Citizen canon

It goes without saying that Orson Welles’s 1941 film Citizen Kane holds a unique keystone position in the history of cinema as a narrative art-form.¹ Aside from the numberless technological innovations which revolutionized the industry and were mirrored across subsequent works for decades to follow, the film also brought a new level of altogether unexplored narrative technique to Hollywood of a caliber previously seen only in written literature. Known to some as the “seventh art” to coincide with aesthetic philosopher Hegel’s primary six—architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, music, and poetry—cinema has always existed within the context of literary works surrounding, inspiring, and influencing it. Just as remains the case today, among the first Hollywood endeavors were cinematic adaptations of literary classics, and the narrative structure of the film reel has always been colored by that explored with the written word in literature or on the stage in performances of plays. Of al the works in the first decades of film’s infancy, no film has stood out as an example of the heights cinematic storytelling could achieve as has Welles’s Citizen Kane. For this reason, the staying power of Citizen Kane is unmatched, and it still tops quality rankings compiled by professional critics and amateur viewers alike. His was the first film to truly bring cinema in line with the artistic merit and overall quality of literature because of his innovative narrative structure and extensive use of complex themes and symbolism.

Perhaps the easiest proof that Kane rivals literary fiction is the abundance of parallels and similarities to American fiction the film has drawn over the years. In his article about conventions of American narrative, Robert L. Carringer draws connections between the film and The Great Gatsby, a widely-read and profoundly influential novel released in 1925, sixteen years prior to Citizen Kane. Surface similarities are easy to discern, as both works center upon larger-than-life titular protagonists who come into great wealth and status. Even Carringer admits that “parallels between Citizen Kane and a well-known literary narrative [might] seem to be […] simply a case of variations on standard formulas and types.”² However, as Carringer goes on to flesh out, there is a staggering number of parallels between the tale of Jay Gatsby and of Charles Foster Kane. Beginning with common symbols, Carringer highlights the fact that a glass ball or globe is present in both works, acting in each as the first insight into the titular characters’ psychological conditions or personal lives. Further, the important “rejection of a natural father” present in both the novel and the film colors much of the reader or viewer’s understanding of the characters’ upbringing and values, as well as their dual yearnings for a childhood or innocence that never was.² Just as Gatsby seeks after the missed opportunity at a joyful young adulthood that Daisy comes to represent for him, so too does Kane seek out the ephemeral Rosebud which seems to stand for his stolen youth and blissful innocence. Writes Carringer, “Kane’s tragedy appears to have been, like Gatsby’s, a case of idealism which became progressively tainted.”² They become parallel protagonists in that both amass a personal fortune, great status and prestige, all for nothing in the end as their true subconscious quest is left unfulfilled. In both works, it is after their demises, however, when the narratives become most interesting.

While it pioneered the use of flashbacks in cinema, a technique and trend employed by numberless films to follow, Citizen Kane’s unique presentation of biographical content actually has to do with some of the work’s overall themes. Carringer elaborates upon his noticing that both the novel Gatsby and the film Kane proceed “in the form of retrospective narratives set a short time after the deaths of their [respective] protagonists.”² While the atypical non-chronological structure of Welles’s film is worth discussing, it is worth first pointing out that its construction is not altogether unlike that of a classic piece of American pseudo-modernist literature. This alone places Citizen Kane in a league of its own, but the method of storytelling delivers on a whole different level. Like in Fitzgerald’s novel, the narrative progresses in an order relative to the perspective of the secondary character or viewer surrogate, and is “organized chronologically according to the experience of [this] evidence gatherer.” ² The disjointed chronology and nonstandard arrangement of scenes, like Welle’s inclusion of the “News on the March” segments, was revolutionary in his time, but also allowed moviegoers to piece together a more holistic view of his protagonist for themselves alongside Thompson’s investigating. The non-chronological storytelling was a narrative device employed by the writer and director to offer snapshot views into Kane’s life as an investigator in real life might have experienced them for himself, only fully understood in a broader context and with proverbial grains of salt applied in rations dependent upon the agent from whom the perspective originated. Thus, Orson Welles himself is quoted as saying that “the truth about Kane, like the truth about any man, can only be calculated by the sum of everything that has been said about him.”² The very structure of Citizen Kane, like many literary works before it, serves to demonstrate an important philosophy which could be applied to any prominent cultural figures’ lives, celebrities whose true natures are only gleaned through an understanding of an abstract of their actions and experiences. in this way, Kane transcends the world of “movies” and again moves in line with larger artistic works of literature by encouraging sympathy with misunderstood or unacknowledged—perhaps, over-acknowledged—characters. It offers keen insight into the media mogul’s inner workings and offers a theory as to the motivations of such a character, the motivations of someone so driven to reshape the world.

