Cinema: Kane Case

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So sharply does Citizen Kane veer from cinema cliche, it hardly seems like a movie. There are some extraordinary technical novelties through which Welles and wiry, experienced little Photographer Gregg Toland have given the camera a new elo quence — for example, the "stolen" newsreels, the aged and streaked documentary shots. When Susan makes her disastrous operatic debut, the camera tells the story by climbing high up among the flies to find two stagehands — one with his hand pinching his nose in disgust. Always the camera seems to be giving the narrative a special meaning where it will help most: picturing a small bottle beside a tumbler when Susan Kane is lying drugged with an overdose of sedatives, exploring the love nest and the family breakfast table like a pair of prying eyes and ears.

Orson Welles treats the audience like a jury, calling up the witnesses, letting them offer the evidence, injecting no opinions of his own. He merely sees that their stories are told with absorbing clarity. Unforgettable are such scenes as the spanning of Kane's first marriage in a single conversation, the silly immensity of the castle halls which echo the flat whines of Susan.

Hollywood claimed Welles never would make the grade. From the moment he arrived there its citizens resented him and his Martians and his youth and his talent. When he grew a beard for his first film, a sporty pressagent sent him a bearded ham for Christmas; while he was dining out one evening, a playful actor cut off his tie with a table knife; columnists dubbed him with nicknames like "Little Orson Annie." At announcements that his first two productions had been called off, the town nodded knowingly. He was just a big bag of publicity.

But whatever Orson Welles did do, Hollywood was pretty sure it would break all the rules. Hollywood was right.