This Day in Film History (“Citizen Kane,” Archetypal “American,” Opens)

May 1, 1941—The film that debuted in New York on this date and that drew the ire of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst became renowned as Citizen Kane. But the original title for actor-hyphenate Orson Welles’ first picture, American, far better expressed its vastly ambitious commentary on this nation’s relationship to wealth, fame, idealism and the past.

Sometimes in writing this blog, I’m faced with a real dilemma: How do I get my arms around a subject that’s enormous and has inspired millions of words already? Citizen Kane is an especially strong example of this.

I could write about the film’s innovations in sight and sound, its cast, its accuracy in depicting Hearst and other real-life figures, the publisher’s plan to strangle the movie in its crib before it hit the theaters, Welles’ attempt to minimize the contribution of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, the film’s original reception, its growing critical reputation as the greatest film of all time, and its foreshadowing of Welles’ own decline, among many other topics.

But these stories have all been told over and over again, and—for me, anyway—they’re now old-hat. (Look, if you really want a brief distillation of all of this, rent the PBS documentary, “American Experience: The Battle Over Citizen Kane.”)

What has interested me, and for quite a while, is what Mankiewicz was implying with that title. I’m not sure why the decision was made to come up with a different one. Did Welles think it was too obviously a stab at holding up to the world a representative figure, that he wanted people to infer it from the movie itself?

But keeping that title would have been a remarkably bold statement by Hollywood in 1941. Two years before, director Frank Capra had come under enormous pressure for depicting the U.S. Senate as a cesspool of corruption in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. From his perch as Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Joseph Kennedy sniped that that film was fostering a terribly negative impression of American democracy. (Unlike, say, the impression made by the manipulative, thieving, anti-Semitic, appeasing patriarch of the Kennedy clan.) Yet the rousing conclusion of Capra’s satire ended up paying tribute to the greatness of America, a place where, unlike much of Europe at that point, a common man could win out against a gigantic system arrayed against him.

Two years later, with the situation on the European mainland even darker than before, no such optimistic message was offered by Welles’ moody masterpiece (a film whose style probably owes more to Continental Expressionism than to the American studio system). A single American leaves his mark on the world, but he debases all institutions he touches, brings misery to virtually all in his orbit, and dies alone and unhappy. Using that word "American," then, would have posed a question about a representative man at the intersection of our media and democratic institutions, in the starkest possible terms: Is this what our country could become? More to the point, is this what our country has become?

Very early on, the film is at pains, in its parody “March of Time” documentary newsreel sequence, to establish Kane as a uniquely American figure:

* “America's emperor of the news syndicate, another editorialist and landlord, the still mighty and once mightier Hearst.”
* “Here, for Xanadu's landlord, will be held 1940's biggest, strangest funeral; here this week is laid to rest a potent figure of our Century - America's Kubla Kahn - Charles Foster Kane.”
* “Famed in American legend is the origin of the Kane fortune…” (This last is a wickedly funny parody of the so-called “Times-speak” style mandated by publisher Henry Luce, who decreed that sentences would dispense with articles, dwell on favorite adjectives, compress two words into one, and unwind, in Yoda fashion, from back to front.)

But the strongest invocation of Kane as representative figure is a quote that the newsreels figure prominently: "’I AM, HAVE BEEN, AND WILL BE ONLY ONE THING - AN AMERICAN.’ CHARLES FOSTER KANE.” It was a statement that might look unexceptional today, but that Hearst would have recognized as a direct allusion to himself, as he had said similar things throughout his career.

Okay. So, after watching Citizen Kane, what might a filmgoer—especially a foreign one—think was the essence of an American?

* An American, no matter what his age, is like a big kid, exuberant and energetic, viewing even established major institutions as playthings. I love the image of Welles as Kane that accompanies this post. He stands in the newsroom like a colossus bringing order (or, at least, his version of reality) to the chaos of the world. The early scenes, when Kane assumes control of the New York Inquirer, represent a portrait of the artist as a young whelp. Early on, the film has fun at the expense of banker Walter Parks Thatcher, who fumes as he reads a letter from the young man: "Sorry but I'm not interested in gold mines, oil wells, shipping or real estate...One item on your list intrigues me, the New York Inquirer, a little newspaper I understand we acquired in a foreclosure proceeding. Please don't sell it. I'm coming back to America to take charge. I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.” (Question: In the digital age, how many publishers say the same thing?)

* An American is at pains to publicize his idealism, opening himself up to charges of hypocrisy and corruption. Kane publishes his self-conscious “Declaration of Principles” in his paper. But watch the quizzical expression on his face when friend Jedediah Leland requests a copy. It’s almost as if he’s already wondering if he can live up to his Gatsbyesque platonic conception of himself.

