Citizen Kane is often touted as the greatest American movie. It is studied in virtually all film schools. Its construction, by all measures is impeccable.
Having seen the movie again, it appears to me that Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Wells, who wrote the screenplay, were prophets.
The 1941 story was ostensibly about the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. He held a conglomerate of newspapers and used them to build an empire of wealth and destroy his enemies.
It was largely a story about the main character Charles Foster Kane as told to a reporter through interviews by other characters who knew him. Through everyone’s eyes Kane was described as a shameless self promoter who loved no one but his own image of himself and believed in nothing except his own wealth. He dragged along his close supporters with his own success. He used his newspapers to intimidate his rivals and to seduce and influence the masses to give him the love he never knew as a child. The core elements are the character’s ambition that propels him to the limelight and his flaws that eventually lead to his undoing. He touted himself as a champion of the people, trying to get himself elected to public office. He had limited initial success but was eventually defeated by scandal of his own making. You could argue that the movie had a happy ending. Continue reading “Revised comments on “Citizen Kane”, the movie”
