FILM: The Legacy
of Citizen Kane
Based on the life of media magnate William Randolph Hearst, Citizen Kane (1941) was the first feature film directed by theatre and radio wunderkind Orson Welles. Steeped in controversy by the time it debuted, Kane was pilloried in Hearst’s newspapers and viewed with suspicion by many in the Hollywood community because of its stylistic self-consciousness and its downbeat narrative. While it may come as a surprise to those who now know the film through its current status atop many of the
lists identifying the great motion pictures, Citizen Kane was regarded as something of a failure at the time of its release,
and Welles’s later career was dogged by studio interference
and inadequate budgets.
How, then, has the film come to acquire the reputation that it possesses today? Why, among all the films released by Hollywood during the studio era, has it come to define the medium more definitively than any other? By examining Citizen Kane’s production circumstances, its initial and subsequent reception, and, most importantly, its formal features, we can identify the reasons the film has attained its meteoric status. A thorough analysis of Kane’s stylistic and narrative innovations can provide us with considerable insight into why the film continues to
be regarded as one of the medium’s signal achievements.
Citizen Kane has long been regarded as a textbook example of stylistic ingenuity and a robust demonstration of the pleasure the medium can afford. This seminar will afford its participants with an arsenal of viewing skills to enhance their appreciation of this cinematic classic.
“I DON'T THINK ANY WORD CAN EXPLAIN A MAN'S LIFE. NO, I GUESS
ROSEBUD IS JUST A... PIECE IN A JIGSAW PUZZLE... A MISSING PIECE”
Charles Foster Kane
LEADER
Charlie Keil is the Director of the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. He regularly begins his Introduction to Cinema courses with a screening of Citizen Kane as a way to alert students to the power of film as a medium of complexity and expressive potential.
BOOK
Participants are required to obtain the specified editions in order to facilitate the group’s ability to find and cite portions of the text during discussion.
Pauline Kael, The Citizen Kane Book
Bantam Doubleday Dell (1974)
ISBN-10: 0553142739; ISBN-13: 9780553142730
(contains both the shooting script and Pauline Kael’s contentious essay “Raising Kane”).
Try to watch Orson Wells’ Citizen Kane (1941) a few times. | 
