The Kane Mission

Citizen Kane is quite an anomaly when you think about it. Or at least its reputation is. Can anyone agree on the best novel ever written? If asked, someone might throw out Joyce’s Ulysses, but another might immediately counter with Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu or Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Even if you limited the question to novels written in the English language, you’d be faced with devotees of Dickens, Eliot, and Melville, as well as those of Nabokov and Twain, but to name a few. Hamlet is the classic example of great play, but not the universal answer for "greatest play." Putting aside those who would campaign against Shakespeare, you could still find Bard enthusiasts who would argue that the man’s (yes, one man) greatest work is King Lear or The Tempest. Subjects as seemingly limited as “the epic poem” find a clash between the mouth of Homer and the pen of Milton.

Yet, Citizen Kane is “the greatest movie ever made.” It tops every big critical list and anyone who makes a case against it is not simply making an argument for the greatest movie ever made, but distinctly marking themselves out as challenging an accepted truth.



And oddly, so many people who have seen Citizen Kane do not like it or even understand what makes it great. Furthermore, the strangest part of that situation is that, unlike a person’s reaction to disliking almost any other great movie, in this case, they actually accept the blame. I have heard countless people challenge everything from The Godfather to Vertigo to Sunrise to 8 ½ to Star Wars. I myself will piss on most Kurosawa films like they were freshly laid snow and I had an uncontrollable desire to see my name. But the standard reaction for Citizen Kane is, “I probably don’t know enough about film to fully appreciate it.” The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the film, but in ourselves.

So the film sits upon its throne, loved by a few critics and film buffs, unappreciated yet revered by many and unwatched by even more. It is a treasure the masses can never comprehend.



As one of those masses, I was not content. I could not figure out what was worse: being denied a marvelous piece of art or being denied the ability to bash a treasure with all the iconoclastic fury I could muster. But reading a book on Citizen Kane would not be enough. I wanted to see, not simply hear, what a marvel it is.

Thus, the great mission was born. The original plan was this: create a list of essential movies to watch made which were made before Citizen Kane and, for a month or two, only watch those movies. Anything that could possibly use post-Kane techniques was to be avoided like electricity on the sabbath. Naturally, this task was not one I could or should tackle single-handedly. I needed a partner, someone with whom I could share thoughts, reflect, and, most importantly, turn to for impetus after a particularly boring film. I immediately turned to Nick, my oldest friend and another budding film geek. I say “film geek” since neither Nick nor I consider ourselves “film buffs.” There are two types of “film buffs.” The first group is those who think that seeing a few foreign films and renting movies made before 1980 on a decently regular basis makes one a film buff. The second are the real film buffs: those who really just know their shit. Nick and I lie somewhere in between the two; we know just enough about film to know we are not buffs.

Upon reflection, perhaps this mission would have made a great Julie and Julia-esque blog. Too bad Julie and Julia came out after we were two months into it. And I console myself with the fact that, knowing me, only the blog or the mission itself could be of true importance. Were I to keep the blog, the mission would be a reason for the blog and, thus, lose its true purpose and my true understanding. I would be watching movies, taking notes on them for quips to make and so forth, instead of allowing them to envelope me. Though, I admit, I would love Amy Adams to play me in a movie. Meryl Streep could play Roger Ebert or Žižek. Is anyone in Hollywood reading this? You're sitting on a gold mine!

But I digress.

We quickly ruled out the isolation approach. After all, Nick was off for the summer and needed to do something to fill his long days; not watching post-1941 films would be an issue. Also, we both needed to catch up on Mad Men. Of course, with this rule eliminated, the list was able to grow, unconstrained by the necessity of a month or two lifespan. What was once 50 films burgeoned to 120 or so. Soon, we were not only getting the best of the best, but a fuller sense of films at the time. We knew not only the high points of aesthetic value, but the cultural points such as the gangster film or talkie-powered musical.

And, in these “extra” films was where the true value of this mission lay. Sure, it was great in finally getting us to watch such classics as It Happened One Night, Rules of the Game, Battleship Potemkin, and Gone With the Wind. We certainly had a better appreciation for them by watching them in the context of their time (very few people nowadays probably have our absolute thrill at Sunrise’s camera movement). But, ultimately, as fledgling film geeks, we probably would have encountered these greats at some point or another in life. However, there are other films that, while we knew enough about them to put them on the list and therefore might have seen them eventually, might not as certainly made their way to our DVD players in life. They could have languished in our Netflix queue for years, always hanging around spot 73 as newer or more important films took precedent. Man with the Movie Camera, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, My Man Godfrey, Scarlett Empress, Le Jour Se Leve, Strike!: I’m looking at you. Hell, even films like Greed (i.e. those that are deemed among the top, but just seem too long or boring to wallow through) make me more indebted to this list.

