1225401

Society for Cinema & Media Studies

The "Heart of Darkness" in "Citizen Kane"Author(s): Hubert CohenSource: Cinema Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Autumn, 1972), pp. 11-25Published by: University of Texas Press on behalf of the Society for Cinema & Media StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225401 .

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The Heart of Darkness in Citizen Kane

Hubert Cohen

The principal aim of Pauline Kael's essay "Raising Kane"l is to see that credit for the writing of Citizen Kane is more judiciously assigned. An- noyed at the popular belief which holds that Orson Welles was singlehandedly responsible for the creation of Kane and which ignores the contribution of writer Herman J. Mankiewicz, Kael argues that actually it was Man- kiewicz who almost singlehandedly was responsible for the writing. In an attempt to put Welles' contribution in perspective and to resurrect Mankie- wicz's reputation, she has been joined by John Houseman, who dedicates the final chapter of his memoir, Run-Through, "To the Memory of Herman Mankiewicz."2 Now Peter Bogdanovich, who soon will publish an official

biography of Welles, has been irked into print on the side of Welles,3 add- ing his voice to those voices which, since the appearance of Kael's study, have found reason to question her scholarship.4 In addition, Bogdanovich censures Houseman's account-which Bogdanovich speculates was a major source of the Kael study-for being flagrantly biased against Welles.

In their discussions of Citizen Kane, however, none of these writers has considered the possible contribution made by yet another writer, Joseph Conrad-specifically his Heart of Darkness-to the conception, the shaping, and the shooting of Citizen Kane. There is evidence that Conrad's character, Kurtz, was a partial source of the film's Charles Foster Kane, that other characters in the Conrad story suggested either wholly or in part characters in the film, and that there are similarities between the film and the novel in structure, points of view, and details of action and style. And Welles himself is the link between Conrad's novel and Kane.

To understand the nature of this influence, we need some background. When the shocking success of the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast led to

1 The Citizen Kane Book (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1971), pp. 1-84. Here- after cited as CKB. Subsequent references to this work will be included in the text.

2 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), p. 445. Hereafter cited as RT. Subse- quent references to this work will be included in the text.

3 "The Kane Mutiny," Esquire (October, 1972), pp. 99-105 and 180-190. Here- after cited as KM. Subsequent references will be included in the text.

4 For example, Bernard Herrmann comments: "Pauline Kael was never in touch with me while the book was written. The musical information is rubbish." Sight and Sound (Spring, 1972), p. 73.



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his being offered a contract with RKO, Welles came to Hollywood with the express purpose of making a film of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which he had already done as a radio drama with the Mercury Theatre of the Air. Lodged in a Brentwood mansion, Welles gave Mercury Theatre founder John Houseman, who prepared the radio script of Heart of Darkness, the task of writing the film script of the Conrad narrative. Houseman, however, confesses that he found himself "unable to give [Welles] anything at all" (RT, p.435). After some delay, Welles himself began writing and pro- duced a script of Heart of Darkness which has been described variously as never getting beyond being a "most superficially and vaguely conceived first draft" (Houseman, RT, p.442) and as "an amazing achievement" (Welles' biographer, Roy A. Fowler).5

Conrad's story opens and closes with a narrator speaking in the first person, but the storytelling is soon taken over by another first-person narrator, Marlow, the man whose concern for captaining an old steamer up the Con- go is soon overshadowed by his growing fascination with a mysterious figure whose name and whose ivory empire in the heart of Africa are on the lips of every white man Marlow encounters. The film "was to be told in the first person, with hand-held Eyemo cameras" acting as Marlow's eyes.6 With characteristic modesty, Welles was going to play both leading roles (as he had on the radio)-the invisible narrator Marlow (who only occa- sionally would be glimpsed in mirrors) and his moral burden, Kurtz, the mysterious, self-proclaimed idealist who set out to bring progress and piety to an uncivilized land, but who, lacking what Conrad calls "inner strength," soon capitulated to his own lust for power and wealth. Departing from Con- rad's strategy, Welles would also have shown us "Kurtz as a young man."7

