Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane   

Screenplay by                             Herman J. Mankiewicz

                                                 Orson Welles

Produced by                               Orson Welles

Directed by                                Orson Welles

Cast List:

Orson Welles                           Charles Foster Kane

Joseph Cotton                         Jedediah Leland

Dorothy Comingore                 Susan Alexander

Everett Sloane                         Mr. Bernstein

Ray Collins                               Boss J.W. "Big Jim" Gettys

George Coulouris                    Walter Parks Thatcher

Agnes Moorehead                   Mary Kane

Paul Stewart                             Raymond

Ruth Warrick                           Emily Norton Kane

PROLOGUE

FADE IN:

EXT. XANADU – FAINT DAWN – 1940 (MINIATURE)

Window, very small in the distance, illuminated.

All around this is an almost totally black screen. Now, as the camera moves slowly towards the window which is almost a postage stamp in the frame, other forms appear; barbed wire, cyclone fencing, and now, looming up against an early morning sky, enormous iron grille work. Camera travels up what is now shown to be a gateway of gigantic proportions and holds on the top of it – a huge initial "K" showing darker and darker against the dawn sky. Through this and beyond we see the fairy-tale mountaintop of Xanadu, the great castle a sillhouette as its summit, the little window a distant accent in the darkness.

DISSOLVE:

A SERIES OF SET-UPS, EACH CLOSER TO THE GREAT WINDOW, ALL TELLING SOMETHING OF:

The literally incredible domain of CHARLES FOSTER KANE.

Its right flank resting for nearly forty miles on the Gulf Coast, it truly extends in all directions farther than the eye can see. Designed by nature to be almost completely bare and flat – it was, as will develop, practically all marshland when Kane acquired and changed its face – it is now pleasantly uneven, with its fair share of rolling hills and one very good-sized mountain, all man-made. Almost all the land is improved, either through cultivation for farming purposes of through careful landscaping, in the shape of parks and lakes. The castle dominates itself, an enormous pile, compounded of several genuine castles, of European origin, of varying architecture – dominates the scene, from the very peak of the mountain.

DISSOLVE:

GOLF LINKS (MINIATURE)

Past which we move. The greens are straggly and overgrown, the fairways wild with tropical weeds, the links unused and not seriously tended for a long time.

DISSOLVE OUT:

DISSOLVE IN:

WHAT WAS ONCE A GOOD-SIZED ZOO (MINIATURE)

Of the Hagenbeck type. All that now remains, with one exception, are the individual plots, surrounded by moats, on which the animals are kept, free and yet safe from each other and the landscape at large. (Signs on several of the plots indicate that here there were once tigers, lions, girrafes.)

DISSOLVE:

THE MONKEY TERRACE (MINIATURE)

In the foreground, a great obscene ape is outlined against the dawn murk. He is scratching himself slowly, thoughtfully, looking out across the estates of Charles Foster Kane, to the distant light glowing in the castle on the hill.

DISSOLVE:

THE ALLIGATOR PIT (MINIATURE)

The idiot pile of sleepy dragons. Reflected in the muddy water – the lighted window.

THE LAGOON (MINIATURE)

The boat landing sags. An old newspaper floats on the surface of the water – a copy of the New York Enquirer." As it moves across the frame, it discloses again the reflection of the window in the castle, closer than before.

THE GREAT SWIMMING POOL (MINIATURE)

It is empty. A newspaper blows across the cracked floor of the tank.

DISSOLVE:

THE COTTAGES (MINIATURE)

In the shadows, literally the shadows, of the castle. As we move by, we see that their doors and windows are boarded up and locked, with heavy bars as further protection and sealing.

DISSOLVE OUT:

DISSOLVE IN:

A DRAWBRIDGE (MINIATURE)

Over a wide moat, now stagnant and choked with weeds. We move across it and through a huge solid gateway into a formal garden, perhaps thirty yards wide and one hundred yards deep, which extends right up to the very wall of the castle. The landscaping surrounding it has been sloppy and causal for a long time, but this particular garden has been kept up in perfect shape. As the camera makes its way through it, towards the lighted window of the castle, there are revealed rare and exotic blooms of all kinds. The dominating note is one of almost exaggerated tropical lushness, hanging limp and despairing. Moss, moss, moss. Ankor Wat, the night the last King died.

DISSOLVE:

THE WINDOW (MINIATURE)

Camera moves in until the frame of the window fills the frame of the screen. Suddenly, the light within goes out. This stops the action of the camera and cuts the music which has been accompanying the sequence. In the glass panes of the window, we see reflected the ripe, dreary landscape of Mr. Kane's estate behind and the dawn sky.

DISSOLVE:

INT. KANE'S BEDROOM – FAINT DAWN – 1940

A very long shot of Kane's enormous bed, silhouetted against the enormous window.

