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- [00:11]
A
Hello, welcome to the Citizen Kane episode of Slate. Money goes to the movies. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios. I'm here with Emily Peck of Fundrise.
- [00:24]
B
Hello.
- [00:24]
A
It's time to really drag out the big guns here. This is the 40 millimeter howitzer of movies. And in order to talk about the movie that everyone seems to think was the greatest movie ever made in the history of cinema, we have the only person we could possibly invite on the show to talk about Citizen Kane. Welcome, Ben Smith.
- [00:46]
C
Thank you so much for having me on.
- [00:47]
A
Ben, who are you and what is your relationship to the press and press magnates?
- [00:53]
C
Oh, I'm the film critic for the New York Times.
- [00:57]
A
Ben is the most astute observer of contemporary media and used to run a website you might have heard of called buzzfeed.
- [01:05]
C
I know nothing about movies. I'm the media columnist for the Times. Anyone reading that column and reading when I write about Disney and Netflix will see how little I know about movies. And yes, used to run buzzfeed.
- [01:16]
A
But you actually, you have a whole childhood of art house movies in your background. As we will talk about in this episode, you'll mention inflicting things, French arthouse movies on your 14 year old daughter. We will talk about where Kane stands as like a movie, as an art house movie. But of course, mostly we're gonna talk about Kane as a character. This whole idea of media moguls, whether it stands up, what's changed in the media industry between 1941 and now, it's a meaty and delicious episode coming up on Slate. Money goes to the movies. So Ben, tell me, where were you? When was it? Tell me like the first time saw Citizen Kane.
- [01:59]
C
My mom used to make me watch black and white movies when I was a kid and actually sometimes to take me to the art houses on the Upper west side. There was one on the Thalia used to play classic movies and there was another one on 99th and Broadway. And so I can't actually remember if I saw it there or if I just saw it on the vcr, but either way, it was when I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch tv and I think she sort of believed that trashy culture from the 30s and 40s was preferable to trashy culture from the 80s. We watched lots of movies.
- [02:31]
A
I feel like this is one of those movies that like kids are just never going to understand. You can watch it, it doesn't matter how many times you watch it. It's like it's gonna go straight over your head.
- [02:40]
B
I Tried to get my 12 year old son to watch this with me on Sunday. And he sat on the couch for about 20 minutes and then he just shook his head, rolled his eyes and left and went to play Minecraft. And I was told it was boring and I didn't disagree.
- [02:54]
C
Yeah, it didn't make a big impression on me at the time. Although the kind of. I remembered the character and I remember the opening scene.
- [03:01]
A
There's a couple of indelible scenes, right. Like him giving his big speech with a big poster behind him and him applauding at the end of the opera, which live on as memes. And they're kind of some of the earliest and most enduring memes that Hollywood has produced.
- [03:23]
B
Especially that the shot of him with the poster behind him, Kane, that lives on in other movies and just in the imagination. It's something that has cultural resonance, I think you know that image even if you don't know what Citizen Kane even is.
- [03:36]
C
Yeah, I hadn't connected it to the meme actually. Like I hadn't connected in my mind the movie and the meme.
- [03:40]
B
Should we just talk about if someone hasn't seen the 80 year old movie, what it is about?
- [03:45]
A
It's about Randolph Hearst, right. This was obvious to anyone who watched the movie in 1941. And it's something which I guess you have to kind of know if you watch it today. But it's a not very veiled fictionalization of the life of one of the great press magnates in American history. Who's this guy? Randolph Hearst, who Ben can give us like the pocket bio and why it is that he was so fascinating to Orson Welles.
- [04:14]
C
It's almost hard and I think in 2021 to remember how powerful or to think about how powerful a newspaper baron was. I mean, Rupert Murdoch is obviously the closest thing we have to Randolph Hearst. But basically it's two things. It's somebody who builds this enormous and powerful business on news, but then also who is not just willing but eager and sort of totally intertwined with why the business is successful to use it as a political cudgel. And he was the sort of iconic newspaper publisher back when being a newspaper publisher was the most powerful thing you could be. I think a lot of the most famous stories about him are apocryphal and some of them, I realize are from Citizen Kane, particularly the one about the Spanish American War where Kane says, you provide the pictures and I'll provide the war. And I think that's something that is apocryphally attributed to William Randolph Hearst. But watching this movie again, I realized, oh, this is where the attribution comes from.
- [05:05]
B
I think he actually literally. Well, according to what I read, he had said, you furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war. And is credited with helping foment the Spanish American war. And then Kane says, you provide the prose poem and I'll provide the war.
- [05:21]
D
You know perfectly well there's not the slightest proof that this our mars off the jersey. Oh, Mr. Bernstein.
- [05:26]
E
Excuse me, Mr. Bernst.
- [05:27]
D
Can you prove it isn't? Mr. Bernstein, I'd like you to meet Mr. Thatcher.
- [05:31]
E
How do you do, Mr. Thatcher?
- [05:32]
A
Leland.
- [05:33]
D
Mr. Thatcher, my ex guardian from Cuba. We have no secrets from our readers, Mr. Bernstein. Mr. Thatcher is one of our most devoted readers. He knows what's wrong with every copy of the Inquirer since I took over. Read the cable girls.
- [05:44]
E
Delightful in Cuba. Stop. Could send you prose poems about scenery, but don't feel right spending your money. Stop. There is no war in Cuba. Signed Wheeler. Any answer?