Fowler writes that "Heart of Darkness was due to roll on October 10, 1939. It had a high budget which started at $50,000 and grew to $1,100,000. With the outbreak of war in Europe and the consequent loss of many mar- kets, RKO wanted to cut down the budget considerably. Dita Parlo, whom Welles wanted as the feminine lead was, because an Austrian, interned in France as an enemy alien. The starting date was postponed until October 31."8 Welles, anxious to start work and get his "Mercury actors on the pay- roll," began to rehearse in the third week of October, and "shot long test sequences" (CKB, p.34). "Others in the film were to be Everett Sloane,

5 "Citizen Kane: Background and a Critique" [editor's title], reprinted in Focus on Citizen Kane, ed. Ronald Gottesman (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971), p. 80, from Orson Welles: A First Biography (London: Pendulum, 1946).

6 Charles Higham, The Films of Orson Welles (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1970), p. 9.

7 From author's interview with John Houseman on May 31, 1972. Hereafter cited as HI. The fact is, writes Houseman, that Orson "had ideas about Kurtz as a young man rather like himself" (RT, p. 435). Houseman observed about Welles' preparation for the role of Charles Foster Kane: "Far from resisting the resemblance [between Kane and himself] Orson pushed it even further when he came to shoot the film. Between young Kane and young Welles there was more than a surface likeness" (RT, p. 454).

8 Fowler, in Focus on Citizen Kane, p. 80.



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.. .Erskine Sanford, George Coulouris, Ray Collins, and Gus Schilling. Tests were done showing aspects of character-featuring Welles [still wear-

ing the beard he had grown to play Falstaff],9 Sloane, and Schilling-and trying out the first-person technique, with smoke coming from a pipe held in front of the lens ...."10 Welles "claimed he would be able to absorb much of this experimental footage into the body of the film. I didn't see how," writes Houseman (RT, p.436).

Apprehensive about Welles' budget and his experimental ideas, RKO

finally balked and offered Welles an English spy thriller as an alternative

project. More interested in Heart of Darkness-"he was in love with the idea," Houseman recalls (HI)-Welles "promised to make this second picture for nothing if he were allowed to do the Conrad."ll Although RKO

agreed, it turned out that the extensive miniature set needed for Heart of Darkness would take a long time to prepare, and so Welles agreed to do the alternative film, The Smiler with a Knife, in the meantime. This project, however, was soon abandoned because of the seeming difficulties in choos-

ing a leading lady. "I was convinced," writes Houseman, "that he never had the slightest intention of making it" (RT, p.437).

The Mankiewicz Controversy "There was still hope for Heart of Darkness-and a lot of money had al-

ready been spent on it-but things seemed to be falling apart for the Mer- cury group. By the end of 1939, Welles was desperate for a subject that would be acceptable to RKO" (CKB, p.34). Early in 1940, Welles, House- man, and Herman Mankiewicz-whom Welles had hired in November, 1939, to write five radio scripts for the Campbell Playhouse radio show-pro- duced a script entitled American which was the first draft of Citizen Kane.

According to Pauline Kael, Mankiewicz's secretary, Mrs. Alexander, testi- fies that during this period at Victorville "Welles didn't write (or dictate) one line of the shooting script of Citizen Kane" (CKB, p.38),12 that Mankie- wicz alone, laid up with a broken leg and watched over by Houseman (who also acted as editor), wrote this first draft. This is also Houseman's account (RT, p. 458). Kael does note that "Welles probably made suggestions in

early conversations with Mankiewicz, and since he received copies of the work weekly while it was in progress at Victorville, he may have given advice by phone or letter" (CKB, p. 38).13 Kael also hypothesizes that just

9 Higham, p. 10 (photograph); RT, p. 428. l0 Higham, p. 9. From an interview in 1969 with Richard Wilson. 11 Fowler, p. 80. 12 "This secretary was employed by Mankiewicz when he was working quite sep-

arately, in another part of California, where he was sent by Welles to put together his own draft of a shooting script, based on their meetings together. She could have no knowledge of Welles' script; she was never present during the working meeting between the two, when the conception and basic shape of the story were developed, nor could she have known what happened to the Mankiewicz drafts after they were passed on to Welles, changed and rewritten by him, and incorporated in his own screenplay" (KM, p. 182).

