Citizen Kane: Difference between revisions

Aside from its famous ending, ''Kane'' is best remembered for pissing off William Randolph Hearst, who thought that the title character resembled him a little ''too'' much -- or perhaps he was angry that Welles's portrayal of Kane's mistress had destroyed the career and reputation of Marion Davies, Hearst's real life mistress. (In reality, Davies was a superb comedienne and a savvy businesswoman who had actually ''saved'' Hearst's publishing empire by giving him $1 million after he lost everything - and that was money she'd earned on the screen.) Welles denied that Kane was based on Hearst or any other specific individual, and later expressed regret that the character of Kane's mistress (which was actually based on the wives of Samuel Insull and Harold Fowler McCormick) was assumed by most moviegoers to be an [[Expy]] of Davies. No matter the reason, though, Hearst used his influence to kill any chance the film (and even some later Welles-directed films) had for commercial success.

 

 

Contrast ''[[Plan Nine From Outer Space]]'' or ''[[The Room]]''.

 

[[Trope Codifier]] and [[Family Guy (Animation)|indirect]] [[Trope Namer]] for [[It Was His Sled]].

 

* [[Academy Award]]: Famous for the awards it lost to ''[[How Green Was My Valley]]'' and others, but it did win Best Original Screenplay, shared by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Welles.

* [[Anachronic Order]]

* [[And Starring]]: The final image of the credits, after all the secondary characters have had clips shown of them with their actors' names, is a list of the bit part actors. Then at the bottom it says "[[Orson Welles]] as Kane".

* [[Aside Glance]]:

{{quote| '''Thatcher:''' "I think it would be fun to run a newspaper." Hmmph!}}

'''Charles Foster Kane:''' I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.<br />

'''[[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Thatcher:]]''' What would you like to have been? <br />

* [[I Just Want to Be Loved]]: This is Kane's main motivation. [[Deconstructed]], as, despite how innocuous a motivation it seems, it causes him to be a [[Jerkass]].

* [[I Take Offense to That Last One]]:

{{quote| '''Charles Foster Kane:''' You long-faced, overdressed anarchist.<br />

'''Leland:''' I am not overdressed. }}

{{quote| '''Kane:''' [pleading] Don't go, Susan. You mustn't go. You can't do this to me.<br />

'''Susan:''' I see. So it's you who this is being done to. It's not me at all. Not how I feel. Not what it means to me.'' [laughs] ''I can't do this to you? [odd smile] [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Oh, yes I can.]] }}

* [[It Will Never Catch On]]: Kane in 1935: "You can take my word for it: there'll be no war." [[World War II|Uh-huh]].

* [[Jump Scare]]: The {{spoiler|screeching parrot}} near the climax of the film.

* [[Posthumous Character]]: Charles Foster Kane.

* [[Pretty in Mink]]: his two wives naturally wore a few furs.

* [[Red Scare]]: Thatcher accused Kane of being a commie near the beginning of the movie. Remember, this was before the US got into [[World War Two]].

* [[Retraux]]: Welles scratched the "newsreel" with sandpaper to make the "old" footage look old.

** The 2011 DVD/Blu-ray release credits editor Robert Wise with this. Thankfully, those involved with digitally remastering the film for high-definition realized this was intentional and didn't fix it.

** The film actually attempts to avert this by having Hearst mentioned by name in an early scene (the reporters discussing the newsreel), establishing Kane as a different individual.

** But also shoots itself in the foot in the first scene with Kane as played by Orson Welles, in which he says: "You provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war". Substitute "pictures" for "prose poems", and this is a word-for-word quote of something Hearst himself said to a photographer.

* [[Spinning Paper]]: A standard trope of early 1930s "B" movies, especially in films dealing with organized crime. It went out of style at around the time the [[Hays Code]] was adopted; any use after the mid 1930's is a deliberate invocation of the trope as tribute and parody. ''Citizen Kane'' is one of these. Making later parodies parody parodies.

* [[Stage Mom]]: At their first meeting Susan tells Kane it was really her mother's ambition for her to be an opera singer.

** Welles himself is an interesting aversion. He was a star since age 16, and became famous for his theatre and (cough) [[The War of the Worlds|radio]], and had in fact made three films prior to this (a bizarre short in 1934, a 40-minute film that was intended to be part of a hybrid stage play/movie performance in 1938, and he narrated a version of Swiss Family Robinson a year before Kane came out), but the movie almost destroyed his career.

* [[Stock Footage]]: The film contains a lot of this. For example, the newsreel has a scene where a man speaks to a political rally, denouncing Kane as a fascient. The crowd was simply stock footage and the man was an actor, filmed in a low-angle shot to hide the fact that no crowd was present. The background jungle footage for the picnic scene was lifted from ''[[King Kong|Son of Kong]]'' and, in an infamous case of [[Stock Footage Failure]], you can plainly see pterodactyls.