Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Citizen Kane: The Greatest Film Ever Made?

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

In 1941, a young artistic prodigy released his first motion picture. It had enormous anticipation, received incredible reviews, and earned nine Academy Award nominations. However, the film was a financial failure because the vast majority of theaters refused to show it. In the 80 years since its release, it has been named the greatest film of all time on multiple lists by critics and directors. Learn more about Citizen Kane. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1941, a young artistic prodigy released his first motion picture. It had enormous anticipation, received incredible reviews, and earned nine Academy Award nominations. However, the film was a financial failure, because the vast majority of theaters refused to show it. In the 80 years since its release, it has been named the greatest film of all time on multiple lists by critics and directors. Learn more about Citizen Kane and why it's considered the greatest movie ever on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now.

Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by rerouted.co. Last week I told you about how I finally purchased the jacket I was looking for. I needed an insulated jacket that was also waterproof. Well, the jacket arrived a few days ago, and I couldn't be happier. The jacket was basically brand new, and I got it for about a quarter to a third of the price of what similar jackets cost brand new online. Rerouted believes that each piece of gear has a story, and they want to help you tell yours.

Before you go and buy your next piece of outdoor or adventure gear, you owe it to yourself to check out re-routed.co, because it could save you a bundle. Once again, that's rerouted.c.O. Orson Wells was unquestionably a genius. In the 1930s, when he was in his early 20s, he had a string of success on both stage and radio. After a meteoric rise where he was making $2,000 a week acting in the middle of the Great Depression, he founded his own acting company at the age of 22, named the Mercury Theater. The first performance by the Mercury Theater was a modern adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar set in a generic 1930s fascist country.

The performance was highly acclaimed and was considered the best adaptation of Shakespeare in a generation. And fun fact, the last surviving member of the 1937 cast of Julius Caesar was Norman Lloyd, who just recently passed away in May 2021 at the age of 106. Wells then created a national media storm with his radio adaptation, of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds. It became famous for being so realistic that some people thought it was an actual Martian invasion. And at this point,

he was only 23. With all that success and talent, studio executives in Hollywood were chomping at the bit to sign Wells to make a deal for motion pitchers. The winner of the bidding war was RKO Radio Pictures. Its president, George Schaefer, gave Wells what was probably

the best contract ever given to a filmmaker, let alone someone who had never made a film before. He was given a two-picture deal, complete creative control on any approved films, and most importantly, he was given the right to approve the final cut, a clause which was almost never given to any directors in Hollywood. After kicking around several ideas, Wells came up with an idea for his first film. It would be a fictional retelling of the story of William Randolph Hearst. Hurst was one of the richest men in the world and one of the most powerful men in America. He was the first real media mogul and owned newspapers across the United States.

In the 1930s, he reached over 20 million people a day via his newspaper empire. He was known for his extravagant spending and the creation of Hearst Castle in California. Wells had no clue what he was doing making a movie, yet he was going to write, direct, produce, and act in the leading role of this film. He recruited many of the members of the Mercury Theater to make up the cast of the film, and none of them had any experience acting on film either. He did have some experience help. He recruited veteran screenwriter Herman J. Mankowitz to help write the script,

and he got Oscar-winning cinematographer Greg Tolan to do the camera work. Part of the secret to the success of Citizen Kane was Orson Well's ignorance of movie-making. He said, quote, I didn't know what you couldn't do. I didn't deliberately set out to invent anything. It just seemed to me, why not? And there's a great gift that ignorance has to bring to anything. That was the gift I brought to Kane. Ignorance. Unquote. The initial working title of the film was The American.

There were many innovative things that Wells did in the production of Citizen Kane. For starters, he had his cast rehearsed, which almost never happens on films, only for stage productions. He developed innovative camera techniques, including extremely low-angle shots, which showed the ceiling of the set, which was almost never done. He actually dug a hole in the studio floor to get the camera low enough. The story had a non-linear narrative, which, while it wasn't the first movie to do it, it was the first to use it that extensively. He used moody lighting, which had only previously been seen in German Expressionist films. He had characters talk over each other, which was also never done, yet it's something

that real people do all the time. His use of sound was innovative and came from his experience doing radio drama. The final product was an incredibly groundbreaking film by someone who had never made a motion picture before. However, the film itself is only half the story. The other half is what happened to the film after it was made. William Randolph Hurst was an extremely powerful man. His power as a newspaper publisher could make or break films,

and he put all his energy into destroying Citizen Kane. Curst papers, unsurprisingly, never ran a review or an advertisement for Citizen Kane. The real damage was done by the pressure he placed on the other Hollywood studios. The other studios came together to try to buy the rights of the movie so they could bury it. At the time, the studios also owned most of the theaters in the United States. Hurst threatened every studio with a ban from his newspapers if they showed Citizen Kane at their theaters. So most of them did not. Hurst papers slandered Wells, and there were attempts to entrap him in uncompromising positions.