13 Houseman writes that from the start Welles "telephoned at odd hours to inquire



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as, according to Howard Koch, it had been Welles' idea to do the Martian radio broadcast "in the form of a radio bulletin" (CKB, pp. 39-40), so it "may very well" have been Welles who, "in his early talks with Mankie- wicz," had suggested the dramatically brilliant and structurally essential News on the March summary of Kane's career; because Welles had worked "as an actor for the March of Time radio program in 1934 and 1935" (CKB, p. 55).14

Even though, in addition, Kael speculates that later, Welles "almost certainly made suggestions for cuts that helped Mankiewicz hammer the script into tighter form, and he is known to have made a few changes on the set" (CKB, p.38), the overriding impression one gets from Kaers essay (and from Houseman's book) is that Welles had virtually no influence on the script Mankiewicz turned out or even on the final shooting script. Kael writes: "Welles was so deeply entangled in the radio shows and other ac- tivities and a romance with Dolores Del Rio at the time the script was being prepared that even when he came to dinner at Victorville, it was mainly a social visit" (CKB, p.38).

Kael did not, however, follow up the possible implications of Welles' talks with Mankiewicz. Houseman confirms the fact that "Mankiewicz and Welles did a certain amount of talking about this project before I arrived. I don't know what they said, but I'm sure it was vague and I'm sure it was struc- tural" (HI). Bogdanovich provides Welles' account:

I'd been nursing an old notion-the idea of telling the same thing several times-and showing exactly the same scene from wholy different points of view.... Mank liked it, so we started searching for the man it was going to be about .... The actual writing came only after lots of talk, naturally. ... So, after mutual agreement on story line and character, Mank went off with Houseman and did his version, while I stayed in Hollywood and wrote mine. At the end, . .. I used what I wanted of Mank's and, rightly or wrongly, kept what I liked of my own (KM, pp. 181-182).

Whose idea the "prismatic" approach was is still not clear. Both House- man and Kael insist that the idea was one Mankiewicz had entertained "for a long time" (HI; CKB, p. 35). But we need not take Welles' word alone that he made suggestions about the idea of Kane or that he actually wrote some of the script or that he revised some of Mankiewicz's finished script. There are others who confirm Welles' version of the events. In 1941 in a sworn affidavit, Richard Barr, the executive assistant on Kane, wrote: "The revisions made by Welles were not limited to mere general suggestions,

after our progress" and that Welles came only once to Victorville-at the "end of six weeks." When he came, says Houseman, he read about "a hundred pages" of the script and "listened to our outline of the rest" (RT, p. 455). Houseman was uncertain if they had sent the pages down to the studio each week: "I don't think so, but that I wouldn't swear to" (HI).

14 Houseman says: "I did most of the original writing of the News on the March sequence, but Orson changed it all around a good deal. It was very long, longer than it is now. Orson took chunks out and twisted them around, and the staccato way that it was shot was very much Orson's" (HI).



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but included the actual rewriting of words, dialogue, changing of sequences, ideas and characterizations, and also the addition or elimination of certain scenes.... It is not possible to fix the actual number of complete redrafts as changes were being continuously made on portions that had previously been written" (KM, p.182).

