Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane
September 5, 1941
RKO
Historical, Drama, Comedy
DVD
B

While I don't believe this is The Best Movie Ever, or even close, I won't deny that it's a good movie, and in its lighter moments a fun movie.  The movie darkens (literally and figuratively) as it goes on, but the opening newsreel is a delightful little parody in itself.  The story is told over and over, in many forms, from many perspectives, some of them not necessarily the ones we're supposed to be in.  (How would Susan know what audience members were doing during her opera debut?  And then there's the problem of whether anyone actually overheard Kane's famous last words.)  The film looks and to some degree sounds like nothing before it.  (The overlapping dialogue in some scenes may owe something to His Girl Friday, which gave a different but not entirely unlike view of the newspaper business.)  Although we sense Welles's stage roots in some scenes, there are shots that have incredible depth, and sometimes height.  The acting is generally solid.  I didn't find the old-age make-up always believable, and I think the movie is about half an hour too long, but overall I was drawn in and entertained.

Cyril Ring, who has a very small role here, was the villain Yates in The Cocoanuts.  Field Norton was in A Night at the Opera, Ray Flynn in A Day at the Races, Cliff Herd in Room Service, Buck Mack in At the Circus, and Lew Harvey in Go West.  Thomas Pogue was in Andy Hardy Meets Debutante, Arthur Yeoman in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, Joan Blair in The Women, and Jack Egan in Turnabout.  William Alston, Eddie Coke, Monty Ford, Jack Gargan, and Sam Rice were in The Bank Dick.  Frank O'Connor, who's in so many of my earlier movies, appears in the Madison Garden scene.  Buddy Messinger branches out from his usual elevator boy roles to play "Man at Boat Dock," one of many.

George Noisom was in The Wizard of Oz and would go on to It's a Wonderful Life, which also features Tom Coleman, Charles Meakin, and Larry Wheat.  Frank McClure was in His Girl Friday and would appear in Auntie Mame.  Carl Deloro and Hercules Mendez would go on to Casablanca, Suzanne Ridgeway to Road to Morocco, Robert Dudley to Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and Shimen Ruskin to Love and Death.  And, yes, that's Agnes "Endora" Moorehead as Kane's mother, although the only other movie I know I have her in is Charlotte's Web.