- [05:54]
D
Yes, dear Wheeler, you provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war.
- [05:58]
E
That's fine, Mr. Kane.
- [06:00]
D
Yes, I rather liked myself.
- [06:02]
A
I think that was Kane directly make.
- [06:04]
C
You know, that was him quoting, rubbing.
- [06:06]
A
The salt in and making it absolutely obvious who he was talking about. Because everyone knew that quote when the movie was made. But yeah, I think it's a kind of person who has no compunctions whatsoever in terms of pushing his own personal agenda in his own media. And also as a politician, like, the person who springs to mind is not Murdoch quite so much as I would say Berlusconi.
- [06:29]
C
Yeah. Because he was really on both sides of the story.
- [06:33]
A
But of course, Kane never gets elected because of a sex scandal. That's the big difference between Kane and Trump, right? Is that Kane actually gets derailed by a sex scandal, whereas Trump just like reasons through it.
- [06:44]
B
And I think Hearst himself did win some elected office, but ran for governor of New York and failed. And I guess was a progressive early on and then turned to reactionary fascism type stuff, is my understanding.
- [06:57]
C
Yeah, his politics are really interesting because. And there is sort of a through line, right? He was sort of like in the early 20th century, he was sort of a reformist trust buster type, like a Teddy Roosevelt, I guess, Republican. Because the issue was the corruption of these Irish American machines dominating the cities. And he was. And you still sort of see that today, actually, I think in how. How white the reform and upper class the quote unquote reform movement in New York City is. But he was of that of that genre of politics. 120 years ago he like definitely would have been a Catherine Garcia voter. And then by the 30s he's this strident anti Roosevelt figure, which is, I think how he's really remembered.
- [07:31]
B
And so the movie is about Charles Foster Kane based on William Randolph Hearst and fall.
- [07:38]
A
Yeah, well, I want to ask about the fall in a minute because I'm a little bit confused about that, but just sticking on the politics for a minute. One other way that Welles like sticks the knife into Hearst is by putting Kane in a photograph being all chummy with Adolf Hitler. And you know, and then the idea is that Kane eventually, you know, obviously distances himself from Hitler because he's an American, goddammit. But like, is that how far right, I mean, would that rhyme with how far to the right Hearst went to like Maybe like early 30s Hitler might have been attractive to Hearst.
- [08:18]
C
I think Hearst did interview. Did Hearst went to Berlin and interviewed Hitler. But as from what I've read, that was after he consulted with New York Jewish leaders. So it was really more, it was like more as a journalist. I don't think he was, he was obviously of the 30s. Right. But I don't think he was a Nazi, but his papers did, I think, publish columns in the 30s by the fascist leaders.
- [08:41]
A
And the next thing that happens, as Emily says, is in the movie and we don't really see the detail of it or how it happens, but people keep on mentioning over the course of the movie that like he made all of this, he had this empire and then he lost everything. He lost it all. He was, you know, left alone in his crumbling Xanadu. Is the Hearst story also a rise and fall story or was it just a rise? Did he fall as well?
- [09:11]
C
He had a bad depression, I think. I mean, I think like many, like many Americans, he. Yeah, I think his business fell apart during the depression, but because, I mean, actually those of us who work in media, it's an advertising business and advertising is very cyclical and nothing like a depression to really screw up your advertising business. So I think in a really straightforward way, his business neared collapse during the oppression and then roared back with the post war boom.
- [09:33]
A
Okay, so that would have been the proximate cause of the fictional Kane empire's demise as well. Right? It's pretty simple. There's a depression, advertisers don't have any money, they don't advertise, and there goes your media empire.
- [09:50]
C
Yeah. You know, it's really tragic how the advertising industry always gets short shrift in these dramatizations.
- [09:57]
B
In the movie, it wasn't totally clear to me why he fell. I mean, yeah, he. A lot of the papers had to close during the Depression, but it was more like the fall came from some. Something inside of him, like his empty life led to his misery as an old man. That's like the kind of very basic theme of the film, like, the pursuit of stuff and riches is an empty one. And at the end, you'll just wind up in a big, lonely house with a lot of, like, you know, Greek statues of women without heads.
- [10:30]
A
It's the standard Hollywood trope that we've talked about now for, like, two seasons on this show. And however long this show continues, it will continue, which is the Hollywood loves nothing more than to make movies about how money can't buy happiness.
- [10:42]
B
Although Hollywood did not love this movie, which we can discuss.
- [10:45]
A
Maybe this is the beginning of that trope. Maybe this is what we can sort of trace that idea back to Kane. The one interesting wrinkle is that it's never entirely obvious whether Kane was pursuing money. Like, he's always described as being very acquisitive and wanting things, but in weird way, it's the banker Thatcher who's like, the guy who always wants money, and it's the sidekick Bernstein who's like, well, it's easy to make money if you want money. If money's all you want. It's a great line.
- [11:21]
B
He doesn't want money to make money.
- [11:22]
C
Yeah, basically.
- [11:23]
A
Exactly. He doesn't. The idea is that Cain wasn't trying to make money. It just so happens if you own a gold mine in the middle of nowhere, then everything else just kind of happens automatically. Or maybe he just had the common touch, and having the common touch makes you money. That was.
