Movie: Citizen Kane

In my effort to catch up on some of the classic movies I've never seen, I recently purchased this stinker.

Why anyone think it was "the best movie ever made" is a mystery to me. It's not even in my top 200. Overlong, stagey, wooden acting, unconvincing storyline, plebeian plot....

The cinematography was very good. I guess the editing and use of flashbacks was innovative for 1941. As a first-ever motion picture, it shows a lot of gumption.

But good? Pfffft.

I think it gets kudos from a historical point of view because a lot of the techniques and tricks that it uses were actually innovations at the time. But I never understand people who think it is fun to watch.

Disc two of the 2-disc set is a long PBS documentary on the battle between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst over Citizen Kane.  

Welles always maintained that Kane was not a biography of Hearst or at least not a non-fictional one.  But as the documentary makes clear, Hearst's life was every bit as privileged as the portrayal of Kane (when WRH visited The Loeuvre, as a child, he asked his daddy to buy it for him).  The country was still struggling to come out of the Great Depression, and showing footage of the uber-wealthy, the 200-room 90,000 square foot Hearst Castle, his private zoo, his paying to have 12th Century monasteries disassembled in Europe and shipped to his 250,000 acre estate in San Simeon -- well, that was good box office.  And all absolutely true.

Hearst was not amused, and was accustomed to getting his way.  He spent enormous sums of money to try to suppress the film.

What I found fascinating is that Hearst was 76 at the time, and Welles was a mere 26.  It must have been galling to have a mere kid pulling down your defenses in public.

Hearst was not successful in preventing Kane from being released, but he was fairly successful in making sure Welles never had a career afterward.

King Kong, now THERE'S an innovative film. Stop-action animation, rear projection, front projection, insert shots, miniatures, full-scale animatronics, in-camera compositing, optical printer compositing, traveling masks, green screen, movie music timed to the exact footsteps of characters -- all absolutely new, or nearly.

1933 - eight years before Kane. Six years before Oz.

NoCoPilot wrote:

...showing footage of the uber-wealthy, the 200-room 90,000 square foot Hearst Castle, his private zoo, his paying to have 12th Century monasteries disassembled in Europe and shipped to his 250,000 acre estate in San Simeon -- well, that was good box office.  And all absolutely true.

Did they have shots of Hearst Castle in the movie? I have read that none of the film was shot there. Hard to believe they could have gotten permission to do so.

Without exception, every time we have friends or family visit from out of state, the first place they want to visit is Hearst Castle. It's just about thirty miles from here.

No, you are correct the Hearst Castle was not available to Welles.  He substituted the Oheka Castle in New York, but cribbed all the other details (about the zoo and monasteries) from the real Hearst. If anything he UNDERSTATED Hearst's excesses.

Interior shots in the documentary show great similarities between the two castles. Guess all uber-wealthy despots go for the same curved marble staircases and fireplaces big enough to stand inside.  The matte drawings used in Kane of exteriors around Xanadu make it clear Welles was portraying the Hearst Castle.