Naturally, we also learned a lot about film. Such as the fact that camera movement is really exciting. And that, if a silent film is boring, the benefit is that you can talk through it. And “What’s the idea?” is akin to “What the hell?” whereas “What’s the big idea?” is more like “What the fuck?” And most silent Russian films are exactly the same, many of them being excruciatingly dull. And, over fifteen years later, Pinocchio is still as horrible as when I first saw it. And, while most famous for Intolerance and Birth of a Nation, Griffith’s true achievement is Broken Blossoms. Oh yeah.

We also learned a lot about camera and things like that, but you really don't want to hear that.

As time passed and the months went on (this whole trek started on June 8 of last year), a slight worry began to emerge: what if Citizen Kane was a letdown? While we consoled ourselves with the aphorism of a journey exceeding a destination (and, with over 100 films and 10 months of movie watching, there was no way it could not), we still wanted a big finish. After all, what is a great movie without a great ending, be it a line or a shot? Casablanca, Psycho, and every Wilder film seem to know this to be the case.



This past Friday was judgment day. Film Forum was screening Citizen Kane as part of their Newspaper Picture festival and we knew that nothing could rival a 35mm print on a big screen with an audience.

I can gush about Kane for pages now. But what’s the point? I’m now on the other side and either you’re on my side of the line and already know what I mean or you would just take my word for it. All I will say is this: mission accomplished. Sure, I could have read essays about Citizen Kane beforehand or listened to a film professor, but ultimately, I experienced it. From the opening shots, I saw Welles tearing up the rules of cinema and joyously creating a whole new vocabulary (or at least turning Middle English into early modern English). The whole movie was thrilling; I had goosebumps and a grin with every shot, every technique that seemed new because it surpassed and undid every expectation I had.

So this marks the end of a mission and an abnormal entry. I’m not pessimistic, not even all that thoughtful, but I thought I should share it all with you (and not just to end my two week hiatus). What’s the moral of this tale? Create assignments for yourself. Give yourself homework. And do it with a class or at least a buddy…because that’s the only way you’ll get it done.



Er, no, that’s not the best moral. Um, realize that to watch movies in the context of your time, you should create really long lists and –

No.

There is no moral. I don’t know if anyone would or could replicate this experience. For starters, you need a Nick to your Devin or Devin to your Nick, someone willing to sit through all those movies with you and set time aside for double features and marathons. Someone who can get high just off of a transcendent film experience and who is willing to laugh at Eisenstein’s October. Someone to whom you can comment on how crisp* a movie is or isn’t and note that the inevitable “everyone running” scene has come at the end of a silent movie.

One film we watched was Murnau’s Tabu. We hated it (except for an awesome dance scene). Watching it was the most fun I had that week and one of my favorite memories from last fall. Why? Because it was silent, and I already said what you can do during boring silent movies. Even my mom, who was in the other room, remarked that she was jealous of how much we were enjoying that dull film. A companion like that is hard to come by. I could continue rambling about how this story is less a story about a film or even one about a list of movies, but about a friendship, but this blog is called “Pop Culture Gone Bad,” not “Mass Bromantic.”

But if you want to try, let me know and I’ll post the list. But yeah, aside from that, just another day in the life of a movie geek.

*Have you ever watched an old movie (particularly a really old silent one) and found it almost impossible to believe that at one point, the action on screen was real life people in front of a camera, who looked and sounded just like real-life people? Our blanket term for the level of believability was crispness. A modern movie, such as The Hurt Locker, would be about a 10 on the crispness scale. It loses a point or so with 40s or 50s Technicolor or really, well, crisp black and white. Typical black and white loses another point or so. But, most cases, you can still imagine. As you watch though films from the early 30s or earlier, they tend to get more and more uncrisp (particularly when a silent film is tinted) and you find yourself less and less able to believe that 80 or 90 years ago, all these people looked quite crisp. There is a sound counterpart to “crisp;” we call it “crackly.” Though, whereas crisp increases with modernity, crackly decreases.