Barr told Bogdanovich that he had seen Welles "fume about the pages that arrived from Mankiewicz" because Welles "thought a lot of it was dreadful" and that he (Barr) actually saw "various important scenes in the script" being written (KM, p.182). Bogdanovich quotes Katherine Trosper, the secretary who worked with Welles from Kane's "rough-draft beginnings, through the final 'mix' of the finished print." Asked to comment on Kael's contention that the script of Kane was Mankiewicz's alone, she replied, "Then I'd like to know what was all that stuff I was always typing for Mr. Welles! . . . Orson was always writing and rewriting. I saw scenes written during production" (KM, p.182). Charles Lederer, screenwriter and close friend of Mankiewicz, recalls reading Mankiewicz's "script of the film-the long one called American-before Orson really got to changing it and making his version of it-and I thought it was pretty dull. ... Orson vivified the material, changed it a lot, and I believe transcended it with his direction" (KM, pp.104-105).

Bogdanovich, who has "read the script that went into production," says that there were many things changed on the set, or after Welles started shooting" (KM, p.182). Houseman told me:

I personally have always said that Orson did a great deal of cutting, some rearranging, some editing ... of the original script. Pauline claims that I'm wrong, that she has read all the versions and that, in fact, he did almost nothing and that except for cuts it was almost exactly as the original script. Now, she claims she has documentary evidence to support this theory of hers. It's one of the disagreements I had with her. I thought Orson did a good deal more changing.15

Given, then, that Welles' influence on Citizen Kane was possible at practically all stages of its development, is there any evidence that his consum- ing interest in making Heart of Darkness influenced the Citizen Kane project at the start? I asked Houseman if Mankiewicz might even have been influenced by Welles' interest in Heart of Darkness in those early talks or by Welles' own script. Houseman acknowledged the possibility that Man- kiewicz, who had worked "a little bit" on The Smiler with a Knife, also may "have worked a little bit" on Welles' script: "Orson certainly must have

15 Houseman finished off his point by saying: "But I think the whole argument is idiotic and I wish to Christ it hadn't become an issue. In the first place, it has certainly alienated me from Orson. The fact is that it's Orson's picture and Herman conceived and wrote, as far as I'm concerned, a perfectly wonderful script from which Orson made a great picture. A movie is the work of the director."

Much of this discussion about what Mankiewicz or Welles did or did not write could have been omitted were it clear how the scripts differ that Kael and Bogdanovich are working from.



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given his script of Heart of Darkness to Mank to look at and asked him what do you think of it. But I don't believe," added Houseman, "that it really affected Mankiewicz's writing of Citizen Kane" (HI). However, when the similarity between Kurtz's and Kane's final whispered words-"The horror! The horror!" and "Rosebud!"-was mentioned, Houseman did not re- ject the possibility that "it just might be that because the last words of Kurtz are so famous, they left an impression on Mankiewicz" (HI). And the possibility that the hand-held camera, which was to have been the invisible narrator Marlow, became the almost invisible, the rather faceless reporter Thompson in Citizen Kane? Houseman said he thought "that was a perfectly good point, that Orson's thinking had been for the invisible narrator and so he now had the invisible reporter. That, I think, is perfectly tenable and probably absolutely correct. In fact, I'm not at all sure that in the original script Mankiewicz thought of an invisible reporter. I suspect he didn't" (HI).

If till now Mankiewicz's contribution unfortunately has been under- valued-and it has-it is equally unfortunate that Kael's and Houseman's means of redressing the balance was to elevate Mankiewicz at the expense of Welles. Clearly, the situation was not as uncomplicated as Kael's presen- tation leaves the impression it was. Nor has Peter Bogdanovich's polemical article, the purpose of which is to right errors of fact, touched on everything that influenced the conception and creation of Citizen Kane.16