- [11:39]
B
Yeah, he wants love. That's the Dre. That's what the film is actually about. It's about a sad boy man whose mother abandoned him as a child, gave him to a banker for some reason I honestly don't understand. Like, she couldn't keep in touch. She couldn't move with him to the city because the boarding house. I don't really understand that at all. But basically, his mom abandons him. No one truly loves this man. He seeks love in the headlines of the tabloids or in the. In the empty applause of the people. He keeps talking about the people. He is like a Trump figure, right, who seeks, like, kind of, like, attention and adoration in the media and in politics, and that's just an empty pursuit and. And ultimately it leaves him empty. That's what I thought the movie was about.
- [12:25]
A
So, Ben, as a Trump watcher, and Trump has said multiple times that this is his favorite movie. What do we learn about Trump from this?
- [12:34]
C
I mean, I don't think Trump is the most complicated person in the world.
- [12:38]
A
Is Kane a more interesting figure and a more complex figure than Trump?
- [12:41]
C
I mean, I think there. I think. I mean, Emily, as Emily said, like, it's pretty straightforward. It doesn't. The movie doesn't leave you a lot of red herrings and room to imagine other things. Just given the structure of it.
- [12:52]
A
Does Keynes need to be loved? Does that read through to Trump as well?
- [12:57]
C
I'm not that big on psychoanalyzing people like Howard, but that makes sense to me. But, yes, 100%. And to me, it's his will, right? It's that he's always trying to impose his will on the world. I was surprised what a high percentage of the entire minutes of the movie are given to his second wife's opera career. It's a huge part of the movie is him sort of willing her to be something she's not and trying to sort of shape her with his will into something she's never gonna be. Which is also very Trumpian, obviously, and.
- [13:30]
B
Based sort of on Hearst's real life. He had a mistress named Marion Davies, and she was like a comedic actress, but Hearst didn't think that was classy enough, so essentially forced her to do, like, more highbrow kind of films, even though she wasn't as good at that, and kind of imposes will on her, just like Kane does with Susan Alexander, which is sort of really interesting. Although in real life, the Susan Alexander character was far more talented. And I guess the portrayal in the film is kind of widely criticized. And Orson Welles wound up apologizing for it too, because it was kind of.
- [14:09]
A
Although, I have to say, like, was it like a Meryl Streep movie? I can't remember where she plays this woman who's completely delusional, who thinks she can sing and can't sing at all. The actual performances, the terrible performances of Susan Alexander, which get panned and everyone hates, are not terrible. Terrible. She's not one of the world's great singers, but she's not, by the same token, like, hilariously, like, roll around on the floor. Oh, my God, this woman.
- [14:36]
C
Yeah. It's not played for laughs, actually.
- [14:38]
A
Right. She's trying. And she's definitely even in the movie. Like, she's top 1% singer. Right. She can sing. She Just can't sing to open an opera house kind of thing.
- [14:48]
B
Right. And in real life, too. Like, Hurst would call if his paper published a bad review of Marion Davies in a movie. He would call the editor and be like, I think you made a mistake. And they would run a correction I hope would not happen today.
- [15:20]
C
That's so amazing. I would love to be in a position to make people do that. That's so fun.
- [15:25]
A
Well, I mean, there's an error in.
- [15:28]
C
Your review of my wife's.
- [15:30]
A
It's a very Murdochean move. Right? Just like phoning up the editor and telling them what to print. In American media, publishers do that, but they're not quite as overt about it.
- [15:40]
B
Anymore, do they, Ben?
- [15:42]
C
In American sort of highbrow white glove broadsheets, people don't do that. But I think only there in three newspapers, and I don't think in. I mean, yeah, I think we have an illusion about ourselves.
- [15:53]
A
If Sheldon Adelson owns the Las Vegas Review Journal and tells them to write something about Israel, like, that's what they're gonna do, right?
- [16:01]
C
Oh, or if, like, the Block family, which owns the Toledo paper, asks them to write a society column about the party they just had, they do it. Okay, you should pick up the. You guys don't read the Toledo paper enough.
- [16:11]
A
Well, I mean, as a former connoisseur of the Roger Eyl's Putnam County News and Recording, there was never any doubt about who was calling the editorial line right there.
- [16:23]
C
I mean, like, the Toledo Blade is a great newspaper that has won Pulitzers, but also runs society columns about its owner's parties. So I think, like, actually, that's not that weird. When you own a newspaper, it turns out you want to impose your will on it.
- [16:34]
B
The one thing I didn't understand about the Susan Alexander plot in Citizen Kane was when the guy, Jebediah Kane's BFF, is writing a bad review of her performance at the opera house, but, like, gets really drunk and passes out, like, in the middle of writing his, like, lead trashing her performance or whatever. And then Charles Foster Kane reads the review and feels sad about it and then finishes the bad review and publishes.
- [16:59]
A
It and fires his friend.
- [17:01]
B
Right, I understand firing the friend. Got it. But why finish the bad review and publish it? What was the point of that? That just seems like. Isn't that the outcome he did not want? I didn't understand. I'm sorry, Ben, to bring up psychological things again.
- [17:16]
C
But no, no, I. I believe that.
- [17:19]
B
What is his motivation there? Why was he publishing that, like, is there some urge in this, in Charles Foster Kane to, like, inflict punishment on himself? I. I didn't understand that part at all. But we can gloss over it as the film does.
