Is CK chilly, hence "shallow"?

[Colmena]

Concerning CK as a "shallow masterpiece," the mixed complaint /honor put forward by Kael and agreed to by many others (e.g. someone in the recent thread on CK and Vertigo), I take it the complaint part addresses two aspects:

1) The failure of the quest: The closing Rosebud disclosure is inert, anticlimactic, "just another piece in the puzzle"-- and in general we don't arrive at any significant penetration into What CFK is about. The various debriefings don't integrate. In sum, No Trespassing.

2) The story is cold, chilly (Welles himself made some comment to this effect).... and so unfelt by us, the audience.

I'd like to know if anyone has anything to say about this second point. Is CK a cold movie, or is there some warmth in there? More specifically: Do you feel for the plight of CFK.... given so much (money, intelligence, looks, charisma, energy etc), and yet losing everything. Now all alone in his hollow castle, deserted by his wife (for whom the Castle was built, supposedly)...then finding the snowglobe, crying (for...??), and dying... Or is he such an ego-maniac(?) that you say, He deserved his comeuppance, and I do feel his plight. Hence, it's a chilly movie.... and a shallow masterpiece...?

The most important note of concern for Kane as a figure of pathos that takes place within the movie comes when Thomson says "You know, all the same I feel kind of sorry for Mr Kane," and Susan replies, with real intensity, "Don't you think that I do?"

So, in regard to CK as a "shallow masterpiece" or not-- which would make it a profound or affecting masterpiece (?)-- do you agree with Susan, and feel for Kane's sorry fate?

Or are you so caught up in the complex showy dazzle of it (the "masterpiece" part that Kael concedes, I assume) that the underlying sad "failure story" (OW) doesn't push itself upon you?

Colmena

[mido505]

Colomena:

I am the "someone" who posted about Kane being a shallow masterpiece in the Vertigo thread. Here is what I wrote:

Citizen Kane is the anti-Vertigo, in that it is anti-psychology. It is a “shallow masterpiece”, as Pauline Kael once noted (although she missed the point of her own observation); despite the big reveal at the end we really know as little about Kane at the picture’s finish as we do at the beginning. Citizen Kane is a film about surfaces because life is about surfaces; human psychology is ultimately an impenetrable mystery, and motivation can only be guessed at without certainty. Citizen Kane initially appears to be the more superficial of the two films, but is ultimately the more profound, in that it respects the inscrutability of a man’s soul, instead of reducing it to one director’s kinky obsessions.

Kane is shallow the way a mirror is shallow, yet place a subject between two of them, and it will be reflected into infinity, as Kane is reflected into infinity as he stiffly walks from Susan's vandalized sleeping chamber. Sometimes the reflection is clear; sometimes it is distorted, as the reflection of a dying Kane is distorted in the shards of the shattered ornament in the film's dreamlike opening. Kane shows us the clear and distorted details of a man's life; yet Kane remains a mystery at film's end, as all men and women remain a mystery to other men and women. Can you say you really know your wife, your husband, your children, your parents, your friends, your self? As the enigmatic Tanya wearily stated at the end of Tough of Evil, "what does it matter what you say about people?"

A man's soul is infinite; it contains multitudes; and even the most simple soul contains nooks and shadowy recesses that can suddenly and without notice be thrown open to the light of day. A film like Vertigo is considered profound because it can be explained by its director's psychological peculiarities; Kane can not be explained, so Citizen Kane is considered shallow. Yet Kane, with its dazzling array of surfaces, its maze of contradictions, its vitality and exaggeration, its magic and misdirection, is ultimately the richer film, and more true. As Pilate asked, "What is truth?" As Welles once pointed out, James Cagney, when performing, was never real, but was always true. Citizen Kane is the same.

Is Kane cold? Emotionless? On the contrary, Kane is a rich emotional tapestry. There is a delicate sensibility at work behind all the bravura; Kane is full of extraordinary emotional moments:

The look on Mrs. Kane's face as she yells "Charles" out the window at her son. In fact, all of Agnes Moorehead's performance.

Susan Alexander" "Well, what do you know, it's morning already..."

Kane giving up his business empire: "I always gagged on that silver spoon."

Bernstein's story of the girl in the white dress: "I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all. But I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I hadn't thought of that girl."

Jed Leland in the old folk's home: "Maybe I wasn't his friend, but if I wasn't, he never had one."

The look of abject terror on Susan Alexander's face during her opera debut.