Joseph Conrad: Mood and Theme

The narration of Heart of Darkness is begun and ended by a framework narrator who is one of five men sitting on the deck of a boat anchored

just at sunset on the Thames. He directs our attention to the setting-darkness descending on the Thames and on London-and to the appearance of

lights which to Conrad symbolize civilization and knowledge trying, like the light from the Chapman lighthouse, to mark out where man has estab- lished a rational, moral order in the sinister, chaotic darkness. Another of the five men, Marlow, the only one of the five whose name we learn, unex-

pectedly interrupts the narrator's thoughts and begins what the narrator

16 In The Films of Orson Welles, Charles Higham states that Welles was "simultaneously" shooting tests for Heart of Darkness while he was shooting what were sup- posed to be tests for Citizen Kane but which were, in fact, "actual sequences" for Citizen Kane. He says also that "both sets of tests came in to [editors] Mark Robson and [Robert] Wise (p. 17). Robert Wise writes: "Charles Higham is completely incorrect in his statement that Welles did the tests for Heart of Darkness simultaneously with those on Citizen Kane. Neither Mark Robson nor I had anything to do with the Heart of Darkness tests. However, I do know that they were made many, many months previous to the tests that Orson made for Kane." Letter, June 30, 1972. Mark Robson's recollection is different. In a letter dated October 18, 1972, he reports: "Regarding your question about Heart of Darkness, as I recall to the best of my memory, while Orson Welles was shooting tests on Heart of Darkness by the photographer Gregg Toland, some film arrived, seemingly also tests of Heart of Darkness, that later turned out to be a part of the opening sequence of Citizen Kane. At the time the dailies were being as- sembled the film merely seemed a continuation of the tests on Heart of Darkness."



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describes as one of his "inconclusive experiences" which makes up the bulk of Heart of Darkness.l7 When at the conclusion of his narrative Marlow grows silent, the framework narrator ends the story, apparently accepting Marlow's point that civilization's achievements are merely a thin veneer over man's essentially savage nature and that the darkness of implacable nature lies in wait for another opportunity to erupt and rule. As he tries to see past the "black bank of clouds" which block his view, he comments that the river "seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness" (HD, p.162).

Citizen Kane also employs a framework, but the point of view is that of the omniscient camera. As the film opens, the shooting script indicates that "all around is an almost totally black screen." Out of the misty dawn, there begins to appear cyclone fencing, grillwork, and a great castle silhouetted on the mountain top. We move toward a single illuminated "little window [which is] a distant accent in the darkness" (CKB, p.91). The omniscient camera reveals to us the domain of Xanadu as we slowly move closer to the light of Kane's death chamber: as we are about to enter, darkness replaces the light. We enter anyhow, in time to witness Kane's death and to hear his last words. Then, just as in the initial scene in Heart of Darkness Marlow had unexpectedly broken in upon the narrator's thoughts, the silence of Kane's death scene is violently broken into by blaring music and a voice announcing a "News on the March" newsreel. When the newsreel ends, we find ourselves among several practically faceless men sitting in a dimly lit projection room. (The narrator in Heart of Darkness mentions that it was so dark on board that Marlow was "no more to us than a voice.")

Similarly, at the end of the film, when Thompson (again in the company of his colleagues) walks out of the frame after having been frustrated in his attempt to discover the meaning of "Rosebud," we are once again at the disposal of the omniscient camera. It takes us back through Kane's life from a position high above a jungle of junk and riches, the inanimate artifacts Kane compulsively amassed both as a sign of his power and, as we have learned, as a substitute for his inability to share or to love. As we move past crated Venuses and tarnished loving cups, we move back in time until, finally, we discover amidst the infernally indifferent flames, the sled "Rose- bud." Cutting to the outside, we find that it is a "moonlit" night, and watch- ing the smoke rise from the chimney, we feel, as one writer has vividly put it, "an almost cosmic sense of waste: an empire and a life that has turned into junk and is going up in smoke."18 In a moment, after letting this visual comment sink in, the omniscient camera has us back behind the cyclone fence looking at the no longer intimidating "No Trespassing" sign.

Although the general concepts expressed in the two frameworks are different-in Conrad the idea of a cosmic threat of all-engulfing evil, and in

17 The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad (New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1924), p. 51. Hereafter cited as HD. Subsequent reference to this work will be included in the text.

18 Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Comment (Spring, 1972), p. 72.