Further, and perhaps most famously, Citizen Kane is renowned for its extensive use of symbolism to send complex messages to the audience and to move the plot forward. From the very beginning of the film the viewer is assaulted by symbols of varying complexity, starting with the camera—and subsequently, the audience—disobeying instructions from a “no trespassing” sign outside Kane’s immense mansion. in another of his articles Carringer states this act signifies “an intrusion into [Kane’s] privacy,” which he claims is “the main business of the film.”³ Further, we as the audience are soon thereafter treated to another significant symbol, the glass globe —the shattering of which Carringer calls “the film’s main symbolic ‘event.’”³ The globe comes to symbolize the film’s focus on interiority and exteriority, subjectivity and objectivity, Kane’s delicate balance between “empires and private worlds.”³ The issue of privacy and of entering into the deepest regions of a character’s private life and interior mental space are primary themes that Citizen Kane explores, themes which theretofore had only been realized in works of literature. In this way, the symbols in the film elevate its narrative to a status that could be interpreted by academics and literary critics, much as novels and works of fiction aiming for artistic greatness might have been.

Of course, no discussion of the symbols in Citizen Kane could be complete without mention of the enigmatic Rosebud, which serves as the film’s most well-known and commonly cited symbol for Kane’s loss of innocence, for his deathbed yearning for the simpler and more childlike times he’d left behind. Continues Carringer in the latter of his two articles, what is interesting about the deployment of this symbol is that the character Rawlston

is supremely confident of the [significance] of identifying Rosebud […] The film wonders, Will Rosebud explain anything? [Whereas] Rawlston asserts, Rosebud will explain everything! Many viewers fail to detect the difference and take Rawlston’s premise to be the film’s. But the film’s true center is located in this ironic distance between the two positions. Rawlston’s view is the butt of an elaborate joke.³

While with this explanation the sought-after symbol of Rosebud may seem to ultimately turn out to be a red herring, its insignificance may actually tell us even more about the film than if it had turned out to be a unifying, all-explaining arc of understanding. That Kane’s dying breath was spent on some unimportant artifact from his irrelevant childhood undermines the empire of significance he had built around himself in adulthood. It humanizes the once-immortal mogul and highlights another primary theme of the film, that all his conquering and achievements of status boiled down to nothing. This is a theme similarly included in countless works of fiction, and Welles’s inclusion of such storied and complicated symbols in his masterpiece reinforces the notion that it, too, should be included among great literary works of this previous century.

Not only did Citizen Kane tread new ground in terms of its technical innovations and cinematographic uniqueness, but ti also opened the door for a whole new generation of narrative art. Through his complex employment of literary-caliber themes through a nonlinear narrative structure and now-infamous symbols for fruitless power and violated intimacy, Welles solidified his position as one of cinema’s greatest storytellers. His creation allowed for films in subsequent decades to mark unexplored cinematic territory and spin tales of unforeseen quality and complexity. And its everlasting mark on cinematic and cultural history can be felt today even despite the efforts of William Randolph Hearst, a real-life media giant upon whose life the exploits of the fictional Kane are reportedly based. Without his innovative use of flashback, we might never have experienced Pulp Fiction and the popular films of Quentin Tarantino. It set a new bar for screenwriting in original works of cinematic fiction to be followed by dozens of Academy Award-winning pictures. And without its inclusion of Rosebud as the mysterious all-consuming symbol for Kane’s psyche, we might never have seen the numberless parodies and homages that followed and will continue to follow for the foreseeable future.