DISSOLVE:

INT. KANE'S BEDROOM – FAINT DAWN – 1940

A snow scene. An incredible one. Big, impossible flakes of snow, a too picturesque farmhouse and a snow man. The jingling of sleigh bells in the musical score now makes an ironic reference to Indian Temple bells – the music freezes –

KANE'S OLD OLD VOICE

Rosebud...

The camera pulls back, showing the whole scene to be contained in one of those glass balls which are sold in novelty stores all over the world. A hand – Kane's hand, which has been holding the ball, relaxes. The ball falls out of his hand and bounds down two carpeted steps leading to the bed, the camera following. The ball falls off the last step onto the marble floor where it breaks, the fragments glittering in the first rays of the morning sun. This ray cuts an angular pattern across the floor, suddenly crossed with a thousand bars of light as the blinds are pulled across the window.

The foot of Kane's bed. The camera very close. Outlined against the shuttered window, we can see a form – the form of a nurse, as she pulls the sheet up over his head. The camera follows this action up the length of the bed and arrives at the face after the sheet has covered it.

FADE OUT:

FADE IN:

INT. OF A MOTION PICTURE PROJECTION ROOM

On the screen as the camera moves in are the words:

MAIN TITLE

Stirring, brassy music is heard on the soundtrack (which, of course, sounds more like a soundtrack than ours.)

The screen in the projection room fills our screen as the second title appears:

CREDITS

NOTE: Here follows a typical news digest short, one of the regular monthly or bi-monthly features, based on public events or personalities. These are distinguished from ordinary newsreels and short subjects in that they have a fully developed editorial or storyline. Some of the more obvious characteristics of the "March of Time," for example, as well as other documentary shorts, will be combined to give an authentic impression of this now familiar type of short subject. As is the accepted procedure in these short subjects, a narrator is used as well as explanatory titles.

FADE OUT:

NEWS DIGEST

NARRATOR

Legendary was the Xanadu where Kubla Kahn decreed his stately pleasure dome –

(with quotes in his voice)

"Where twice five miles of fertile ground, with walls and towers were girdled 'round."

(dropping the quotes)

Today, almost as legendary is Florida's XANADU – world's largest private pleasure ground. Here, on the deserts of the Gulf Coast, a private mountain was commissioned, successfully built for its landlord. Here in a private valley, as in the Coleridge poem, "blossoms many an incense-bearing tree." Verily, "a miracle of rare device."

U.S.A.

CHARLES FOSTER KANE

Opening shot of great desolate expanse of Florida coastline (1940 – DAY)

DISSOLVE:

SERIES OF SHOTS

Showing various aspects of Xanadu, all as they might be photographed by an ordinary newsreel cameraman – nicely photographed, but not atmospheric to the extreme extent of the Prologue (1940).

NARRATOR

(dropping the quotes)

Here, for Xanadu's landlord, will be held 1940's biggest, strangest funeral; here this week is laid to rest a potent figure of our Century – America's Kubla Kahn – Charles Foster Kane. In journalism's history, other names are honored more than Charles Foster Kane's, more justly revered. Among publishers, second only to James Gordon Bennet the First: his dashing, expatriate son; England's Northcliffe and Beaverbrook; Chicago's Patterson and McCormick;

TITLE:

"TO FORTY-FOUR MILLION U.S. NEWS BUYERS, MORE NEWSWORTHY THAN THE NAMES IN HIS OWN HEADLINES, WAS KANE HIMSELF, GREATEST NEWSPAPER TYCOON OF THIS OR ANY OTHER GENERATION."

Shot of a huge, screen-filling picture of Kane. Pull back to show that it is a picture on the front page of the "Enquirer," surrounded by the reversed rules of mourning, with masthead and headlines. (1940)

DISSOLVE:

A GREAT NUMBER OF HEADLINES

Set in different types and different styles, obviously from different papers, all announcing Kane's death, all appearing over photographs of Kane himself (perhaps a fifth of the headlines are in foreign languages). An important item in connection with the headlines is that many of them – positively not all – reveal passionately conflicting opinions about Kane. Thus, they contain variously the words "patriot," "democrat," "pacifist," "war-monger," "traitor," "idealist," "American," etc.

TITLE:

"1895 TO 1940 – ALL OF THESE YEARS HE COVERED, MANY OF THESE YEARS HE WAS."

Newsreel shots of San Francisco during and after the fire, followed by shots of special trains with large streamers: "Kane Relief Organization." Over these shots superimpose the date – 1906.

Artist's painting of Foch's railroad car and peace negotiators, if actual newsreel shot unavailable. Over this shot sumperimpose the date – 1918.

