major defeat. Still, he owns the most toys and if anyone wants to play, they must play by his rules, so his wife must humilate herself as an opera singer and visitors at Xanadu end up on those surreal safari "picnics" and such. That's an interesting concept, Mark.

I agree, too, he lost the meaning of Rosebud, may not have realized himself what it meant to him until at the end of his life when he's driven away his wife and friends and has only the things and people his money can buy. It's not the Rosebud object itself, of course, but the joy and innocence it represents. And the realization comes as suddenly to the audience with that final scene as it must have come to Kane himself at the end of his life.

I think that fact that he collects statues plays into the concepts you gents are elaborating on, as well, and the line "Who would pay x amount of dollars for a dame without a head" is also quite significant. Kane only understood the shell of people, the superficial, because his entire life was based on such concepts. For a man that had everything, I doubt he owned anything "real" his entire life.

When the "singer' first crooned for him - he was touched, but he didn't what had happened, so he tried to capture the feeling in the only warped way he could, destroying his marriage and the people involved (including himself) in the process.

Boss alert - back later

I'd argue that. He did own at least one real thing in his life Rosebud, of course. If you never learnt what rosebud is, it would impact the film. You wouldn't think of him as a "child at heart" or for that matter a human being. He would never have had anything to become recoginazable as something not far from you and me. We all have are Rosebuds it's what makes Kane human at the end of it all.

I've always like this film from a more technical achievement point of view.

At 48 years old.Im ashamed to say I JUST saw this movie this year for the first time,and OMG I'm so glad I watched it.Since viewing this movie,I've got on a kick of watching older movies.Heres a list of just a few movies I had the privilege of watching for the first time this year in my deprived movie life .... From here to Eternity,In the Heat of the Night,Gaslight,Reds,and Bugsy.After Bugsy,I have got to say Warren Beatty made a huge jump in my favorite actors list.A MUST SEE to appreciate him!!