Citizen Kane by Mulvey Laura;

Author:Mulvey, Laura;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BFI Publishing
Published: 2019-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

The glass ball at the beginning …

… on Susan’s dressing table …

… at the end, after Susan has left Kane

This scene establishes the presence of the glass ball (which is later going to mean so much to Kane and to constitute the link with his past loss) on Susan’s dressing table, to the left-hand side of her reflection in the mirror. Neither character draws attention to it, nor does the camera, but there it sits, like a narrative time bomb awaiting its moment, for the observant spectator to pick up and take note.

Patterns, symmetries and repetitions order the shape of the film, lying almost imperceptibly under the already complex flashback structure. First and foremost, these patterns confirm the film’s ultimate control over its own sense, within which the investigator and the different narrators function like illusionistically handled marionettes. But the purpose behind the patterning is emotional as well as formal. Although the witnesses are unable to achieve any distance or understanding that can enlighten the Kane enigma, it is their engagement with his character that makes the film moving on an immediate level. Repetitions create resonance, irony and pathos. For instance, Leland ends his narration with the story of his unfinished review of the disastrous Salammbô production. Kane finishes the review in the spirit in which Leland, before falling asleep over his typewriter and a bottle of whisky, had started it.

BERNSTEIN Mr Kane is finishing the notice the way you wanted it. I guess that’ll show you.

The scene is played out in a three-way drama between Leland, Kane and Bernstein. The three, who formed an inseparable triumvirate in New York in the first section of the film, are meeting for the last time in Chicago. The scene and the sense of failure and ridiculousness that has overtaken Kane is heightened by the memory of Leland and Bernstein’s presence when Kane wrote his ‘Declaration of Principles’ in the first half of the film. When, in Susan’s narration, Leland returns the ‘Declaration of Principles’ torn up, along with his golden handshake, the ghost of the old, abandoned idealism hovers ironically over Susan’s attempt to rebel against Kane’s control. The scene ends with his shadow looming over her and darkening her frightened face.

There are three scenes between Kane and Thatcher. The third, which does not appear in the original screenplay, shows Kane forced by the 1929 recession to sell off assets to Thatcher. In certain visual and thematic ways it recalls the first scene between Thatcher and Mrs Kane. Then, Mrs Kane signed away her son to the banker; now Kane himself is signing away his newspapers to him. Before he signs, Kane walks far off into the cavernous office and stands under a high window. The composition, with Thatcher and Bernstein framing it in depth, is somehow reminiscent of Kane as a child playing in the snow, in the background of the shot in which his mother signs the agreement with Thatcher. During this scene, Kane says ironically:

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