Somerset Maugham once famously said, “There are three rules for the writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.” Same is true of making movies. What makes a great movie? No one knows. But generally we can recognise one when we see one. This question is especially relevant since the recent release of Mank on Netflix, a film by David Fincher on the life of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz who co-wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane. Many of those who watched Mank had not seen Citizen Kane, present company included.
When you watch what has been called ‘the greatest movie ever made’, you are doing it under pressure. Let us say you don’t know anything about Orson Welles and you watch the movie with no biases. What do you think? First, it is a very well made movie. Second, as one review said, it appears fresh even though it was made in 1941. So you would give it a pretty high rating.
Then you read about Orson Welles. You read that this was his first film and he was only 26 when he co-wrote, acted and directed in it. He had no prior filmmaking experience. He introduced a whole lot of new actors that he brought from stage – Mercury Theatre – where he used to work previously. And then you realise – my god, this is a work of a genius.
Barring cameo roles like Alfred Hitchcock, a director never appears on screen. You see him indirectly – through screenplay, dialogues, camera movement and so on. Here, Welles appears on screen as well as off screen. On screen, he is brilliant, playing various stages in the life of Charles Foster Kane, from a young businessman to a middle aged, pompous newspaper owner to an old, senile man who refuses to accept reality.
A director shows himself through camera movements. Many times, you see the camera movements being performed without any coherent thought behind them. Is it a dialogue? Go back and forth over the shoulders. It takes a director of the stature of Yasujirō Ozu to break the monotony. Welles has no compunctions is doing whatever it takes. He goes wide angle, he keeps the camera still if need be, he uses trolly when he feels like it, he even scales the walls. You cannot predict what he will do in the next shot. There is no particular style that you can attribute to him. Every movement he makes, he makes it with such conviction that you feel it. Unlike many of today’s movies where the camera goes through any of the 64,800 angles just because, you know, we have CGI.
Orson Welles broke rules even before they had been formed.
In the beginning, there is a long dialogue in the newspaper office. Welles shot it with most of the faces in darkness. The tradition of fully lighting faces continued unchecked long after Citizen Kane, with notable exceptions like All The Presidents Men or Unforgiven in between.
The perfectly good samaritan hero was made popular by many who came later. Orson Welles showed his hero with all his flaws and a personality so complex that even a stalwart like Martin Scorsese says about Charles Foster Kane, “you can’t get to know him.” That’s why he appears fresh. His characters touches shades of noir or whatever it is that is in vogue today.
Then there is the story itself. What is ‘rosebud’? It has evoked extreme reactions. While many called it a thrilling mystery, Pauline Kael wrote a scathing review calling it “superficial.” I think the fact that ‘rosebud’ turns out to be a seemingly trivial things adds to the complex personality of Charles Foster Kane. That a man who was a business tycoon, a millionaire who created and destroyed lives should, in the end, yearn for a childhood memory.
I come back to camera movements and cinematography. Usually, you equate old movies to blurred images, continuity mishaps and the camera unsure of its own position, like an uninvited guest to a party. The images of Citizen Kane are scathingly clear. One is reminded of the same quality is Akira Kurosawa’s movies in the sixties, especially Yojimbo.
The movie starts with the enigmatic verse from the incomplete poem Kubla Khan, by the British poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, that he famously wrote under the influence of opium,
Or, a vision in a dream.
A Fragment.In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:Where Alph,
the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.The mansion of Charles Foster Kane is called Xanadu. It’s a poem describing a man who is in search of his lost creativity, among other things. It is in this Xanadu, that Charles Foster Kane, on his deathbed, with a snow globe in his had, utters his last famous words, “rosebud.”
It is a mark of a great work that it presents itself differently to different people. What is Citizen Kane about? There is no single answer. It is a satire on the state of media in 1941 that is still relevant today. It is a tragedy of a man running after wealth and power, refusing to admit defeat even when he has lost his empire. It is a simple. thrilling mystery of what is ‘rosebud’. It is a masterclass in filmmaking that inspired countless directors around the world to start their own journey.
Citizen Kane is a work of a genius.