Kane's wife, Emily, to her husband, in his lover's apartment: "You decided what you were going to do, Charles, some time ago."

An impotent, enraged Kane, to his nemesis, Gettys: "Don't worry about me. I'm Charles Foster Kane! I'm no cheap, crooked politician, trying to save himself from the consequences of his crimes. Gettys! I'm going to send you to Sing Sing! Sing Sing Gettys! Sing Sing!"

I could go on. So many beautiful moments. Kane cold? I've seen it over a hundred times, and the hair still goes up on the back of my neck as the camera tracks in on burning Rosebud, that dollar book Freudian gag, that cheap gimmick that explains everything and nothing, as Hermann's remarkably poignant score soars. In the right mood, that ending will make me cry. No trespassing, indeed.

[Roger Ryan]

I completely agree with "mido505". We've alluded to this idea in other threads on KANE, but Thompson's fixation on finding the meaning of the word "Rosebud" partially blinds him to the bigger reveal: everything he is told by Thatcher, Susan, Bernstein, Leland and Raymond is, essentially, true. That there are contradictions in those perceptions is only because an individual cannot be defined by one idea...or word.

If the film appears "shallow", it is only because we don't recognize this truth in ourselves; we're like Thompson, not realizing that our own fruitless search for a definitive meaning is the same search Kane was on.

[Colmena]

Thanks for your replies, and esp Mido's very extensive one!

It appears that I did not make my query clear. I pointed to two reasons why CK might be identified as shallow: a) because of the failure Rosebud to deliver the goods, the no trespassing opacity of Kane, etc. or b) because CK is "chilly," i.e. because we do not feel for Kane's situation.

The second is my interest here: Is CF Kane a tragic, self-destructive figure whom we feel for-- as we feel for Lear's self-destructive and tragic situation...-- or is this tale so chilly that we do not feel for Kane? And then, since we do not feel for Kane.... we end up with a shallow experience, and a shallow masterpiece?

These aspects can intersect, since if Kane is completely opaque, then he is harder to feel for... but I'm trying to distinguish them.

Colmena

[Roger Ryan]

KANE will be "chilly" for some, but not for others. Some viewers have great trouble identifying with anti-heroes and see nothing of Kane in themselves. They require that identification in order to become emotionally involved in the story. I've been reading of viewers who can not continue watching something like BREAKING BAD because they identified with the protagonist in the first two seasons, but are unable to enjoy the subsequent ones because they feel the protagonist has been corrupted. Personally, I can identify with a part of every character on that show. Some films create an emotional connection through their ideas. I am always emotionally moved by the finale of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE; the character of Alex (and most everyone else) is reprehensible and, yet, the idea put forth involves me emotionally. KANE is like this as well: the statement being made is fairly profound so I have an emotional attachment to it.

Apart from this, there are plenty of traditionally emotional moments as "mido 505" pointed out. So, neither chilly nor shallow.

[mido505]

Colmena:

Thank you for your clarification. Let me see if I can be helpful. The paradox, and the genius of Citizen Kane, is that most of us, as audience members, can identify with just about every character in the movie except the central one. We can easily see ourselves as the concerned mother, the abused child, the betrayed best friend, the loyal functionary, the scorned wife, the insecure mistress, the dogged professional. What we cannot identify with is this giant, this plutocrat plucked from obscurity into unfathomable riches; a man of immense power and almost total freedom, who influences the destinies of millions; a man who is able to take the loot of the world, and build a fairy tale castle of his own imagining. Add to this the fact that this colossus is portrayed by another giant, vital, protean, and touched by genius, and you are left with a monolith at the center of the film that can scarcely be approached. Like the giant black slab in Kubrick's masterpiece, Kane is a cold, forbidding impenetrable mystery that contains an infinitude of worlds. Kane's biological father is not the only person who "can't get at him"; we can't either.

As we can't easily identify with Kane, we react to him, as the other characters in the film react to him, absorbing some of their point of view in the process. We get to know them as they get to know him, and themselves. Interestingly, all of these characters who have come into Kane's orbit have achieved some kind of self knowledge as they approach the end of their lives, as they approach death. Did Kane? Was Rosebud for his understanding, and not for ours?

