Citizen Kane - Writing

  Citizen Kane is a film that the audience never fully understands what is behind Charles Foster Kane or “Rosebud.” We never fully grasp the true nature of his character and what drives him to keep building Xanadu and collecting countless statues. Is it his separation from his mother? Memories of a lost childhood? Kane's perpetual isolation? The one thing that we lack in the film is Kane telling his story. So, seventy years later we are still debating.

There were five total writers who worked on Citizen Kane. Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles are credited with writing the original screenplay though there have been many arguments as to who the “true” writer of Citizen Kane is. Most people agree that Mankeiwicz wrote the original screenplay and Welles made revisions to it and with those revisions truly made it his movie.  Mankiewicz is known for his work on The Wizard of Oz (uncredited), Pride of the Yankees, The Pride of St. Louis, most other movies with "pride" in the title. Welles, who was known as a “prodigy,” began his career in the theater then as a radio actor and, with John Houseman, later formed Mercury Theatre. Prior to Citizen Kane, Welles was best known for his radio adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic, The War of the Worlds. Three other writers were uncredited but are now listed as “contributing writers” with the screenplay of Citizen Kane. John Houseman had worked with Welles during his time in New York and produced Welles’ Too Much Johnson in 1938. He was the “babysitter” to Mankiewicz during his writing of Citizen Kane. Mankiewicz had a notorious drinking problem. Houseman and Welles disagreed on who should get credit for writing Citizen Kane and their friendship ended because of that. Houseman might best be known to a younger generation as the narrator of A Christmas Carol in the Bill Murray movie Scrooged and as the driving instructor in the Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! movie. Roger Q. Denny was also a contributing writer who went on to write many documentary shorts. Mollie Kent had her only writing credit, even though uncredited, on Citizen Kane. She held various “crew” positions, most frequently script supervisor. Her most notable films were Hello, Dolly! and The Manchurian Candidate.

               A theme that dominates the story of Citizen Kane is how difficult it is to find out about a person’s life when they can’t tell the story themselves. Despite all of the stories told, Jerry Thompson doesn’t not find much about the life of Charles Foster Kane. He concludes that there must be more to the man than the stories and all of his possessions. How different would the story be if Kane were able to tell his life story? The viewer is forced to come up with what really was important in Kane’s life. Another theme is that of the American Dream and how it might not be all that it’s cracked up to be. Kane is happy as boy despite being poor. As Thatcher comes and takes Kane away to, what seems to be, the American Dream that is the point where Kane’s life begins to unravel. A snow globe ties the movie together as it is one of the first objects we see in the movie as it falls from Kane’s hand as he dies.  We see it later when Kane accompanies Susan to her apartment for the first time. Later, after Susan leaves him, he trashes her room and finds the snow globe again. The film is pretty much book ended with a sled. We see him playing in the snow with it when Thatcher comes to take him away and once the deal is made it is covered over in snow, possibly signifying the end of his “innocence.” We see it again at the end as it is being consumed by flames as a piece of “junk.” All of these create many layers to film that if one pays attention, along with the cinematic elements, can decipher what is going on.

               All of the characters eloquence is believable. No one seems out of place in their respective positions in the film. Newspapermen talk like newspapermen. The dialogue seems like genuine, realistic speech.