- [17:31]
C
I mean, I agree with you. I mean, I guess I saw it in some way as his sort of feeling like some debt to the friend in some weird way and to that relationship, but then also inevitably blowing it up as a result.
- [17:45]
B
I think he needs to prove his integrity.
- [17:47]
A
Well, so this is the whole thing, right? So he does have some kind of integrity in that, like, he will write the column that his friend wanted to write. He will publish that column even though his wife hates. He will pay the friend $25,000 as kind of guilt money. But ultimately he will fire that friend and not talk to him again. And this is, I think, a really important part of the plot, at least for those of us who are kind of journalists, is that Jedediah then sends back the $25,000 check torn up into pieces, along with the front page manifesto that Kane had written, basically saying, I am always gonna write the truth and I care about the truth as a kind of fuck you. To Keynes, who's clearly given up on his one belief that he ever had in his life and has become the cynical press magnate who publishes lies. And that view of the press, which was clearly a view of the press back in 1941, remains a very common view of the press to this day. That ultimately you can't really trust what they write. The newspapers will tell you that they only write the truth, but you should never believe that. Believe them when they tell you that, because ultimately they will always follow their own agenda.
- [19:02]
C
Well, I think what's kind of interesting is that at the time, Hearst's rise and the rise of, like, contemporaries was the rise of the yellow press, which it wasn't seen as having. As being successful because it was so honest. But in the movie, it's. His early success is portrayed as a product of his sort of breaking with the corrupt old system and publishing the truth, which I think isn't how it was seen at the time or necessarily how it would be seen now. I think it was just. He was. They were flashier and more fun, but I think not necessarily more accurate. I mean, the early New York Times is just unbelievably boring and almost deliberately like its strategy was to be boring. And it worked.
- [19:39]
A
I mean, the New York Times successful strategy became the most successful newspaper.
- [19:44]
C
But when they said all the news that's fit to print, I mean, like, really all of it.
- [19:47]
A
But so tell me about that, right? Because like I grew up in, in the uk, which was dominated in terms of circulation by splashy tabloids who are quite unreliable. And while there were some very sober sided newspapers like the Times as well that were boring and true, it was clear where the circulation gains were. And in this movie too, you know, you have these scenes with the editor of the paper who's this very, you know, comedic, stodgy old man. And Kane is like, well, you know, go out and report about missing women and tabloidy stuff. And then he says that and the circulation goes from 20,000 to 600,000. So I mean, again, like, it's obvious what the message of the movie is, that like giving tabloid fare to the masses is the way to become a successful press magnate. But like the opposite worked for the Times, right?
- [20:38]
C
Well, I mean, Hearst Corp. At its peak is a much bigger company than the New York Times and there's space for lots of things. But that was obviously this enormously successful innovation. Although printing crime reports was this like unbelievably successful. Although I think they move it forward. I think it was sort of a mid 19th century innovation by places like the New York Sun. I could be getting that wrong. You may be right.
- [20:58]
A
Or crime photos from Ouija. It reminds me of a bit of like LA Confidential as well and all of that kind of like CD journalism. Right.
- [21:05]
C
But they do paint Hearst as sort of a populist. None of the early discussion is about his twisting it to his political ends. That kind of comes later. In fact, he's a reformer against the bosses. And there's no, there's no sense of like, are these reformers totally the good guys? Which is my own preoccupation.
- [21:19]
A
Although there is that hilarious scene where they're like when he loses the election for governor and they rip up the one saying Kane wins and they run the one saying fraud at the polls. Fraud at polls. Which becomes extremely cuts and resonance.
- [21:31]
C
Yeah, that's very familiar.
- [21:33]
A
Point. I mean, Trump's favorite movie.
- [21:37]
B
But it did seem like, I mean, at the beginning when like Kane comes into the sleepy paper and the guy's like, well, you know, we stop working early in the afternoon or whatever. And Cain says, you know, news is 24 hours, like, what are you doing? And has a line about like, if the headline is big enough, the story is big enough that I mean, really, the Internet obviously did not exist in 1941, but like, this is the way Internet sees the news. Like, I just read some story about Ben Shapiro's website this morning being very popular on Facebook. And I was like, kind of had Citizen Kane vibes in my head.
- [22:12]
C
He would be so flattered, probably.
- [22:15]
D
Here is a three column headline in the Chronicle. Why hasn't The Inquirer a three column headline? News wasn't big enough, Mr. Carter. If the headline is big enough, it makes the news big enough.
- [22:27]
C
That's right.
- [22:27]
D
Now, the murder of this Mrs. Harry Silver, there's no proof that that woman was murdered or even that she's dead. She's missing and the neighbors are getting suspicious. It's not our function to report the gossip of housewives.
- [22:37]
E
If we were interested in that kind.
- [22:38]
D
Of thing, Mr. Kane, we could fill.
- [22:39]
E
The paper to twice over daily.
- [22:41]
C
Mr. Carter.
- [22:42]
D
That's the kind of thing we are going to be interested in from now on.
- [22:45]
B
Oh, and I want to talk about that, too. Like this, like, American thing of like a movie about a, you know, a very rich white guy told in the most sympathetic way possible, even as he does, like, kind of bad stuff is interesting.
- [22:58]
C
You think that's American? I think that's solely American. I don't know.