For Death is the one thing that Kane shares with them, and with us. We all face death. And as Kane ages, and approaches death, he ceases to be remote: Maurice Seiderman's brilliant old age make up buries Welles and brings Kane into focus. We begin to feel for Lear when he ceases to be king; we begin to feel for Kane as he becomes the doddering old person we too will become. We will all, eventually, be a little "funny" sometimes. We will all, likely, die alone.

Welles finally felt it when he destroys Susan's bedchamber, and we do too.

William Randolph Hearst famously feared death, would not allow the word to be uttered in his presence. All men of power, large and small, fear death, because it is the one thing they cannot control. We cannot control it, either. For all his immense otherness, Kane is us.

If we accept this Truth, Citizen Kane is hardly shallow, hardly cold. If we don't...

[Glenn Anders]

Colomena: This exchange has been a brilliant one, and your contribution perhaps the most brilliant of all, now summing up the paradox of Charles Foster Kane, as it might be applied in a self-analytical way by George Orson Welles to his central character, himself and American Life in general. That's where the personal triumph and tragedy of CITIZEN KANE lies. As Welles told Ruth Warrick, this was to be a film about the kind of man Americans were encouraged to admire and emulate. He didn't go quite so far, but I think that he meant, "worship." Kane is in the line of the Great Chain of Being: God, gods, saints, priests, emperors, kings, aristocracy, "men of action," tycoons, robber barons . . . .

Charles Foster Kane, as mido505 implies, is the sum of his resentments, a man who happened to lose the one key element which might have made him a better human being. As the main character in David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DRIVE, he remembers his life in shattered fragments, and that sled, "Rosebud," represents the love he lost, perhaps never had (thinking of his dysfunctional parents); thus, as Jed Leland told "the faceless reporter," the love he couldn't give because he didn't have any to give.

I had a sled like that myself once -- "A Flexible Flyer."

Don't know what happened to it. Someone took it, I think. Maybe not.

And, like mido505, don't you think the hair on the back of my head goes up when I see the fire ruthlessly consuming that sled? It's been that way ever since I first saw CITIZEN KANE at the age of nine. But I don't cry anymore.

And mido505 is right, too, that we eventually tend to become doddering old fools . . . and if we do not, time and loss begin to make us feel we are becoming so.

I got my first real cane the other day, by FEDEX. Now, almost literally, I can't live without it.

Glenn

[Colmena]

Thank you for your kind words, Glenn.

Let me add that in general I've been treated very hospitably here, as a newbie. I think it speaks well of Welles that the atmosphere here is as generous as it is.

I don't use a cane... but I'm now 63, and living alone, in my modest Xanadu.

The amazing thing is that Welles at 25 would seize upon this kind of a story, and so you end up with this dazzling young man's version of an old man's tale. What a package!

On 416 of Thomson's bio, there is a brief description of Welles himself, ending up old and alone. Not in a gloomy castle, but in some LA "crummy little tract house." A haunting scene...

As to Rosebud and all that, I've come to the extreme maximalist position: that it is highly meaningful, and moreover (contra Thompson & Thomson, et al) a crucial piece of the puzzle of CFK. The final disclosure doesn't wrap up the meaning of Rosebud, but sends us off to watch it again, now knowing what we know... CK encourages us to watch it another time because it so obviously reverts to its beginning, the way that the steady approach to the mysterious Xanadu, with that single light aglow, our constant target as we slowly approach... is reversed at the end, as we retreat, with the light now off, and the smoke from the incinerated sled, wafting away into oblivion. But we have been granted the secret that no one in this movie, apart from Kane himself (who is now as departed as the sled, his light is off) knows.... So, what can we accomplish, watching it a second time, now that we know what we do?

When you see CK the first time around you say, "Ah-hah, it's the sled!" The quest is over.
When you see it the second time, at the end you register: It's the original loss, in a life of losses...

That's why you (Glenn) were so fortunate that first time around, as a child, because you could immediately register it correctly, as a child's loss, instead of just seeing the burning sled as a query that had finally been answered.

[Glenn Anders]

Yes, Colmena. True. Thank you.

[Colmena]

Mido,

I just re-read your post... which I failed to reply to.
Much appreciated!

In regard to Kane (and Welles) being approachable (by us, the audience, and by the other participants in this tale), for me one of the most important moments in the film comes when Thompson says "I kind of feel sorry for Mr. Kane," and then Susan wails "Don't you think that I do!?" I can't think of more heartfelt words in the entire movie as her wail. The intensity is similar to the point when Kane first whispers "Rosebud..." (after smashing up her room) and begins to cry.