In Memoriam: Citizen Kane

[selenak]

Today my Special Edition DVD of Citizen Kane arrived, prompting my inner Orson Welles fangirl to squee. Incidentally, Kane isn't even my favourite Welles movie; depending on my mood, I favour Othello, Chimes at Midnight or Touch of Evil. But there's something breathtaking in seeing those familiar images of Citizen Kane in the immaculate, pristine DVD quality, and to hear those familiar voices so clearly. Welles' voice in particular. As Simon Callow has said, it was "quite simply a gift from God, a natural instrument equivalent, in speech, to the singing voice of a Gigli or a Chaliapin". (He goes on to say that Welles' voice "flattered and stimulated", with "the smile being positively audible, as is the arched eyebrow". Callow's biography of O.W. is somewhat controversial among Wellesians, but for my money, it's the most compelling simply because Callow manages to bring Welles' theatre productions alive in the way only another actor can, not to mention Orson himself - as he sees him, certainly, but it's an immensely fascinating character he describes.)

So far, I've watched the audio commentary by Ken Barnes. Who manages to maintain a delicate balance in the "who wrote what in Citizen Kane" debate, otherwise repeats familiar anecdotes and gives some details on how particular scenes were shot and composed that were new to me. As audio commentaries by film historians go, it was a good but not great one. But then again, maybe that's an advantage, because it allows the viewer to devote just a tad more attention to the picture than to the commentary, and no matter how often I've watched Kane, there is still something left to discover. This time, for example, I realized that during the conversation between Leland and Bernstein at the party early on, Kane remains clearly mirrored in the window behind them the entire time. There is something simultaneously endearing and exasperating in the "Look! Look what I can do! Look how brilliant I am!" dazzle of Citizen Kane. (Something which I imagine a great many people felt in Welles' presence, too.) But as the years go by, I'm more struck by the mixture of affection and cruelty the movie displays for its characters, which is something Welles would go on to do in future endeavours. Susan, Kane's second wife, might be silly and not too bright, but as the cruelty of what he does to her, forcing her on the stage to endure humiliation after humiliation in the guise of celebration, starts to sink in, it's hard not to feel for her, and when she finally leaves him, one cheers. "Oh yes, I can." At the same time, Susan does not end up a liberated woman, or even one at peace; when we meet her, she's unhappy, forced to cash in on the Kane name and the career she didn't want to support herself, with a tendency to drink too much (which is a parallel to Kane's old friend Leland). And yet Susan is not dismissed as hopeless. "Look," she says in her final scene, the sun shining on her face, "look, what d'ya know, it's morning!"
Leland, on the other hand, who of all the characters has the most insight without ever seeing it all, is stuck in the perpetual twilight of his old age when we meet and leave him. As opposed to Bernstein, who loves Kane uncritically but never presumes to understand him, and Susan, who doesn't love him but starts out liking Kane, comes to hate him through their marriage and ultimately to pity him, Leland loves him and never manages to forgive him. Male friendships and mutual betrayal is a favourite Welles theme; those friendships almost always can be called love, cut much deeper than the male/female relationships in his pictures (though Welles, as opposed to many other directors concentrating on male friendships, is capable of presenting interesting women in the same opus), and the betrayal is inevitable sooner or later. The relationship between Charles Foster Kane and Jed Leland is the first variation of this theme, and of course the rapport between Welles and Joseph Cotton, friends in real life, helps to make it so memorable - as it does in the film Welles did not direct but ironically became most famous for due to what is not much more than a cameo, The Third Man - another tale of male friendship and mutual betrayal, among other things).
"You want to persuade people you love them so much that they ought to love you back. But you want love on your own terms."
"A toast, then, Jedediah, to love on my own terms. Which are the only terms anybody ever knows. His own."

Comments

[lynnb.livejournal.com]

I haven't watched the film in a long time, and now you've given me incentive to watch it again :) What always impressed me is that Welles didn't sugarcoat anyone in the fim; even the best characters aren't perfect, which makes it all the more fascinating.

I remember seeing the original movie trailer - how clever of Welles to keep appear to be spotlighting his cast, while being the narrator, thereby making himself more conspicuous :)

That trailer...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

..is Welles being a tease and a shameless flirt with the audience, isn't it? Also the only trailer I can think of which solely (with one brief exception) consists of scenes NOT shown in the actual movie.