- [23:01]
B
Probably not. That's just my perspective. Because the American, like, bootstrappy part. Although, what am I saying? Citizen Kane is not bootstrappy. Some guy had the Colorado load, which is a funny thing to say. And then he became rich through no fault. Like, he didn't do it at all.
- [23:16]
A
He just inherited it all. He was given it all on his 25th birthday and he had this massive wealth on his 25th birthday. Became like the sixth richest man in America on his 25th birthday.
- [23:26]
B
That's kind of a jerk.
- [23:27]
A
And was like, I'm not interested in any of this. But there is this one tiny corner of my wealth which I happen to own a newspaper randomly. I probably bought it in a foreclosure auction or something. I know I'm going to have some fun with that. And the banker, that's just like, fun. You're not meant to be having fun. You're meant to be a rich person. Rich people aren't meant to be having fun. A newspaper isn't a toy.
- [23:47]
B
That's every rich guy who buys a media outlet. Don't we see this today with the New Republic? And what are some other.
- [23:54]
A
Ben will talk about Jared Kushner buying the Observer, Jay Penske buying up, like, all of Hollywood media.
- [24:02]
B
That is kind of American, isn't it?
- [24:03]
C
Oh, yeah. And then once you own a newspaper, the temptation to meddle is just so irresistible because it is so much Power and newspapers. I mean, the thing about, you know, the news media also can cause enormous amounts of trouble for rich people who are otherwise shielded from it.
- [24:17]
B
So they. Even though these aren't the way to make money, this is the way to control the story and wield power.
- [24:24]
C
I think, like, it gives the rich people who do terrible things have a kind of appreciation of the media because it's like the one institution that doesn't always bend to their will. Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein were the investors in Talk, for instance.
- [24:38]
A
All right. Wow. And this does remind me of that whole chapter of the Brad Stone book about Jeff Bezos where he really uses his ownership of the Washington Post to his advantage when the whole news of the affair breaks.
- [24:54]
C
Yeah.
- [24:55]
B
To paint himself as like a noble journalist type.
- [24:58]
A
He puts out all of these rumors about him being hacked by the Saudis because they didn't like him because of the Khashoggi coverage and that. All of which was completely untrue. Yeah, yeah.
- [25:10]
C
No, it was incredibly cynical. It's like he had gotten all this, like, kind of goodwill from buying this newspaper not that long earlier and just immediately cashes it all in to cover up a totally random and meaningless personal foible.
- [25:22]
A
Well, it might have been random, but it wasn't meaningless.
- [25:24]
C
Yeah, true. Not to him, at least. The Post is doing wall to wall streaming coverage of Jeff Bezos blue Origin launch. They have the exclusive. It's very impressive that they got that.
- [25:33]
B
Oh, wow. That must have taken a lot of.
- [25:35]
C
Hurdle, a lot of hustle. Actually. I'm a little hard to shock, but I found that kind of shocking. It's one of those things where you bend over backward to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest for a while, and then maybe because you're taking heat for it anyway, you stop trying. I don't. I have no idea what they're doing. Like, why did they cover. I don't think they covered the Richard Branson launch. Wall to wall. Right.
- [25:54]
B
Well, it was on the weekend. It's my theory why Jeff gets more coverage.
- [25:58]
C
Slow news week. It's a very slow news moment.
- [26:00]
A
The newspaper closes at weekends. There's no journalists working at the weekend.
- [26:04]
B
I mean, it's not as many, let's be honest. Okay, so there are a lot of real life Citizen Kanes to this very day, 80 years later. Like, the story of the man who didn't get loved enough as a child and craves love for his whole life and ruins people's lives is timeless. But the portrayal of the media in this movie is Kind of timeless too, is the message I'm getting from you folks here.
- [26:28]
A
Nothing will change like Orson Welles got it right in 1941 and it will remain right in perpetuity.
- [26:34]
C
Well, I mean, as Emily was saying earlier, I do think that the notion that a lot of these things that we attribute to the Internet predate the Internet is like a good reminder at least.
- [26:41]
B
Yeah. Sensationalist media and news definitely predated that may have caused a war. Unclear. Right. In the Spanish American War.
- [26:49]
A
Well, of course, the Iraq war. Right. I mean, a lot of people are blaming like Judy Miller and the New York Times for starting the Iraq War.
- [26:56]
C
I mean, part of the fabric of things. Right. I'm not sure you need to pick a cause as here as a spokesman for the New York Times, I feel obliged.
- [27:04]
A
As the high profile media columnist for the New York Times, it is now officially your job to stand up and defend the New York Times against all attacks, foreign and domestic.
- [27:13]
C
That is the most annoying part of this job, I have to say. It's interesting though, I was just thinking there's kind of an absence of other kinds of media. I mean, the nice thing about Citizen King, it's so like schematic and simple. There's so little going on in a way, there's so few chapters. And it just occurs to me there aren't really other forms of. There's no. I mean, radio is obviously the really. And if you were having conversations in the 20s and 30s about the power of media and the scary power of media, you were talking about radio. Like all the conversations that we're having now about the Internet were about the radio.
- [27:43]
A
And Orson Wells, of course, knows this better than anyone.
- [27:46]
C
It's the center of all of them.
- [27:47]
A
Because he, before he does Cain and he does Caine at the age of 24, but even before he does Cain, he does War of the Worlds, which is this radio play saying, oh my God, the aliens are invading. And it is so verisimilitudinous that like people genuinely think that the aliens are invading and they start panicking because they're hearing on the radio that the aliens are invading. And I think that is Orson Welles real sort of eye opening moment of the power of media.