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Kane a feeling of futility and waste-the framework device (a device which is admittedly not uncommon in literature or film) and possibly some of its content still may have been suggested by the prose work.

Setting the great castle Xanadu19 near the Florida Everglades may also reflect the influence of Heart of Darkness. "The dominant note," says the

shooting script, "is one of almost tropical lushness . . ." (CKB, p.114). In

executing the one major scene that makes use of this detail-the picnic scene- Welles removes the "almost" and heightens the Everglades' primeval character. This scene, jarring because Kane's slapping Susan across the face at the end of it reveals his potential for physical brutality, opens with a

giant close-up of the face of a "colored man singing." As the camera pulls back, we see "couples dancing" and behind them Kane's tent and a primeval forest complete with bat-like prehistoric birds that float through the ancient trees. This back-projected primeval forest with its soaring bats, Higham in- forms us, is footage Welles took from Son of Kong.20 It seems likely that this was footage Welles had hit upon while investigating footage for Heart of Darkness and it seems possible that Welles took his cues for the picnic scene from Conrad. As Marlow proceeded up the Congo, he repeatedly treated the jungle as primeval, as the home of icthyosaurus:

"Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginning of the world, when vegetation rioted and the big trees were kings.... We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore an aspect of an unknown planet.... [Around us] hands clapping, ... feet stamping, ... bodies swaying, eyes rolling.. . . The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us-who could tell? ... We could not understand because ... we were travelling in the night of first ages . ." (HD, pp. 92, 95-96). One of the fascinating aspects of Citizen Kane is, of course, what Welles

does with point of view. Regardless of whose idea the "prismatic" approach had been, Welles' or Mankiewicz's, it would have meshed easily with Con- rad's method of piecing together an image of a mysterious central figure, the strategy and technology of which Welles, in preparing Heart of Dark- ness for the screen, had been experimenting with for months.

In Heart of Darkness, Marlow tells his story in the first person. As we have learned, in preparing the script Welles intended to convey this point of view by having the hand-held camera act as Marlow's eyes, keeping his face a mystery and revealing it only accidentally. Funneling all experience through Marlow, the man trying to piece together the varied pictures of Kurtz painted by those who have dealt directly with him, is partially what makes Marlow co-protagonist.

In Citizen Kane, however, Welles does not use a hand-held camera to

19Jed Leland once refers to Xanadu as Eldorado, which is the name of the ex- peditionary group in Heart of Darkness-"The Eldorado Exploring Expedition" (HD, p. 87). An additional detail: Jed Leland usually calls Kane, "Charlie." Marlow refers to himself as "Charlie Marlow."

20 Higham, p. 14.



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represent Marlow's counterpart, reporter Thompson who is in search of the mystery that is Kane. Thompson is presented by means of a modified first person technique. What Welles does is keep Thompson's face averted or in shadow. In so doing, Welles not only keeps our interest focused on the ob- ject of the search and not the searcher, on Kane and not on Thompson, but also, by not making Thompson's face a totally mysterious item to be glimpsed in mirrors and the like, by treating it casually as something non- descript and unnoteworthy, he causes us to grow indifferent to the fact that we never have a clear shot of him.

If Heart of Darkness was in part a model for Citizen Kane, what Welles and Mankiewicz decided to do was to separate the Marlow-figure's role as narrator from his role as co-protagonist. Had Welles chosen, as Conrad did, to let the investigator share Kane's most intimate thoughts, to make him seek out Kane's mystery and then have to struggle with him as Marlow struggled to save Kurtz from further dehumanization, the investigator would have been elevated by that interaction to a role at least as important as Kane's. Even at the end, when Thompson is asked to judge Kane, he still is unable to put the pieces together: the neutral, invisible Thompson never distracts from Kane's centrality.

If my suppositions are correct, then Marlow's role as Kurtz's "friend" and conscience is delegated to Jedediah Leland in the parallel situation in Citizen Kane. "If I wasn't [Charlie's friend], he never had one," Leland tells Thompson, and though Kane ignores Leland's advice, Kane does ac- knowledge Leland as his conscience.