And ditto to the not-sugarcoating-anyone. I mean, Kane's ambiguity is a given, but he could have made Emily or Leland into saints, for example. Which they aren't.

I love that trailer...

[lynnb.livejournal.com]

He was also introducing moviegoers to his Mercury Theater members, and he did a great job of it. Most of them were making their film debuts, weren't they? I don't remember seeing Joseph Cotten in anything before that, or Agnes Moorhead. That was their springboard. As for Ray Collins, I can only picture him as Lt. Tragg from Perry Mason, LOL.

And ditto to the not-sugarcoating-anyone. I mean, Kane's ambiguity is a given, but he could have made Emily or Leland into saints, for example. Which they aren't.

Oh, I agree. So much more interesting to watch a movie about human beings than saints any time.

Re: I love that trailer...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Yes, for most of them it was their film debut. Would you believe I never saw Perry Mason (know about it, of course)? So Ray Collins is stuck with his Wellesian connection as far as I'm concerned. (I've got many of the Mercury radio productions on tape or CD.)

Re: I love that trailer...

[lynnb.livejournal.com]

Wow, I didn't know they were available. Did you find them in a catalog or web site?

Perry Mason used to be a rerun staple, but I haven't seen it in years and years. I still think it's more entertaining than the current lawyer shows :)

Mercury Radio shows

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Actually, I bought them in London and Los Angeles over the course of five years, at various HMV's, Borders and Waterstones, respectively.

But you could try the net. War of the World is out in several editions, of course, but there's also a collection which includes Dracula, Mutiny on the Bounty and Rebecca, and there one with the entire Les Miserables.

Re: Mercury Radio shows

[lynnb.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I will do that. I'm really interested in their work.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Another Chimes at Midnight fangirl! uhmidont very kindly sent me a tape of it a year ago, but I still long for it on DVD.

Chimes at Midnight...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

...better come out on DVD! The only way I saw it was via the local university some years ago, and alas I am not in the position of a video recorder which could have made a copy. It's brilliant, isn't it? And that battle scene still outdoes any of the later ones inspired by it in its laconic, unglamorized depiction of senseless warfare.

Also: this may sound unkind since I basically like him, but please let someone other than Peter Bogdanovich record the commentary. What he did for "Lady from Shanghai" was quite dull.

[kernezelda]

I watched Citizen Kane for the first time about a year ago, and what remains with me most vividly is the conversation between Kane and his wife, where they age perceptibly and the set/costume changes subtly tell us that time is passing, passing.

It was the technical aspect of the film that intrigued me more than the plot complexities.

Oh, the breakfast scene knocked me out the first...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

...time around, too. But after several times rewatching, other stuff starts to be noticeable as well.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Velvet Goldmine (http://uk.imdb.com/Mlinks?0120879)?

No, I haven't.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Details, please?

Re: No, I haven't.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

It's an hommage to, or spoof of Citizen Kane, in its narrative structure, but instead of focusing on a newspaper magnate, the journalist-narrator investigates a glam rock star (David Bowie in fictionalised form), and the homoeroticism isn't sublimated, it's flaunted. :-)

It's fabulous, and the soundtrack's really good, too. The leading actors -- Ewan McGregor, Christian Bale, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Toni Collette -- are splendid, needless to say, and the director's next movie was the deservedly praised Far From Heaven, should you need more of a recommendation.

To conclude: you should see this. :-)

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Since you are listening to it, I would like to give a shout out to the score, which was very much Herrmann's calling card for the movies and was one of the two or three best things he ever did. One of the things I particularly like about it is the aria he wrote for Susan to not sing - sung, as it is on most recordings, by someone who is capable of its more difficult bits, it is actually a wonderful pastiche of Massenet or someone of that vintage. (It is a great one to stick into music quizzes and confuse the canary fanciers.)

That aria...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

...the commentary insists it's Straussian, but it always sounded more like Herrmann going for Massenet to me, too. In any case, Kiri te Kanawa did a good recording for a Herrmann collection, didn't she?

And yes, the soundtrack is fantastic. Would you believe that in the dubbed German version, they dubbed the music as well? One of my professors, the one who aquainted me with O.W. actually, never could get over that, and rightly so. Bernard Herrmann, he used to say, voice shaking at the heresy. They dubbed Bernard Herrmann!