There's No Place like Oz

The past month, I had a few dreams that have been parodies/homages of The Wizard of Oz. Naturally, I mean the movie, not the book, as the dreams tend to be Technicolor spectacles and involve me skipping down the Yellow Brick Road (since, ever since Judy Garland did so in 1939, there really has not been an alternate, acceptable method of travel along such an itinerary). Upon reflection, I realized that the best part of these dreams were that, in a way, they were just as valid as the “original.” After all, Garland’s Dorothy only dreams she goes to Oz and, upon waking up, I too can say to my friends, “I had the most wonderful dream. And you were there. And you were there,” etc. The whole idea of dreaming that one is in the dream part of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz is actually quite post-modern if one thinks about it.

I then had the good fortune of seeing The Wizard of Oz again, on a big screen, at The Film Forum in New York City. I went there with my friend anticipating to marvel at the Technicolor and some of the aesthetic choices, and maybe the acting, but that would be it. I would appreciate Oz as many do: a brilliantly done fable that has withstood the tests of time. I would see the movie as a masterpiece so elegantly simple, a tale with such a universal appeal, and the quintessence of imagination on celluloid. Hell, even the furthest Roger Ebert goes with glorifying the cranial aspects of the film is to say:

``The Wizard of Oz'' has a wonderful surface of comedy and music, special effects and excitement, but we still watch it six decades later because its underlying story penetrates straight to the deepest insecurities of childhood, stirs them and then reassures them. As adults, we love it because it reminds us of a journey we have taken. That is why any adult in control of a child is sooner or later going to suggest a viewing of ``The Wizard of Oz.''

Upon revisiting the film, I was shocked to discover a movie with a tremendous amount of bite. In the act of creating an Oz perhaps more archetypal than that of L. Frank Baum’s novel, it still manages to parody and question the subject material. The Wizard of Oz is simultaneously the classic Oz and the classic Oz parody.



Before I go further, let me just add a few words to those of you raising Joan Crawford eyebrows right now. By the time the movie came out, the novel was already 39 years old and widely regarded as a “classic.” Of course, “classic” delivers both reverence and a propensity to be mocked. Furthermore, the film was at one point under the direction of George Cukor and eventually delivered to Victor Fleming to create. Both of these men were not simple-minded, idealistic artists who only wished to entertain children. Fleming had quite a few pre-Code sex comedies under his belt and Cukor, after leaving both Oz and Gone with the Wind, would find himself directing the bitchy catfight known as The Women. While none of these facts automatically prove my prior paragraph, they should at least quell any knee-jerk reactions that I am simply trying to fit the square peg of post-modernism into the round hole of 1939.

Now for the film…

As I have already said, the movie already feels like a parody of The Wizard of Oz, or at least an homage. Consider any parody/homage you have seen of the film. Most of them involve taking already existing characters and placing them in roles from the classic. One example which immediately comes to mind is Futurama’s. As we watch Leela go along Martin Luther King Blvd (the renamed Yellow Brick Road) she encounters Fry as the Scarecrow, Bender as Tin Man, Dr. Zoidberg as the Cowardly Lobster, Professor Farnsworth as the Wizard, and Mom as the Wicked Witch. We would never simply say she encounters the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lobster, the Wizard, and Wicked Witch. Furthermore, all of the choices are meant to fit the characters to the pre-made roles from the work and each side (for example the Cowardly Lion and Dr. Zoidberg) has a role to play in the ultimate product on screen.

Oddly enough, we never seem to take note that the exact same concept is at play in the MGM classic film. We do not simply meet the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, The Wizard, and the Wicked Witch. Just as we think “Oh, look! It’s Fry as the Scarecrow,” we also should think “Oh look! It’s Hunk as the Scarecrow!” Both are fitting matches, as Fry is quite brainless and Hunk had earlier been talking about a head of straw. Just as Mom’s inclination to evil deeds makes her an ideal choice for Leela’s Wicked Witch of the West, so does Miss Gulch’s cruelty make her an ideal choice for Dorothy’s Wicked Witch of the West. Mom’s choice of words colors her portrayal of the Witch; Miss Gulch’s hatred of Toto makes her green-skinned counterpart threaten “I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog too!” (a line absent from the source material).

I could list the differences between the film and the novel for quite some time. But let me just sum up this argument by talking about how each of the actors uses his or her position to play to his or her own acting and comedic strengths. We are watching a classic vaudeville routine as much as we are watching a recreation of Baum’s classic.

I could argue that Dorothy’s Kansas is more akin to our own than to that of L. Frank Baum’s and that, in fact, Dorothy herself has read The Wondeful Wizard of Oz. Encountered with a similar situation and a need to sort out problems, she is taken by her mind into a world very similar to a book from her childhood. The characters of the novel are replaced with familiar faces and situations are modified to become more pertinent to her own crisis. After all, in the original work, Dorothy truly travels to Oz and we know little about Kansas beforehand. The mirroring of her Kansas life to her Oz life is a device unique to the film. Just as I have had dreams about The Wizard of Oz that have reflected my own life (and have found myself not referencing the source material in my dream), so could Garland’s Dorothy have encountered such an experience.