In talking with Bogdanovich, Welles mentioned that Jed Leland was "based on" Ashton Stevens. Welles makes the point that Stevens was "the last of the dandies" and a drama critic who worked for and adored Hearst, but he does not indicate that Stevens acted as his idol's conscience-a role which Welles may well have borrowed for Leland from Conrad's Marlow.

Kane and Kurtz: The Similarities As might be expected, some of the most salient parallels between Con-

rad's story and Citizen Kane have to do with the mysterious and nearly mythical protagonists themselves-Mr. Kurtz and Mr. Kane.

In Heart of Darkness, we do not, as we do in Kane, learn anything about Kurtz's childhood, though in Welles' film version of Heart of Darkness, he planned to dramatize some of Kurtz's life previous to his trip to Africa. In the Conrad story, what we know about Kurtz prior to his going to Africa comes largely from three informants: a cousin of Kurtz's, a former newspaper colleague of Kurtz's, and Kurtz's "Intended" (who also mentions that Kurtz's mother died after he left for Africa). The first two visit Marlow while he is recuperating from the illness he contracted in Africa (recall that Thompson interviews Jed Leland in the hospital). From the cousin, we learn that Kurtz had been "essentially a great musician" (HD, p.153). From the journalist (that Kurtz was himself a journalist is an intriguing coincidence, but probably no more than that), we learn that Kurtz be-



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lieved himself principled and unselfishly devoted to bettering the lives of others: "Each station [in Africa] should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a center for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing" (HD, p.91). But once the lofty ideals and principles he so eloquently espoused were put to the test, they turned out to be no more substantial than dead leaves and brittle twigs spread over an

empty pit. In fact, says the journalist, Kurtz's "proper sphere ought to have been politics 'on the popular side.'. .. How that man could talk. He electri- fied large meetings.... He could get himself to believe anything-anything. He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party" (HD, p.154). At the end, Thompson will say of Kane: "He was a liberal and a reaction-

ary" (CKB, p.292). Marlow has already alerted us to the fact that mere "principles won't do"

in facing the complex attack of evil. Principles are mere "acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags-rags that would fly off at the first good shake." A man must meet that attack "with his own true stuff-with his own inborn strength" (HD, p.97), by which Marlow means, in part, a strength of character based on human values instilled and tested by action. Kurtz, however, besides being a monumental egoist, is "hollow at the core" (HD, p.131). Before coming to Africa to face its multifarious seductions, journalist Kurtz had prepared a report for the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs. After reading it, Marlow describes the report as "vibrating with eloquence ... a beautiful piece of writing" proclaiming that "by the simple exercise of our will, [the civilized white man] can exert a power for good practically unbounded." Marlow comments, "It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence-of words- of burning noble words" (HD, pp.117-118). As Marlow is returning the dying Kurtz to civilization, he overhears him muttering to himself, as if "rehearsing some speech ... or was it a fragment of a phrase from some newspaper article? He had been writing for the papers and meant to do so again, 'for the furthering of my ideas. It's a duty.'" (HD, pp.148-149).

"It is my duty," the young publisher, Charles Foster Kane, tells his ex- guardian Thatcher, "to see to it that the decent, hardworking people . . . are not robbed blind by a group of money-mad pirates because, God help them, they have no one to look after their interests!" (CKB, p.151). Like Kurtz, Kane also sets his ideals down in writing: on the front page of his second edition of the Inquirer appears Kane's "Declaration of Principles:"

I. "I'll provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly.

II. "I will also provide them with a fighting and tireless champion of their rights as citizens and as human beings" (CKB, pp. 169-170).21

Marlow, the one man who comes closest to understanding Kurtz, and who

21 When asked about this similarity, Houseman insisted that the "Declaration of Principles" was "pure Mank. That was simply the fact that Hearst or Pulitzer or somebody, when they started a newspaper, wrote a Declaration" (HI).



