Down the stretch...

...we come.  Almost home.

We're on the first of the last 10 films I'm watching and writing about from the AFI Top 100 (10th Anniversary Edition).

And I put this one in the last 10 because I love watching it, and I wanted it to be part of the last push.

Film 91

91.  "Citizen Kane" (AFI Rank #1)

If it hasn't been obvious during the course of these essays, I have no formal education in regards to film.  For that matter, I have none for theatre.  I take inspiration, mix it with experience, and rip the fuck off anywhere I can when I do theatre.  If I'm occasionally capable of directing a really good play, or giving a really good performance, it is because of my particular skill set with emotional/intellectual recall.  I also have a pretty good eye, am decidedly myopic in regards to what I want, and I try not to treat people like shit.  All that has served me reasonably well.  And were this essay about me, I could go on and on.  I'm getting off topic.

My point was that there are dozens and dozens of essays, books, opinions, whatever, written about this film by people FAR more educated and often smarter than me.  The AFI ranked it the best that the United States had to offer, and this film is often cited as the greatest ever created, no matter the country.  It's not my favorite film, but it's the best one I've ever seen.  It's high on the list of my favorites, too.  What this one does to me, mostly, is make me appreciate its art.  I find myself gasping out loud, and this past viewing was no exception.  And this, my friends, is as high as this art gets.

Directed by a barely 26 year old Orson Welles, who had capitalized on his fame with the Mercury Theatre to negotiate a full-control contract with RKO Pictures.  Welles got to make the film he wanted to make, and he had full artistic license to do so.  The film wound up as a failure for RKO, losing the film company about $150K, but the contributions of this film to the art of film was invaluable.  Telling the tale of William Randolph Hearst as a slightly fictionalized Charles Foster Kane, this film was beset by a barrage of negative advertising in all of Hearst's papers, along with RKO pulling its support, and limiting its release.  None of that matters. What matters is what happens when the film starts playing.  And what happens then is nothing short of astonishing.

Julie and I watched this together, and she asked me what it was that caused me to gasp and say "wow," etc. as I watched.  Well.  That's a tough question.  Let me attempt to answer it.  I'm blown away right from the start, as Welles slowly pans around the neglected estate of Xanadu, while always, somehow, no matter the angle, keeping one lit window in the same spot in the frame.  It is that attention that just thrills me.  That he chose to end the film with almost an identical shot, only this time, the light is out, and the estate billows smoke as Kane's personal effects are incinerated, is...well.  Come on.  Does it get better than that?

I'll be here all day if I start talking about all the great shots that are present in this film visually.  Let's just say this...I don't think I can recall a film that takes such care with each shot, and everything, and I mean EVERYTHING feels intentional.  There's a scene where the characters of Leland and Bernstein are speaking with each other, as Kane does a dance at a celebration for Kane's triumph over the rival newspaper in town.  Check that scene out.  Every frame includes Kane, reflected in the window, between Leland and Bernstein, a constant presence in the moment.  And despite f-stops and all kinds of other crap...there's Kane in that scene...in perfect focus.  Check out the camera work in this film.  Often characters are FAR away from the subject of the frame, and yet, when Welles wants them to be, they are in perfect focus.  That's pretty heady stuff from a 25 year old kid, whose entire experience was in live theatre and radio.  Camera angles are played with throughout, lighting and shadows are used to amazingly dramatic effect, mirrors are used, montages are used to show the passage of time.  The breakfast scene, and the dissolution of a marriage told at the breakfast table through a passing series of vignettes is genius.  Everything in Kane's life is a grotesque, often way off the charts in terms of scale.  Check out the fireplaces.  Look at the arches in the house.  Everything is HUGE.  These items are meant to tell a story.  

I'm going to comment on just one more thing that you may not have noticed, but I did, and then I'm stopping discussion of the visual, because, again, I'll be here all damned day.  Just before the final shot of the film, as the treasures that Kane has hoarded are panned across, something you may not have caught is that every object that plays a key moment in a scene earlier in the film is shown.  There's Kane's trophy that was presented to him by the staff of the paper, then the headboard from the bed that Kane moved into the newspaper office.  It's meant to show us that nothing the man touched was too small to keep, and NONE of it gave him any pleasure, except as a sort of museum to his own life.  And of course, the sled gets thrown in the fire, which leads to the final shot I described above.  The film, ultimately, asks the question...to what end?   What does it all mean?  Know what the title was supposed to be?  "John Q," or "American."  Little tougher film to stomach when its viewed as a morality play about ALL of us, rather than a scathing lampooning of one specific individual.  And that's what this film is, ultimately.  What drives us?  What gives us pleasure?  What can we live without?  What can't we?  What do our things say about us, and is Kane's perverse manner of holding onto things really just a metaphor for memory?

