10 Great Screenplays: #3 Citizen Kane (1941)

What is there left to be said about Citizen Kane, Orson Welle's classic masterpiece? It's impressionistic, it's filmmaking at its artistic best, and it's cinematography and directing is simply fantastic. There's a reason it belongs at the top of virtually every "best films" list. Orson Welles had control of the project from beginning to end and the result was marvelous. However, the story of an immoral newspaper magnate seemed to many an attack on one of the most powerful men in America, especially in Hollywood, at the time of the film's release, William Randolph Hearst. As a result, Welles was black-balled and never able to surpass his debut film.

Don't you love megalomania?

Now, onto the writing. After compiling a massive amount of notes on figures like William Randolph Hurst, Welles commissioned Herman Mankiewicz to write the first draft of the screenplay under the working title American. Meanwhile, Welles worked on his own version of American. Both wanted to capture the idea of a man's life being remembered by those who knew him and the image of the man changes with each telling. Welles compared his work to Mankiewicz's, merged them, and they reworked the entire thing over and over until Welles was satisfied. 

The story centers on the recently deceased Charles Foster Kane, a newspaper magnate who at one point held the power to send himself to the White House. His last word, "Rosebud," baffles everyone. A reporter, Thompson, is sent out to uncover it's meaning and perhaps find a new angle on Kane's life that the other media sources were missing. 

He first goes to meet Kane's second wife, a singer in a lowly dive, but she is unable to give the reporter anything. Then, he requests to see the memoirs of Kane's banker and long-time legal guardian, Walter Parks Thatcher. Although they are very informative on a number of things regarding Kane's childhood, Thompson can't discover anything mentioning "Rosebud." 

It's a shame the newspapermen didn't have a window into Kane's thoughts like the audience did.

After that, Thompson interviews Bernstein, a friend of Kane's who was there when he started building his journalistic empire. More interesting information is revealed, but not the information Thompson was looking for. Also, Jedediah Leland, once Kane's best friend, can't fill him in on Rosebud. No one can.

At its essence, this is the story of a futile search for a secret. The kind of secret perhaps only one person knows, the individual, the one who takes it to the grave with him. On top of that, it's a tale of perspective. The first of its kind, typical of the visionary work Orson Welles has become identified with (see his War of the Worlds radio broadcast as further proof). This part of what makes the screenplay for Citizen Kane so special. It's focus is definitely not on plot, it's focused on character and idea. Difficult to pull off, but as you can guess, the results are absolutely splendid. 

The screenplay was the only thing connected with Citizen Kane that William Randolph Hearst couldn't stop from receiving an Oscar, though I'm sure he tried.