NARRATOR

Denver's Bonfils and Sommes; New York's late, great Joseph Pulitzer; America's emperor of the news syndicate, another editorialist and landlord, the still mighty and once mightier Hearst. Great names all of them – but none of them so loved, hated, feared, so often spoken – as Charles Foster Kane. The San Francisco earthquake. First with the news were the Kane papers. First with Relief of the Sufferers, First with the news of their Relief of the Sufferers. Kane papers scoop the world on the Armistice – publish, eight hours before competitors, complete details of the Armistice teams granted the Germans by Marshall Foch from his railroad car in the Forest of Compeigne. For forty years appeared in Kane newsprint no public issue on which Kane papers took no stand. No public man whom Kane himself did not support or denounce – often support, then denounce. Its humble beginnings, a dying dailey –

Shots with the date – 1898 (to be supplied)

Shots with the date – 1910 (to be supplied)

Shots with the date – 1922 (to be supplied)

Headlines, cartoons, contemporary newreels or stills of the following:

1. WOMAN SUFFRAGE

The celebrated newsreel shot of about 1914.

2. PROHIBITION

Breaking up of a speakeasy and such.

3. T.V.A.

4. LABOR RIOTS

Brief clips of old newreel shots of William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Stalin, Walter P. Thatcher, Al Smith, McKinley, Landon, Franklin D. Roosevelt and such. Also, recent newsreels of the elderly Kane with such Nazis as Hitler and Goering; and England's Chamberlain and Churchill.

Shot of a ramshackle building with old-fashioned presses showing through plate glass windows and the name "Enquirer" in old-fashioned gold letters. (1892)

DISSOLVE:

NARRATOR

Kane's empire, in its glory, held dominion over thirty-seven newpapers, thirteen magazines, a radio network. An empire upon an empire. The first of grocery stores, paper mills, apartment buildings, factories, forests, ocean-liners – An empire through which for fifty years flowed, in an unending stream, the wealth of the earth's third richest gold mine... Famed in American legend is the origin of the Kane fortune... How, to boarding housekeeper Mary Kane, by a defaulting boarder, in 1868 was left the supposedly worthless deed to an abandoned mine shaft: The Colorado Lode.

The magnificent Enquirer Building of today.

1891-1911 – a map of the USA, covering the entire screen, which in animated diagram shows the Kane publications spreading from city to city. Starting from New York, minature newboys speed madly to Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Atlanta, El Paso, etc., screaming "Wuxtry, Kane Papers, Wuxtry."

Shot of a large mine going full blast, chimneys belching smoke, trains moving in and out, etc. A large sign reads "Colorado Lode Mining Co." (1940) Sign reading; "Little Salem, CO – 25 MILES."

DISSOLVE:

AN OLD STILL SHOT

Of Little Salem as it was 70 years ago (identified by copper-plate caption beneath the still). (1870)

Shot of early tintype stills of Thomas Foster Kane and his wife, Mary, on their wedding day. A similar picture of Mary Kane some four or five years later with her little boy, Charles Foster Kane.

NARRATOR

Fifty-seven years later, before a Congressional Investigation, Walter P. Thatcher, grand old man of Wall Street, for years chief target of Kane papers' attack on "trusts," recalls a journey he made as a youth...

Shot of Capitol, in Washington D.C.

Shot of Congressional Investigating Committee (reproduction of existing J.P. Morgan newsreel). This runs silent under narration. Walter P. Thatcher is on the stand. He is flanked by his son, Walter P. Thatcher Jr., and other partners. He is being questioned by some Merry Andrew congressmen. At this moment, a baby alligator has just been placed in his lap, causing considerable confusion and embarrassment.

Newsreel close-up of Thatcher, the soundtrack of which now fades in.

THATCHER

... because of that trivial incident...

INVESTIGATOR

It is a fact, however, is it not, that in 1870, you did go to Colorado?

THATCHER

I did.

INVESTIGATOR

In connection with the Kane affairs?

THATCHER

Yes. My firm had been appointed trustees by Mrs. Kane for the fortune, which she had recently acquired. It was her wish that I should take charge of this boy, Charles Foster Kane.

NARRATOR

That same month in Union Square –

INVESTIGATOR

Is it not a fact that on that occasion, the boy personally attacked you after striking you in the stomach with a sled?

Loud laughter and confusion.

THATCHER

Mr. Chairman, I will read to this committee a prepared statement I have brought with me – and I will then refuse to answer any further questions. Mr. Johnson, please!

A young assistant hands him a sheet of paper from a briefcase.

THATCHER

(reading it)

"With full awareness of the meaning of my words and the responsibility of what I am about to say, it is my considered belief that Mr. Charles Foster Kane, in every essence of his social beliefs and by the dangerous manner in which he has persistently attacked the American traditions of private property, initiative and opportunity for advancement, is – in fact – nothing more or less than a Communist."

Newsreel of Union Square meeting, section of crowd carrying banners urging the boycott of Kane papers. A speaker is on the platform above the crowd.

SPEAKER

(fading in on soundtrack)

– till the words "Charles Foster Kane" are a menace to every working man in this land. He is today what he has always been and always will be – A FASCIST!

NARRATOR

And yet another opinion – Kane's own.

Silent newsreel on a windy platform, flag-draped, in front of the magnificent Enquirer building. On platform, in full ceremonial dress, is Charles Foster Kane. He orates silently.