Kane Case

As in some grotesque fable, it appeared last week that Hollywood was about to turn upon and destroy its greatest creation. That creation was Citizen Kane, the film which Orson Welles and his Mercury Players had spent more than a year talking and thinking about and 70 days shooting, with $750,000 of Radio-Keith-Orpheum's money.

The film was in the cans. A magazine advertising campaign had begun. But no release was set by R. K. O. for the picture to be shown to the public, and it seemed very likely that none would ever be. Old Mr. William Randolph Hearst, who had only heard reports of the picture through his cinematic eyes, ears and tongue, Columnist Louella Parsons, thought the life of Kane was too close a parallel to the life of Hearst.

The Picture. The objection of Mr. Hearst, who founded a publishing empire on sensationalism, is ironic. For to most of the several hundred people who have seen the film at private showings, Citizen Kane is the most sensational product of the U. S. movie industry. It has found important new techniques in picture-making and storytelling. Artful and artfully artless, it is not afraid to say the same thing twice if twice-telling reveals a fourfold truth. It is as psychiatrically sound as a fine novel but projected with far greater scope, for instance, than Aldous Huxley was inspired to bring to his novel on the same theme. It is a work of art created by grown people for grown people.

The Story begins with the death of Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), at one time the world's third richest man, overlord of mines and factories and steamship lines, boss of newspapers, news services and radio chains, possessor of a vast castle in Florida, a staggering agglomeration of art, two wives, millions of enemies. The MARCH OF TIME is running off rushes of its Kane biography in its projection room. But when they are shown, the editor does not think the facts reveal the man. "It might be any rich publisher--Pulitzer, Hearst or John Doe," he complains. "Get me something that will show it is Kane. Find out his last words. Maybe they meant something."

Kane's last word was "rosebud." Thompson (William Alland), the newsreel reporter, spends two feverish weeks in interviewing five people. Thompson talks to Kane's trollopish second wife (Dorothy Comingore), whom he tried to make a singer, finally established in the castle. There she passed the years assembling jigsaw puzzles until she walked out in boredom. Then there is Kane's rich guardian (George Coulouris) whom Kane hated; Kane's general manager (Everett Sloan), the sad, loyal, philosophical Jew who stuck by to the end; his former drama editor and best friend (Joseph Gotten) with whom Kane broke after Kane's disastrous try for the Governorship of New York; Kane's butler (Paul Stewart). None knew the meaning of "rosebud." But each in his way understood a little of the man: he was not cruel, but he did cruel things; he was not generous, but he did generous things; he was willful, capricious, and he wanted to be loved--on his own terms. The MARCH OF TIME never finds the meaning of "rosebud," nor the key to Kane's frustrations, but, almost by accident, the audience does.

So sharply does Citizen Kane veer from cinema cliche, it hardly seems like a movie. There are some extraordinary technical novelties through which Welles and wiry, experienced little Photographer Gregg Toland have given the camera a new elo quence -- for example, the "stolen" newsreels, the aged and streaked documentary shots. When Susan makes her disastrous operatic debut, the camera tells the story by climbing high up among the flies to find two stagehands -- one with his hand pinching his nose in disgust. Always the camera seems to be giving the narrative a special meaning where it will help most: picturing a small bottle beside a tumbler when Susan Kane is lying drugged with an overdose of sedatives, exploring the love nest and the family breakfast table like a pair of prying eyes and ears.

Orson Welles treats the audience like a jury, calling up the witnesses, letting them offer the evidence, injecting no opinions of his own. He merely sees that their stories are told with absorbing clarity. Unforgettable are such scenes as the spanning of Kane's first marriage in a single conversation, the silly immensity of the castle halls which echo the flat whines of Susan.

Hollywood claimed Welles never would make the grade. From the moment he arrived there its citizens resented him and his Martians and his youth and his talent. When he grew a beard for his first film, a sporty pressagent sent him a bearded ham for Christmas; while he was dining out one evening, a playful actor cut off his tie with a table knife; columnists dubbed him with nicknames like "Little Orson Annie." At announcements that his first two productions had been called off, the town nodded knowingly. He was just a big bag of publicity.

But whatever Orson Welles did do, Hollywood was pretty sure it would break all the rules. Hollywood was right.

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