Because so many theaters refused to show the film, it lost money. Hearst wasn't angered at the portrayal of himself so much as he was the portrayal of his mistress, Marian Davies. Even though Hurst managed to suppress the film, he wasn't able to prevent the critics from seeing it, and the critical reception was overwhelmingly positive. Life magazine said, quote, few movies have ever come from Hollywood with such powerful narrative, such original technique, and such exciting photography, unquote. John O'Hara of Newsweek called it, quote, the best picture he had ever seen,

and said that Wells was, quote, the best actor in the history of acting. The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote that, quote, it comes close to being the most sensational film ever made in Hollywood, unquote. In fact, up until April 2021, Citizen Kane had a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 115 positive reviews, mostly taken from the period when the film was released, and no negative reviews. However, they dug up an 80-year-old review from the Chicago Tribute, with the title, Citizen Kane fails to impress critic as greatest ever filmed. That dropped the review of Citizen Kane to 99%.

The New York Film Critics Circle named it the best film of the year. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, and it was expected that the film would sweep the Oscars. However, the industry's backlash against the film, due to the Hearst campaign, resulted in the film only winning an Oscar for Best Screenplay. So, okay, Citizen Kane is a good film, but there are other good film, but there are other good films released every year. Where does this idea come from that Citizen Kane is the greatest film of all time? This began with the British magazine's Sight and Sound. It's one of the most respected and longest running magazines about the film industry in the world. In 1952, they came out with a poll

of film critics and directors to ask them what they thought the greatest films of all time were. Everyone who has sent the poll could list 10 films in any order. The films were then ranked by the number of people who put the film on their list. They have conducted the poll every decade since 1952. In the first poll conducted, only 11 years after Citizen Kane was released, the top film was the Italian film, The Bicycle Thieves. Citizen Kane was just outside the top 10. However, in the next five polls in a row, Citizen Kane was ranked number one. This was in 1962, 1982, 1982, and 2002. In the 2012 poll, Citizen's Citizen Kane came in second to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.

The American Film Institute came out of the list of the top 100 films in 1998 and an updated list in 2007. And on both lists, Citizen Kane was listed number one. In 2015, the BBC came out the list of the top 100 American films, and Citizen Kane was number one. Roger Ebert called Citizen Kane the greatest film ever made. There are a host of other lists where if Citizen Kane doesn't rank number one, it usually ranks in the top five or three. 10. If you haven't seen Citizen Kane, you owe it to yourself to see it. However, if you haven't seen it yet, I need to give you a word of warning. Many people going into the film might suffer from something I've called the Citizen Kane effect. Basically, if you know that it's been named the

greatest film ever, and you don't think it's the greatest film you've ever seen, you end up disappointed. You just need to recognize it for what it is, an innovative and great film. Citizen Kane is in my personal top 10 favorite films, but it's not number one. The reason why it's rated number one isn't that everyone thinks it's number one, but simply that so many people think it's great. When Citizen Kane was released, Orson Wells was 26 years old. It was probably the peak of his career. He never got a movie deal this good again. He made many films throughout his career, and most of them were actually really good, even if they didn't make a lot of money. In the 1980s, however, he best became known as a pitchman for Palmison Wine, which is how most people

remember him today. And that's really a shame, because he was unquestionably one of the greatest actors and directors and geniuses of the 20th century. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. Today's five-star review comes from listener Majid Baba over at Podcast Republic. They write, you learn about things that you never thought you'd be interested in. I've used my newfound knowledge to impress friends and family. Gary's voice and sound quality make it an enjoyable listening experience. Thanks, Majid Baba. I can think of no greater compliment than to know I'm helping people look good in front of their friends.

Next time, I recommend making bets with them so you can take their money. Remember, if you leave a five-star review, you too can have your review read on the show.