* An American believes that, with enough determination, he can carry everything before him. From his first days as a publisher, Kane sees the impact of his work, whipping the public up to feverish warmongering through wildly exaggerated atrocity stories. (In only a slight variation on one of Hearst’s most infamous moments, Kane telegraphs his paper’s Cuba correspondent: “Dear Wheeler: You provide the prose poems—I’ll provide the war.”)

* An American believes that, if events conspire to disprove the last contention, enough money will fix everything. The young Kane (like the young Hearst) is able to hire away the best talent of his New York rival. His success in establishing a chain of papers leads him to think that money can do just about anything—a principle put to its most severe test when he hires a vocal coach, builds an opera house, and sponsors a tour for his talentless second wife.

* An American—well, the plutocratic sort, anyway--holds the touching belief that he knows what is best for “the people.” The film tells us that Kane has transformed from a liberal interventionist to a conservative isolationist, but doesn’t show this happening. But it does the next best thing, through the drunken tirade by Leland after the publisher has exclaimed in disgust that “the people” preferred corrupt boss Jim Gettys to himself in the recent election: “You talk about ‘the people’ as though you owned them, as though they belong to you. Goodness. As long as I can remember, you've talked about giving ‘the people’ their rights, as if you can make them a present of Liberty, as a reward for services rendered.”

* An American collects objects even as he destroys the past. The young Kane briskly disposes of the incumbent fuddy-duddy editor of the Inquirer by telling him that the news goes on 24 hours, not just 12. All the old niceties about verifying facts goes out the window under his leadership. But Kane’s success in riding roughshod over resistance at home and abroad enables him to go on buying sprees for European art.

* An American searches fruitlessly for an ever-receding past even while being waylaid by the future. After the famous montage scene showing the dissolution of Kane’s marriage, whatever audience sympathy for his charm has diminished. But Mankiewicz and Welles establish residual mercy for him, even after it’s hinted that he’s trying to seduce a young woman encountered on a rain-drenched street. Later on, in her apartment, he confesses what brought him out on this night: “I was on my way to the Western Manhattan Warehouse in search of my youth. You see, my mother died a long time ago and her things were put in storage out West. There wasn't any other place to put them. I thought I'd send for them now. Tonight, I was going to take a look at them. You know, a sort of sentimental journey.” The trouble is that Kane’s obsession with the past has terrible consequences for his own future. On the night Kane goes “in search of my youth," he meets the woman who’ll break up his family and wreck his political prospects in the ensuing scandal.

* An American continually mourns the loss of his innocence. It’s all in the word for Kane’s childhood sled—“Rosebud.” (Legend has it that Hearst became particularly enraged over the film because mistress Marion Davies had confessed, while deep in her cups, that the word was Hearst’s charming endearment for her private parts.)

* An American wants to be loved--badly. No matter how much other countries might assail U.S. military interventionism, an American leader, whether Republican or Democrat, expects to be given credit for spreading the benefits of liberty. We don't understand--we're hurt--when we don't receive it. Again, Leland (now elderly) dismisses Charles’ particular form of self-regard: “It seems we weren't enough, he wanted all the voters to love him too. Guess all he really wanted out of life was love. That's Charlie's story, how he lost it. You see, he just didn't have any to give. Well, he loved Charlie Kane of course, very dearly, and his mother, I guess he always loved her.”

* An American thinks his motives are so pure that they justify actions that are egotistical and destructive. Kane's hatred for Jim Gettys becomes so consuming that he's prepared to disregard the political boss's blackmail attempt, expose mistress Susan Alexander to ridicule and destroy his marriage. He lashes out in contempt for both the boss he despises and the wife he's wronged for taking "the love of the people of this state away from me." But there's another underlying problem in Kane's attitude: by nakedly seeking Gettys' ouster in his own paper, by promising voters he'll appoint a special prosecutor to seek his removal, Kane has, in effect, become accuser and judge in the same case.

* An American contains multitudes within himself, defeating all attempts to arrive at a single settled truth about his life and legacy. In his 1996 account, The Making of “Citizen Kane,” Robert L. Carringer briefly mentions a scene cut in later versions of the American script: Leland reciting Walt Whitman. That brought to mind a great bit of braggadocio from the poet’s Song of Myself: “I contain multitudes.” The Latin American short-story master Jorge Luis Borges said the film “teems with multiplicity and incongruity.”

The scene that best exemplifies this, I think, comes late. After Susan announces she’s leaving Kane, his image is caught in not one reflection but what looks like a half dozen, roughly equaling the number of witnesses offering their perspectives after his death to the reporter. Even after we learn the truth about Rosebud, however, we are left to ponder the question: What difference does knowing this make to our understanding of Kane?

Citizen Kane is famously framed at beginning and end by the "No Trespassing" sign barring the way to Xanadu. But Mankiewicz and Welles' complex narrative affirms that even those who aggressively disregard such signs are still no better off in possessing the truth about the archetypal "American."