Citizen Kane: Classic or Dud?

Citizen Kane is no Condorman

Orson couldn't move with Michael Crawford's natural grace.

CK = a damn good watch every time

[Kael] never mistook trash for art; never thought it elitist (or unimportant) to distinguish the two; never put forth that there was any connection, organic or otherwise, between the widely accepted and the good. Kael believed that every moviegoer could develop an aesthetic--but not that one necessarily would, just as she believed that a talented filmmaker could use lowbrow forms to create art, but not that the ability to master such forms could ever make one an artist. In short, she was a democrat but not a populist.

[...]

Kael also approaches the high/low question in her characteristically textured way: "One of the great things about movies is they can combine the energy of a popular art with the possibilities of a high art," she says. "What's wonderful about someone like Altman is that mixture of pop and high art. He's an artist who uses pop as his vehicle. That's part of the excitement in a movie like 'Nashville' ...Godard's 'Weekend' is another case in point." Here, in a nutshell, is one of Kael's key critical insights, one that underlies so much of what she wrote and admired and wanted other people to see and grasp and debate.

I have a lot to say about Citizen Kane itself, too: I've seen it probably ten times and it means a lot to me. But where to start? For now I'll just say that the scene where Everett Sloane talks about seeing the girl in a white dress is possibly the most beautiful moment in the history of cinema. I'm really surprised by all the people who said they find it cold: certainly Kane himself is a rather cold person but the film itself always seems endlessly fresh, a burst of energy, something genuinely new then and now.

I hated that, even though I like Peanuts.

hmmm, does it really? i admit i've only seen it like 40 times but i can't recall one instance of this! (was it in the newsreel? because that's sort of supposed to be a corny effect)

I don't see how you can see the film 40 times and not remember this bit!

I'm glad I'm not the only one for whom Charles Schulz ruined it. Maybe he assumed everyone had seen it by then, even small children (except Linus).

Ha ha, yes, this happened to me too. DAMN YOU SCHULZ!

CK classic tho.

Peanuts didn't ruin the ending for me, but something else did. Tiny Toon adventures?

Loved Carmela Soprano trying to get her mobbed-up film club interested: "Now, to give us some background, let's see what Leonard Maltin has to say."

Saw a rep screening this afternoon (paired with Mank, which--weather permitting--I'll see tomorrow). I like J.D.'s post above: "But where to start? For now I'll just say that the scene where Everett Sloane talks about seeing the girl in a white dress is possibly the most beautiful moment in the history of cinema. I'm really surprised by all the people who said they find it cold: certainly Kane himself is a rather cold person but the film itself always seems endlessly fresh, a burst of energy, something genuinely new then and now."

I've never found it less than incredible, start to finish. I've also seen it called pretentious (by a certain cranky baseball writer--not important); even if you hate the film, that particular complaint strikes me as absurd. It's about as pretentious as Rock 'n' Roll High School.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iMy0969BTw

I don't know if this is even my favourite Welles film, but I was a little taken aback when Vertigo overtook Kane on the Sight and Sound list. I can understand Vertigo being someone/anyone's favourite film, but it seems too introverted to be a consensus pick. I guess most people have no more in common with the character of Kane than they do with the character of Scottie, but the Welles film obviously has more external scope and seems like it has "universal" implications.

I remember one of my film teachers saw Kane in its original theatrical run in 1941!

That's amazing.

I was disappointed with Vertigo's ascension too--subjectively, and also objectively for the reason you mention. This is not directed at anyone who considers it to be the better film, but, as I've mentioned before, I honestly believe that, generally speaking, Vertigo benefitted from the time it was out of circulation, when it's mystique grew and grew. Kane, meanwhile, became entrenched as The Greatest Film Ever that you just had to see. It became homework.

Also Vertigo was able to slot very easily into Lacanian film theory and the idea of the male gaze. Both films are rich in detail for analysis of male exploitation of women.

Good film imo

Just occurred to me that Kane and Vertigo both have Bernard Herrmann soundtracks, although you don't tend to see, say, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad on most best-ever lists so maybe it's not that.

I’m sure I said it way upthread but Kane’s rep for me was sealed as a kid thanks to regular mentions by Charles Schulz’s characters. Which is also how I knew Rosebud was the sled.

Really? Interesting. Had to look that up.

My first encounter with CK: a Saturday morning cartoon in which Vincent Price plays a ghost obsessed with Rosebud.

i agree that vertigo is a movie for people who love to think about movies. in my experience Most People do not like vertigo v much: it is boring and slow and keeps burrowing further into an extremely off-putting performance. i like it a lot but do find it hard not to interpret the shift from kane (a playful muckraking spectacle that wants you kept giddy) as indicative of a broader turn towards the academy in terms of who gets paid for anything to think about movies.

Kael's phrase about Kane "a shallow masterpiece" applies more to Vertigo imo.

I played Kane's opening scene for elementary students for years on Welles' birthday (sometimes switching over to the shootout in Lady from Shanghai). I recall one student begging me (partly jokingly) for days afterwards to tell him (or her--can't remember) what Rosebud meant. "Can't do it--you will see it one day." I wonder if he did.

I realized yesterday that one supposed mystery--which at some point I began to accept myself--is easily explained: how was Kane's last word known if no one else was in the room? Raymond, his attendant (Mr. Sentimental), mentions the snow globe falling to the ground when Kane said Rosebud, the implication being that he was in the room watching over Kane, before the nurse enters, even though we don't see him.

My first encounter with CK: a Saturday morning cartoon in which Vincent Price plays a ghost obsessed with Rosebud.

― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn),

Wasn’t that, like, The Real Ghostbusters?

it may have been

^___^

James Agee didn't like it? I was checking the initial critical reception in 1941 and came across that. I checked Agee on Film, and it's only mentioned once, in passing; I found one more specific quote online, but can't find his review (if there is one). All of this sparked by someone writing into the aforementioned cranky baseball writer: "Awhile back you made the point that Citizen Kane began to be considered the greatest movie when an influential critic or two said it was." I was kind of hoping to be able to write in and (gently--he's cranky) correct that--I always thought it received almost unanimously ecstatic reviews--but after investigating a bit, the reception indeed seems to have been somewhat mixed.

Right there, staring me in the face, but nowhere to play it.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/rosebud.jpg

I somehow missed this:

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/citizen-kane-rosebud-sled-auction-2657602

As Citizen Kane (1941) opens, we’re drawn into the grand estate of Charles Foster Kane (played by Orson Welles, who co-wrote and directed the film). The elderly media tycoon is dying. Lying on his deathbed, he clutches a snow globe, which falls from his hand as he breathes his last word: “Rosebud.” That final whisper will serve as our way into Kane’s world, setting in motion a narrative that traces his rise and fall, with the mysterious Rosebud at the center.

Rosebud is a dramatic device, but spoiler: it’s really a wooden sled that Kane once cherished as a young boy, a symbol of innocence lost. In Welles’s words, it’s “a little toy from the dead past of a great man.” At the film’s close, we watch as Kane’s staff, following his death, casually discard the sled into a furnace as if it were garbage, which it is to anyone not named Kane.

Turns out, Rosebud is no one’s trash. It would endure as a powerful symbol in cinema, particularly as Citizen Kane, which earned an Academy Award for its screenplay, remains highly esteemed as a masterpiece. The actual sleds created for the film, too, would become treasure—one of the last surviving Rosebuds has now made auction history.

On July 16, Heritage Auctions sold the pine hardwood specimen, with a red seat stenciled with the word “ROSEBUD,” for an eye-watering $14.75 million. The final bid makes the sled the most expensive version of Rosebud to be sold at auction and the second most valuable piece of movie memorabilia over sold (after the $32 million ruby slippers from 1939’s The Wizard of Oz).

The prop emerges from the collection of Gremlins director Joe Dante, who was given the old sled in 1984 by a crew member who was clearing out an old RKO Pictures lot. Dante had the sled analyzed and radiocarbon-dated to verify its authenticity; these scientific reports are included in the lot.

“I’ve had the honor of protecting this piece of cinematic history for decades,” said Dante in a statement. “To see Rosebud find a new home—and make history in the process—is both surreal and deeply gratifying. It’s a testament to the enduring power of storytelling.”

Only three sleds created for Citizen Kane are known to survive (two were burned in the film’s final scene). One, used in the scene where a young Kane is seen playing with it in the snow, was the top prize in a 1942 RKO contest and won by a 12-year-old Arthur Bauer. The so-called Bauer sled, crafted out of pinewood, remained in his family for more than 50 years, before it was sold at Christie’s in 1996 for $233,500.

Another sled, this one in balsa wood, was snapped up by Steven Spielberg in 1982. It was recovered by a studio watchman from a pile of garbage outside the prop vault of the old RKO studios, before hitting the block at Sotheby’s, where Spielberg acquired it for $60,500. The artifact hung in the filmmaker’s office for years before he donated it to the Academy Museum in 2018.

Apparently, the Dante backstory:

He told Heritage auctions how he was making the film Explorers in 1984 on the same studio that was formerly owned by RKO Radio Pictures, which produced Citizen Kane.

Dante said crews were on site clearing out storage areas when one worker, who knew he liked vintage films, asked if he wanted it.

"I was astonished...Since I am a huge fan of the movie, I said, 'Yeah, I'll be glad to take it."

Apparently Dante's sled makes a few cameos in his films, like here in "The 'Burbs":

https://www.slashfilm.com/img/gallery/an-iconic-classic-movie-prop-makes-a-stealthy-cameo-in-a-quirky-tom-hanks-comedy/joe-dante-hid-rosebud-in-the-burbs-and-three-other-works-1749764239.webp

Given the years those auctions happened (and how the film’s reputation as arguably “the greatest” had been long since secured by the time the first one took place), I feel like the exponential growth in bids is more of a reflection of how more and more of the country’s wealth has continued to pour into the hands of the wealthiest individuals after Reagan completely restructured the flow of money in the U.S. economy.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/orson-welles-lost-movie-ai-1236361881/

Showrunner’s endeavor will deploy a fusion of AI and traditional film techniques to reconstruct the lost footage. This includes shooting some sequences with live actors, with plans to use face and pose transfer techniques with AI tools to preserve the likenesses of the original actors in the movie. Extensively archived set photos from the film will serve as the foundation for re-creating the scenes.

Helping to spearhead the project is Brian Rose, a filmmaker who’s spent the last five years re-creating 30,000 missing frames from the movie. He’s rebuilt the physical sets in 3D models, using them to pinpoint camera movements to match with the script, set photos, and archive materials. By his thinking, he’s reconstructed the framing and timing of each scene, which will serve as the foundation for the re-creation.

“There was, for example, a four-minute-long, unbroken moving camera shot whose loss is a tragedy,” Rose said in a statement. “The camera moves from one end of a ballroom and then back up the other end (while) you have about a dozen different characters walk in and out of frame, and crisscrossing subplots. It was really ahead of its time. Yet all but about the last 50 seconds of the shot was cut.”

Tom Clive, a VFX expert on face-swapping and de-aging who previously worked for Metaphysic and recently joined Showrunner, will also be assisting.

I want to hurt these people.

I think it would be fun to completely ruin great films.

Citizen Kane playing in Regal cinemas around the US on Sunday

They show all the shots with Rosebud as a prop in a Dante film during this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbe_dmrlX6Y

That's where I learned about it.