- [28:21]
C
I mean it's so. Have you listened to it lately? It's so great. And I think it's a little unclear to the extent to which most of the audience was in on the joke, but there were some newspaper reports about people. I mean, it was actually one of these classic things. It remains a subject of dispute whether the Audience was tricked or whether the audience got it. But it was a great story that the audience thought that the aliens were invading and ran out into the streets and started shooting at clouds or whatever. And it was in some newspapers and politicians then saw it in the newspapers and held hearings about it. And there was discussion of regulation and it was sort of a classic one of these media cycles. But it remains a little, I think, unclear how widespread it was that people didn't realize it was a radio play.
- [29:00]
A
This is the equivalent of those like Internet journeys journalists who find a random tweet from someone with five followers and they blow it up into. People are saying on the Internet. And then there are like parliamentary hearings.
- [29:11]
C
Yeah, used to be called man on the Street.
- [29:13]
B
I definitely learned in school that happened like I was taught that in American history, I think in high school that Orson Welles made people think aliens invaded America or the Earth, rather of aliens.
- [29:25]
C
Invaded the Earth or New Jersey. New Jersey, specifically Princeton.
- [29:31]
B
So I guess, yeah, he understood the power of the media narrative.
- [29:34]
C
But just for your listeners, as a piece of media, it really holds up. I mean, it's amazing you listen to it now.
- [29:40]
A
Does it hold up better than Cain?
- [29:42]
C
It holds up from my perspective, better than any piece of audiovisual content from that period.
- [29:48]
A
It's so good because I think apropos Emily's 12 year old son, Cane to a modern Sensibility is a little bit. Did you whisper boring, Emily?
- [29:59]
B
I mean, it's a little bit.
- [30:00]
C
Yeah.
- [30:00]
A
I mean we're allowed to say that.
- [30:02]
C
Yeah, it's all slow.
- [30:03]
A
It's slow. It's a little bit ponderous. It has fun comedic moments, but it doesn't have fun comedic pacing.
- [30:10]
B
Right. And I guess it was revolutionary or innovative at the time for the cinematography and Greg Toland and these long shots like the one of Kane playing in the snow as a child while his mother's talking to the banker. And. And you can focus on.
- [30:25]
A
Yeah, he zooms back through the window, which is like you couldn't do that in 1941. But then he did. Wow.
- [30:31]
B
Right? And that's all cool, but like in this house we just watched Black Widow and Scarlett Johansson falls through the sky dodging like things that are blowing up in fires and stuff. And that's more compelling to watch. Let's just be honest. I feel like I talk about Marvel a lot on Slate Money. I don't know what's happening to me. But anyway, it is a little bit of a boring movie. Like it's enough already calling it the greatest of all time. I feel like it's time to move on from that.
- [30:54]
A
I do think that it's hurt by that label to some extent that you put it on and you're like, oh, this is a great cinematic masterpiece. I need to sit down and pour myself a glass of whiskey and admire the greatness of the art. And it does make it a little bit harder to just appreciate it as a movie. But earlier on in this season, we watched the Fountainhead, which was made, what, eight years later? Something like that. Seven or eight years later. And it's much lighter on its feet. You wouldn't imagine a very long movie written by Ayn Rand with contractual obligation to keep every single word that she wrote and not allowed to change it, to actually be in many ways lighter and more watchable than this movie that is meant to be, like, the perfect encapsulation of what cinema can and should be.
- [31:47]
B
And I guess even at the time, people didn't like it so much or think it was so great until, like French critics got ahold of Citizen Kane. This is my, like, half hour of Internet research I did yesterday. But yeah, like, it wasn't considered the greatest movie until I guess, a little bit later, like the 1950s. And some French critics and filmmakers were like, this is an incredible movie. And then it kind of started moving up.
- [32:09]
A
The French have a much higher boredom threshold when it comes to movies.
- [32:14]
B
Interesting.
- [32:15]
A
Am I wrong about this? Like the great European art house movies. I mean, Ben, you got taken to these as a kid, right. They're not exactly American screwball comedies.
- [32:23]
C
Yeah. I don't feel real. I think I don't feel entirely qualified to make sweeping statements on things that I'm not totally sweeped in. You know, I enjoy Breathless.
- [32:31]
B
Late money. That's what we do.
- [32:33]
C
I made my daughter, I think, when she was 14, watch Breathless, and I think she thought it was weird and romantic and great, which is what it is.
- [32:40]
B
Yeah.
- [32:40]
C
I'm just gonna avoid making sweeping statements. I mean, I do think with a lot of this stuff, often there's a, like, obviously Kane was incredibly influential and Welles was incredibly influential on, like, their generation of movies. And many of the movies made after them owe them a debt. And so that's. I think all these, you're balancing like, influence versus sort of what's fun for a 12 year old to watch now.
- [32:59]
B
Right. There's a difference between entertainment and historical importance or landmark moments. You don't necessarily come to a movie to. And know to appreciate those things watching it.
- [33:10]
C
Yeah. That every subsequent filmmaker was copying certain elements of it. You can't take that for granted.
