Citizen Kane (1941) - The cold elephant on the shelf

♥♥♥♥

Marvelous artwork on an original poster for Orson Welles' Citizen Kane

QUICK REVIEW:

Build up as a mystery concerning the meaning of media mogul Charles Forster Kane's last word spoken, before leaving the world and his crumbling empire behind, the word "Rosebud."
Citizen Kane, hailed as the greatest film ever made time and time again, is a technically astute and innovative, especially with its deep focus shots and elaborate, wide-ranging plot structure, and its revelation in the end, which cements the sad end of Kane's existence, and works as an almost violent punch. The film also impresses as inspired by especially newspaper magnate Randolph Hearst's derailed life, much to his dissatisfaction and fury. - He tried to get the film shelved or destroyed and to wreck its writer-director-producer-star Orson Welles' (The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)) reputation. Hearst banned his papers from mentioning or advertising the film, and he even made theaters cancel screenings of Kane, worsening its revenue potential. His dirty tricks didn't work in the long run, as he is known as the film's main inspiration now (more than any of the other inspirations, which are also known and can be read about in Kane's enormous Wikipedia-page here).
Still I have always felt that Citizen Kane is a film which is hard to approach and essentially cold. The basic story is that striving for personal success above everything else is a road to misery. - And that makes for two very cold hours of imperial, gloomy movie magic here. The characters feel very alien to me, and the gloom of the film's premise never sinks in as forcefully as I believe it should. Perhaps I am too dazzled by the technical and narrative refinements of the film; it feels full of hard edges and slightly hostile to me.
Citizen Kane, a dreaded, great, albeit overrated, film.

Related review:

Orson Welles: Mr. Arkadin/Confidential Report (1955) or, The Mysterious Past of the Great Gregory Arkadin

Watch the original, over-long, super-indulgent trailer for the movie here

Cost: 0.8 mil. $
Box office: 1.5 mil. $ (US only)
= Flop, though some uncertainty
[For RKO Radio Pictures and Welles' Mercury Productions, who produced the film and gave Welles an unheard of level of freedom on it.]

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