Dammit.  I can't.  I have to talk more about the visual, and its effect on the story.  Look, it's 2016.  This film is 75 years old.  We have technology that can create worlds that don't exist, and show us things in our world that are too hard to capture visually.  Want a guy to get run over by a car?  CGI!  Yet here is the greatest film ever made, and almost all of it is shot in the camera using either practical effects or miniatures.  The visually stunning political rally?  It's a photograph with holes pricked in it, behind which light was passed, which gives the illusion of movement.   Kane's shoes are shown in several shots, because the fucking camera was dug into the floor.  Why?  Because a shot of the top of his shoes wouldn't feel the same.  Anyway, we have nearly unlimited technology available to us now, and still, we can't achieve this.  Film can't make us feel the way this one does by visual power any longer.  The focus is grandeur, and the details present in those.  Welles was reduced to finding the details in the mundane, because that's what was available.  Amazing.

Acting in this film is tremendous, top to bottom.  Actors often talk on top of each other, while maintaining their focus.  Know what that sounds like?  Real life.  Try having a conversation with someone.  Watch how you don't wait until they're done talking.  Watch how often you interrupt, or they do, or how you express similar ideas at the same time.  Welles grabbed that idea and throttled it in this film.  Especially Kane.  Maybe that was yet another choice, meant to show how little Kane listened, or how much he wanted to be heard.  And again...is that Kane, or is that all of us?  Anyway, this film is played almost entirely by complete rookies from the Mercury Theatre, including Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, and Everett Sloane.  The ensemble work is tremendous, and characters are interesting, deep, and focused.  Like the visual.  Ha!

If one could quibble with something on this film...it's the plot.  I've been pondering this a lot.  It doesn't seem as the plot really goes anywhere.  And the more I think about it, the more I think that, too, is yet another cheeky turn by Welles and co-script writer Herman J. Mankiewicz.  The story being so dissatisfying, if you will, is because the message it is conveying is one of dissatisfaction.  Work with me on this.  It works.

Bernard Herrmann wrote the score, and this, like everyone else involved, was his first film.  That his score is largely unremarkable is no reflection of its greatness.  It is just overshadowed, often literally, by what happens to us visually.   Herrmann is one of Hollywood's treasures, as his career not only included this film, but the score for "Taxi Driver" and "Psycho" as well.  Tell me if you remember the music from either of those.  I'm guessing you do.  If John Williams didn't exist, we'd be talking about Herrmann as the greatest of Hollywood's composers.

You know, I tend to get into directors a lot in these.  I am an idiot.  Gregg Toland is the cinematographer, and he deserves just as much praise as I gave Welles above.  I forget all the time that there is a person responsible for the composition of the photographs we see, and that guy was Toland.  I've short-changed him.  The guy probably did most of the work.  So, I mentioned him.  And now we know he did it.

I'd love to drone on about this film.  I can't, because as soon as I start, I'll never stop.  Here's what I want you to do.  I want you to watch it.  I want you to watch it like an artist.  Don't go into this movie expecting it's going to affect you like "Pretty Woman" does.  It's not even going to get you like "Star Wars" does.  It's going to get you like looking at the Sistine Chapel does.  It's going to get you to think..."Really?  You thought of THAT, too?  DAMN!"  Every brush stroke in this masterpiece only makes sense when all the brush strokes are viewed, yet one could get lost just looking at the brush strokes.
 
Yes.  This film is that great.

Everything you've heard about it is true.  It requires you to think.  It requires you to pay attention.  It requires you to listen.  It's high art, folks, and high art is often lost on the masses.  I'm trusting you, gentle reader, not to be among the masses.

And let me just say this.  I'm not educated about film.  And as I've said countless times, I don't read Ebert's essays until I'm done.  Well.  This uneducated simpleton nailed it.  At least I nailed it as far as Ebert's concerned.  His essay is here.