I first saw this movie in a film class in 1970, - my god - 30 years ago! I am watching it now, home for lunch, somehow it is on cable. I have to tear myself away to go back to campus and teach - too bad! Right now Susan Alexander is being coached by her frustrated Italian voice coach -"Ah no no no no!" he tells her, his hair ruffled, his tie askance. Now is the opera scene, painful to watch, and Jedediah Leland is tearing his program into long scraps and playing with it. Each part of the movie is a classic. My favorite is the part where Kane departs on his trip to Europe, after buying the best newspapermen to work for the Chronicle. He brings in a band and chorus girls and they sing his song," Who is this man...what is his name...his name is Charley Kane." Great scene. The lighting is odd: it looks like Welles had lights set up on the floor to illuminate the chorus girls legs. Of course the camera shots were the defining element of the film - the long shots, the lighting - some shots were set up like portrait painting (anchor, balance). And Dorothy Comingore was amazing as Susan Alexander ("What about me? What about me!) She starred in early movies as Linda Winters (? why the name change) and was blacklisted in the 1950's by McCarthyism (that sounds like a movie in itself). We just watched the People vs Larry Flynt in film class, and the ending is very much like the closing scenes in Citizen Kane: the mansion, the emptiness, the isolation, the loneliness. Here is a great link for Citizen Kane.
I once attended a reception, didn't really know anyone there, so I put the name Charles Foster Kane on the nametag. Only one person noticed and asked me about it. I said, "I'm covering this reception for the Chronicle." Even my youngest son has adopted the Citizen Kane humor: when he was young and visiting his mother over Christmas, he was surrounded by family while he was playing with a snow globe: he suddenly gasped, fell back on the couch, dropped the globe gently on the ground and said "Rosebud!" Only a couple people understood it, but he is well on his way to acting out obscure scenes from classic movies, just like his dad (I was proud). "You vant to know about a Rosebud? I tell you about a rosebud..." Of course the scene about the disolution of his marriage is great: the dissolution is shown by a series of breakfast shots. The mystery of Rosebud is hinted at the very beginning, when Mr. Berstein is being interviewed. "Maybe it was something he lost, and could never discover again," he said (I am paraphrasing). And so it was: his childhood. I just asked students in my American Government Honors class who has seen Citizen Kane, only one person said yes, out of 24!
No comments:
Post a Comment