Citizen Kane, quite astonishingly Orson Welles’ debut feature, is often cited as the greatest movie ever made; therefore I watched the film fully aware of its hallowed status among critics, scholars and filmmakers. So here’s the deal – I wasn’t overwhelmed by the film, or rather, not as much as would have been deemed commensurate with the enormous reputation that precedes it. The film-a-clef starts off with newspaper mogul Charles Forster Kane (commandingly portrayed by Welles himself) uttering the iconic last word “Rosebud” before his death in his palatial mansion. As a reporter, hoping to decipher the mystery behind the strange last word, starts interviewing the various people who knew Kane from close quarters, what emerges is the life of a singularly ambitious yet deeply lonely man otherwise known to the world as a powerful, visionary and filthy rich media magnate who had once harboured gubernatorial aspirations. And the more he goes about arranging the jigsaw puzzle and thus deconstructing the mythic nature of the man, the more he gets convinced that a single word can never encapsulate such complex a persona. William Randolph Hearst, whose life allegedly formed the basis of Kane’s character, infamously tried to destroy the film, but to no avail. The film’s forte lies in its pioneering technical accomplishments – virtuoso non-linear storytelling, a host of memorable deep focus shots, expressionistic photography with great usage of both low-angle and overhead shots, to name a few.
Director: Orson Welles
Genre: Drama
Language: English
Country: US
