Citizen Kane (1941)
You never should have married a newspaper man... they're worse than sailors!
THE SUMMARY: A newspaper tycoon statue-hoarding failed politician dies, uttering a mysterious last word, before we see every numbingly mundane piece of his life leading up to that point but it turns out his death is in fact the movie’s greatest excitement. Citizen Kane is the IPA of cinema. Nobody actually likes this - people just claim to so they can appear ‘sophisticated’ or ‘cultured.’ This is a garbage movie with a garbage story about garbage characters, and it’s completely boring throughout.
FROM MOVIE-PICKER TONY: After the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters try to uncover the meaning of his final utterance. As a young art student in the 1980s, this was the film that made me understand what art direction was.
THE BEST:
A compelling visual style: I can appreciate the movie’s visual style - dark shadows and bright highlights make great contrast, achieved through dramatic lighting and presented in black and white in a way that enhances the intended drama of the movie. The trouble is, there’s no drama to enhance. You can put lipstick on a pig, or cast dramatic light on a pig, but it’s still a pig. There’s even a famous pig named Orson, after all. Coincidence? Yes - absolutely. Or maybe the pig was actually named after him, who knows?
Great slapping form: Sean Connery would be proud - flawless execution. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the scene online to post here in the review, but it was the movie’s most memorable moment to me, outside of the meme clapping.
‘If I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man’: This was the only point in the movie I found remotely philosophically interesting. Sitting down with his business manager, an older Kane says ‘you know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.’ There’s a question implied that we’ve sometimes discussed with the audience - can you be a good and wealthy person, as in, are morality and money inherently opposed? Generally speaking, I don’t think they are - there’s morality in how you acquire and build your wealth, but not in the wealth itself. If you build wealth by providing a good or service people want to consume voluntarily, you haven’t committed any wrongdoing. In fact, you’ve contributed great value. And of course the ultimate moral good, building family and raising the next generation, depends on the resources to do it, so any good man should be seeking to maximize those resources.
However, is there something inherent to large-scale wealth that makes a person lose that moral focus? That is to say, if money is only ‘good’ insofar as it serves higher ‘goods,’ do large sums of money make people forget that proper order? On principle, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with being a billionaire. But in practice, it’s very hard for me to make a list of billionaires who are clearly committed to proper morality.
Despite being a rich guy scumbag, I guess Kane is pretty keen on rich guy scumbags, and that’s as much credit as I can give him.
Yes, I’m sure it was influential: Whenever I hear praise for this movie, it’s most commonly about how or what it pioneered or influenced, rather than what it does on its own. Fair enough. I’m sure it was first to do it ‘this way’ or in ‘that style.’ But I’m not grading it based on movies made later. I’m grading it based on this movie alone.
If I hadn’t been very rich…
THE WORST:
Terrible, uninteresting story that doesn’t even solve its own mystery: Oh my God, who the hell cares? The movie’s entire premise is the mystery of Kane’s last word, ‘Rosebud.’ But why do I care what this guy’s last word was, anyway? What difference does it make? Presumably, based on ‘Rosebud’ being revealed as the text on his childhood sled, the word has some significance to the past before Kane’s life was consumed by wealth and power. Perhaps it symbolizes a simpler time, or a childhood stolen, or something like that, but is that supposed to make me feel better about what an asshole he was later in life? Oh, boo hoo - how tough it must be to inherit a life of riches. How relatable it is to get handed sacks of cash and still be a piece of shit - oh wait.
Worse still though, the movie doesn’t even bother to explain ‘Rosebud’s’ significance in detail. Kane presents a mystery, fails to solve that mystery, and relies on you to create your own story to explain a detail that doesn’t even matter that much anyway. Here, have some deep thought to explain the composition of this pile of crap. No thanks. I’ll just leave it there to stink on its own.
And it turns out it is about a pile of crap, actually. Fat Bastard solved the mystery decades later.
Terrible, uninteresting characters: It’s not just Kane, who’s a philandering, lying, manipulative power maniac with a rage problem. His parents sucked - they gave up their kid. Bernstein, Kane’s manager sucked - he enabled all of Kane’s dishonesty. Kane’s first wife may have been decent, but couldn’t hang on to him. Kane’s second wife is an intentionally terrible opera singer alcoholic. Who exactly is the ‘good guy’ here? Almost everyone is completely hateable, which can be entertaining sometimes, but worst of all, these characters are hateably boring. They’re all saltine-cracker dry. The villainous acts aren’t done with heads on spikes. They’re done with bookkeeping and journalism. Statue collecting is a major plot and character point, for Christ’s sake. The movie would have been far better acted by the actual statues.
What the f**k is this cockatoo: I’m sure the Kane-lickers will say tHiS PiOnEErEd tHe JuMP ScARe or some such bullshit - no. This is a preposterously out of place nonsense transition that cheapens the movie to absurdity, and yes - it was put in place precisely for the reasons just described: because this movie sucks ass and is a bore-fest. Later in life, Orson Welles was asked about this bizarre presentation. He said it was ‘to wake the audience up.’ In case you think he means anything other than ‘the audience might be sleeping,’ in separate commentary, Welles confirmed the cockatoo is to ‘wake up any audience members who might be dozing off.’
That’s not me saying this movie sucks. That’s the director and producer saying it sucks. If people are falling asleep, and he’s planning on them falling asleep, that’s on Orson for making a sedative, not a movie.
wat
THE RATING: 1/5 Wickies. A genuinely torturous experience. It was so pointless and boring I was actually angrier than Kane smashing his riches watching it, and then a rogue parrot screamed in my face. Fool me once, Orson Welles, shame on you. But as a wise man once said, if you fool me, I can’t get fooled again.
YOUR RATING: Vote here ⬇
NEXT WEEK: Downfall (2004)
AFTER THAT? YOU PICK - VOTE! June’s nominations are from listener Dracullama.
Want to be the movie nominator for the month? Here’s how - fill out the form below. Note: once you are entered, you are eligible for selection on an ongoing basis. One entry per participant - multiple entries will be rejected.