1941 drama, dir. Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore;
ImdB /
allmovie. The
newspaper magnate has died, and a reporter goes looking for a unique
angle on the story that everybody is writing.
In some ways I found this very good; in others I found it
remarkably heavy-handed. I suspect, given that even flashbacks were
still quite unusual in film, that Welles deliberately made it even
easier than usual to understand what was going on, but as a result it
often comes over more as a pot of message than as a drama.
Cinematographically (with the great Gregg Toland as director of
photography) it's splendid: Welles insisted on a lot of upward shots
meaning that sets had to be built with ceilings, but the technique of
deep focus to have both foreground and background elements of a scene
sharp at the same time was also innovative, and it's used well here.
The dolly shot with the camera moving "through" a sign has become a
cliché, but I think this may have been the first time it was done,
certainly the first time it was widely noticed.
Obviously Howard Hughes was one of the inspirations, but Marion Davies
was actually good at acting even without Hughes boosting her; Susan
here is simply unsuited for the sort of singing Kane wants her to do,
and knows it. Really, Comingore portrays her more as someone who
appeals to Kane simply because she is one of the few people who isn't
in awe of his legend, and even she ends up having a mind of her own
and not wanting to stay where she's put..
I think it's worth bearing in mind that hard-hitting stories were in
fashion, or at least stories that seemed hard-hitting; John Ford's
film of The Grapes of Wrath had come out the previous year (also
with Toland as director of photography), though that was rather
watered down from the book, including getting a relatively happy
ending. At the same time, RKO was profitable and wanted some critical
credibility with more highbrow films, and Welles' theatrical ambitions
had failed after The War of the Worlds, so he was ready to be lured
in with money and a promise of creative freedom. (At that, his Heart
of Darkness failed because he couldn't trim the budget, and shooting
for this started in partial secrecy so that there could be a
substantial body of footage before anyone was in a position to tell
Welles to stop.)
We saw, up front, that nobody was there to hear Kane mutter
"rosebud", even if the butler later claims that he heard it. Are we
supposed to mistrust everything, then? In which case there's nothing
left, because it's all reportage.
But more significant to me is the final speech: if the reporters had
been given a signed note from Kane explaining exactly the significance
of "rosebud", it wouldn't have helped them understand the man any
better. In the end, there is nothing in the middle of the magnate;
it's just the process of getting there and finding out that has been
interesting.
So I end up with very mixed feelings. Beautiful shooting, fine sets
and locations, mostly good but not great acting, but all in service to
clunkingly simplistic characters. I can accept the good bits and
ignore the bad, but I find myself unlikely to feel enthusiastic about
watching it again.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.