But I digress. The whole dream sequence (i.e. the meat of the film) is conscious of its own theatricality. Every character is an actor playing a role. The movie rubs its Technicolor in the viewers face more than almost any other film had or ever will. But with this self-awareness also comes a self-awareness of the sinister nature of a children’s story, particularly the very one on which it is imbuing cinematic immortality.



This film is not a faithful recreation of L. Frank Baum’s children’s tale. Everything has an edge, a bite, and wink and a nudge to the audience. The whole celebration is Munchkinland is, indeed, quite manic, gaudy, and indicative of an acid trip. Most parodies will include some jab at Munchkinland. But look at Dorothy’s face during the event: she knows she is not in Kansas anymore and the film knows we are not in Kansas anymore. The entire transition to Oz must be anything but gradual. From sepia to Technicolor, from a world where the most action comes from falling into a pit with some pigs (twister excepted, as it is the doorway between Kansas and Oz) into a frantic celebration of nonsense and high-pitched singing. Whereas Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and earlier children’s movies seem comfortable in their spectacle, The Wizard of Oz both excels in such category and is at odds with its own nature.

Furthermore, there is Glinda. Most people seem willing to write Glinda off as an empty-headed character of insipid pink goodness. But actually, Glinda is quite sinister. Parodies have noted the danger she placed Dorothy in by not telling her how to get home immediately (again, a difference between Baum’s novel and the film, as there are two different good witches and Dorothy only meets Glinda at the end). Yet her dark nature only begins here. Watch again the first encounter between Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West. Glinda pushes Dorothy towards the billow of smoke before pulling her away to “protect” her. Furthermore, throughout the whole exchange, she taunts the Wicked Witch of the West and practically paints a target on Dorothy. Even putting the ruby slippers on Dorothy by magic is a machination of the film. In this “parody” of Oz, the good witch is just as foul-minded and sadistic as the wicked one. At least the Wicked Witch is courteous enough to be ugly and to grimace.

I could again rattle off examples, such as the effeminate, queer natures of the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion or the changed nature of the Wizard’s gifts. All I will say about the latter subject is that whereas the novel emphasizes the fulfillment of the characters and how they had those traits all along, the movie appears more skeptical. After all, the Scarecrow doesn’t even give a correct mathematical equation. Instead, the focus on that scene is the movie seems to be the deception and ineptness of the Wizard and gullibility of the others. Their gifts are as much of a placebo to keep them happy as a kid’s movie is a placebo to make children feel at ease with a world on the brink of war (or a dream to make Dorothy believe there is no place like home).

And that sentence does bring us to the end. The end may be the most unsettling part of the film. Yes, there is no place like home, but there’s also no place like Alcatraz. We are ferried away from a tear-jerking scene where Dorothy says goodbye to the first characters we have seen display true affection and respect to her to the boring, sepia world of Kansas, full of claustrophobic shots and people who do not believe a single word coming out of Dorothy’s mouth. Is Dorothy’s final mantra the truth or merely a way to delude herself into happiness, even though she just abandoned her friends and the beautiful Technicolor world of Oz where she was a hero?



In short, the entire movie seems critical of its own story and characters. It tinges “good” characters with hints of sadism, heroic ones with behavior not fitting their genders, and joyous celebrations with bouts of insanity. The very tale is a dark retelling of Oz despite being the iconic telling of the story. And, all the way, it manages also to doubt its own reality. The very novel is framed as a dream, not a reality, a world of fake sets and actors in make-up. Yet, would that make Kansas the reality? Are we comfortable allowing a world without color and with character actors on the loose in the vague pretense of being farm hands to be reality? I am not sure. After all, this reality is far less present than the dream and in the end, both are figments of the imagination.

I suppose reasons like this are what grad school is for. I have only scratched the surface of the Oz question, one that most movie critics seem terrified of even acknowledging. Which I guess I leave as my final question: why has no one written about this…or if they have, why has it not broken into the world of common critical knowledge? Are we so desirous of always having one piece of innocent childhood to return to that we will, if necessary, turn something that was never all that innocent into it? In the end, I guess we are like Dorothy: ready to ignore the reality of our situation and, no matter the circumstance, click our heels together and mutter “there’s no place like home.” We do not care what “home” is, as long as it’s “home.”