- [33:15]
A
One thing that Emily, I know, picked up on, and I did too, and I want to ask about is what did you make of the character of Bernstein? And did you consider it to be like an amazingly positive representation of Judaism in the movies, which was heretofore nonexistent, or was it like an incredibly bad anti Semitic caricature or somewhere in the middle?
- [33:38]
C
You know, I mean, it's certainly like a pre Holocaust movie. And I do think that there's a kind of ethnic. I mean, there are all sorts of ethnic jokes that get made in movies to this day, maybe diminishingly, but that people are a little more careful about Jews. And I suspect it was taken at the time as a very sympathetic portrayal and I think it basically was, but obviously also relied on certain stereotypes. But I think you'd be like hard pressed to find anything from that, you know, where ethnicity wasn't sort of written into the characters in a pretty deep way.
- [34:05]
B
Right. Unless they were just white.
- [34:07]
A
Well, right.
- [34:08]
C
Unless they were WASPs like Cain.
- [34:10]
B
I read this really interesting piece in Tablet magazine about the Bernstein character, which I guess Welles thought was extremely progressive that he was putting a Jewish character in the movie. And there was, I guess, another Jewish character in the film I didn't pick up on. And there was debate over can you have two Jewish characters in a scene at the same time? And I was just like, oh my God. And then there was that scene with Payne's first wife where she's so obviously anti Semitic against Mr. Bernstein and just is disgusted. Do we have to have him come over and is just repulsed by him. That I thought was pretty interesting. And I hadn't realized, of course, this is before the Holocaust, so everything's kind of like up for grabs in that respect. And the last thing I'll say is apparently the actor who played Bernstein was really concerned about his looks and his nose and had like multiple plastic surgeries to try and get his career off the ground. It was sad to read about that.
- [35:01]
A
He did have the most magnificent nose. It is the best nose in the movie by far.
- [35:05]
B
Yeah, I liked it. I'm a Jewish person with a big nose approving of another person's big nose. And I'm glad that the movies have moved on.
- [35:15]
C
Is Felix allowed to like the nose? Do we feel alright with Felix expressing opinions on his nose?
- [35:19]
B
Well, Felix is Jewish, Right, Felix?
- [35:22]
A
Exactly. I come from a.
- [35:25]
B
There's a book about it.
- [35:26]
A
There's a book about my large and storied Jewish family. I'm Jewish enough.
- [35:30]
C
I can have an opinion in this scene, I guess. Then we have three Jews. So many Jews.
- [35:35]
B
But it's also interesting because so many Jewish men making the movies, you would think they would be even more progressive about the portrayal of a Jewish man in the movie. But I guess that's tbd.
- [35:44]
C
I mean, he's. Honestly, though, if you think about the characters in that movie, I mean, I think he's the best. He's the most. Are there other characters who don't really go down in flames or do something awful? He's probably the most appealing character in the movie.
- [35:55]
B
He has that one line about. Because the whole movie, right, is ostensibly about, what does rosebud mean? And how could one thing or one moment be so important over the course of the life? And Bernstein has some line about seeing a girl in a white dress once. And he keeps thinking about her, you know, his whole life. He comes back to the girl in the white dress, and that's like an important line that they gave him that carried.
- [36:16]
C
He's a pretty developed character, actually. He's not two dimensional.
- [36:18]
E
Rose Barton, maybe some girl. There were a lot of them back in the early days. It's hardly likely, Mr. Bernstein, that Mr. Kane could have met some girl casually.
- [36:29]
C
And then 50 years later, on his.
- [36:30]
E
Deathbed, well, you're pretty young, Mr. Mr. Thompson. A fellow remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the fence, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in. And on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. 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 haven't thought of that girl.
- [37:09]
B
But why does he stick with Cain? Unclear.
- [37:11]
A
He has a great career. He winds up as the chairman of the. Yeah, that's a great line. I'm the chairman of the board. I have nothing to do.
- [37:16]
B
Right.
- [37:17]
A
But what do we make of the whole MacGuffin, this idea that we're spending the whole movie trying to work out what the hell a rosebud is. I feel like it's a relatively thin attempt to try and make people wanna keep on watching. And it's not much more than that. Or do you think it's actually deep to the meaning of the film?
- [37:37]
B
I think it's deep to the meaning of the film, yeah. I mean, it is kind of a MacGuffin, but it is also deep to the meaning of the film, which is, as I've said, like, boy loses mother, has no love, spends his life trying to get that adoration and love back. And that Rosebud kind of like embodies all of that. And I mean, you see in that. In the last scene of his childhood, he is playing with the sled. That's like the last time you see this guy happy. Right. So, I mean, it kind of is cheesy that, like, we spend the whole movie trying to figure out what it is when they've shown it to you in the first scene. But at the same time, I mean, it thematically makes sense, I think.
- [38:16]
C
Yeah. And I think it's. And it probably, also, at the time when Freud is sort of hot and new, feels like it's the trendy ideological thing to do in a movie. Right. Then.
- [38:25]
A
Right.
- [38:26]
C
We have other trendy things to do in movies now, but you know what I mean, that you can find in Marvel. But then it was Freud and it stuck.
- [38:32]
A
Right.
- [38:32]
B
Everyone knows Rosebud.
- [38:34]
C
And if Marvel movies were being made, like, every single superhero's Backstory would be 100% only about their relationship with their mother.
- [38:43]
B
Yes. Black Widow kind of is about that.
- [38:46]
C
Come to think of it. Right. You can probably draw a line from Rosebud to every superhero movie, because the superheroes come exactly out of.
- [38:52]
A
It's certainly Batman. Right? Batman.
- [38:54]
C
Right. I mean, the idea of an origin story.
- [38:57]
A
Yeah. Every Disney movie involves, like, losing a parent. Right. This is. Every single animated Disney movie involves losing a parent. Most superhero origin movies involve losing a parent. Like, it's a pretty standard thing.
- [39:09]
C
Yeah. I mean, it goes back to Dick. I mean, it's. Yeah, it goes back pre Freud, but I think that's probably.
- [39:13]
A
It goes back pre Kane. You mean that Orson Welch didn't invent the idea of losing a parent and that we can go back to, like, David Copperfield or whatever.
- [39:20]
C
But I do think that, like, you. You know, again, I'm so. I'm not a film historian, but I do think the idea that you're looking at people's motives like you're looking at this public figure, not through his public life, but through his childhood. Like, he's very specific in that moment and probably felt really fresh.
- [39:36]
B
It's a real decision for Orson Welles, because Orson Welles is clearly, like, he made the movie to send a message about acquisitiveness and capitalism maybe, but he still humanized the character so much so that like the reporter after talking to his ex wife says, you know, I feel sorry for him. You know, like, it's interesting that he does that because it is a trick to just make you feel. Feel empathy for someone who maybe is not necessarily, at first glance, sympathetic character. If someone made a movie about Rupert Murdoch, I don't know if they would go into whether or not he was loved by his mother.
- [40:12]
C
Right. And turned him into kind of a tragic, pathetic character.
- [40:16]
B
Yeah.
- [40:16]
C
The kind of family drama that we like now is succession.
- [40:19]
B
And there is definitely mother issues on succession.
- [40:22]
A
Ben, what would you say your final verdict on this movie is? How well does it hang up? How would you rank it, rate it?
- [40:30]
C
I mean, I honestly, I loved watching it again, I should say I watched it on an airplane. So, like, you know, you always love movies. You watched an airplane. I also love the Bodyguard. So, you know, like. But I. But I know. But I was totally swept up in it and found it be moving. And the business we're in is so simple. Right. The media business is such a basic, simple business and so little has changed in it. And I think that isn't some profound observation, but you definitely feel it watching this. Yeah.
- [40:56]
B
You really do. Everyone likes to talk about how bewildering media has become. And it's actually. It's just if the headline is big enough, the story is big enough.
- [41:04]
A
Emily, final verdict on this.
- [41:07]
B
So I came into this. You didn't ask, but I'll tell you that I came into this with a lot of resentment, Felix, because I took a film class in college thinking this will be an easy A. It was just watching movies, how hard could it be? And it was the worst grade I got in all of college. And we watched Citizen Kane and I didn't get it. Like, now that I'm watching it again, I was like, oh, did not get it. And I blame the teacher because all he talked about was the cinematography. But anyway, I enjoyed it, but I would have rather watch something else. Like, it just doesn't. I mean, it just doesn't hold up to my standards in 2021 of what is an entertaining film. Although it gives you a lot to think about, I'll say that.
- [41:45]
A
Yeah, I'm gonna come out. You know, we. We also in this season watched the undisputed masterpiece that is Parasite. And it's just you're constantly awed about how tight it is, how well structured it is, how well written it is. And I'm sure there's a million ways in which, like, Bong Joon Ho is indebted to Orson Welles, and in which, like, none of that would have been possible without Cain and Kane is this sort of like Fountainhead from which all great cinema somehow flows. But, you know, you stand on the shoulders of giants and all that. And where we're at now in terms of the craft of movies is just far advanced from where we were in 1941. I think where we were in 1948 was far advanced from where we were in 1941. He had to invent a whole bunch of stuff that just hadn't been invented yet. And to Ben's point, it still says a lot about media and wealth. But I think. Yeah, I'm kind of with you. I'm not gonna put it up there in the Masterpiece pantheon. I'll put it up there in the sort of influential pantheon.
- [42:56]
B
But I would like to see a movie made now about one of these media moguls that's like a thinly veiled portrayal of Ben. Looks doubtful, but like a murder song.
- [43:07]
A
Stay tuned for season three of Slate Money. Succession.
- [43:10]
C
I mean, okay, that's what it is, right? It is. Yeah. That's what succession is. Although. No, but write a sort of biopic of a Murdoch. Yeah, Biopic. Murdoch. I mean, yes. Is something. Yeah. I just.
- [43:20]
B
Ben could write it.
- [43:21]
C
I was looking skeptical because I think, like, Murdoch's life really isn't that interesting, aside from his work. From the outside.
- [43:27]
B
From the outside. We'd have to figure out what makes him, like that.
- [43:30]
A
Sumner Redstone had a more interesting life. Right. Like a dramatization of the life of Sumner Redstone would be super fun to watch.
- [43:40]
B
Yeah, I want that. I'm putting out a call to anyone listening to Please gin up that screenplay and get that going, because that could be fun. You could put some CGI in there to make it even funner.
- [43:52]
A
All right, Ben Smith, thank you for coming on Slate Money. It's been awesome to have you.
- [43:57]
C
Thank you guys for having me.
- [43:59]
A
That's it for Citizen Kane. Next week we will be back with Mary Child talking about Glengarry Glen loss.