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finds himself acting as an advocate for Kurtz's dying conscience, at first had tingled at Kurtz's "burning noble words." Jed Leland, the only real friend Kane ever had, asks that when the typesetters are finished with Kane's "Declaration," which Kane has written in grease pencil on a piece of scrap paper, that he wants the document back: "I've got a hunch," he

says almost lovingly, "it might turn out to be one of the important papers of our time" (CKB, p.172).

Later, of course, when he feels Kane has betrayed these principles and set back twenty years "the sacred cause of reform," Leland, quite drunk, finally passes sober judgment on Kane, pointing out that Kane had never

really believed the ideals he had set down. Kane's pledge to improve the

people's lot was merely his way of making Charlie Kane important: "You talk about people as though they belong to you.... The truth is, Charlie, you just don't care about anything except you" (CKB, pp.229-230).

After having been fired for trying to write the truth about Susan Alex- ander's dramatic ability, Leland returns the "Declaration of Principles" to Kane who, referring to it as an "antique," rips it up. Kurtz's rejection of his lofty principles is symbolized by a note he later "scrawled" at the "foot of the last page" of his eloquent pamphlet: "Exterminate all the brutes!" (HD, p.118).22

Leland's attack on Kane for making everything an extension of himself echoes Marlow's sickened comment on Kurtz's ego: "You should have heard him say .. .'My Intended, my ivory, my Station, my river, my'-everything belonged to him" (HD, p.116). On the day of his marriage to Susan Alex- ander, Kane tells the reporters, "We're going to become a great opera star" (CKB, p.233, my italics). And at the end of their marriage, Susan, stand-

ing before the now portly and totally bald Kane and having heard Kane

beg her not to leave him because "you can't do this to me," responds, "I see -it's you that this is being done to! It's not me at all. Not how I feel" (CKB, p.272). Kurtz is described as "impressively bald. . . . [His 'bony head'] was like a ball" (HD, pp.115, 135).

Then there is Kane's final whispered "Rosebud!" which may have been

suggested by Kurtz's "The horror! The horror!" Though it is a unifying gimmick in Citizen Kane, it is not merely a gimmick. Kane passes judgment on the meaning and quality of his life just as surely as does Kurtz. Marlow, who himself "wrestled with death" before returning from Africa, compares his encounter with Kurtz's:

"I was within a hair's breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. ... He had summed up-he had judged.

22According to Welles, Kane is also based on a character from one of Welles' early plays-Last Stand-which he says concerns a 'boss of a kind of King Ranch who . . . fights a losing battle against the twentieth century . . . and breaks down himself in the process" (KM, p. 188).



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'The horrorl' He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief .. ." (HD, pp. 150-151).

Charlie Kane, says Jed Leland, ". .. didn't believe in anything except Charlie Kane. He never had a conviction except Charlie Kane in his life. I guess he died without one-that must have been pretty unpleasant. Of course, a lot of us check out with no special conviction about death. But we do know what we're leaving ... we believe in something" (CKB, p. 194).

Leland, who had always been rather passive and dependent on Kane's

energy and sense of purpose, has given up the will to survive. Now cynical and flip, he plays at senility. Ironically, he believes Kane died unreflecting and hollow. The residue of bitterness toward his former idol makes him in-

capable of imagining that Kane's final words might have been a lament. For the final whispered "Rosebudl" is, in fact, less a judgment of his past actions than a lament that his fate had not been different, that he had not been permitted to achieve in adult life the happiness he had experienced only in childhood. Leland is no Marlow, but Leland's remark that "a lot of us check out with no special conviction" and his assertion that most dying men believe "in something" do roughly echo Marlow's more intense summa- tion.

Similar Characters-And Styles Other characters in Citizen Kane resemble in varying degrees characters

in Heart of Darkness. Mr. Bernstein,23 Kane's faithful, morally unreflecting lackey and general manager, is a man who never, as he himself admits, "would answer you different from what Mr. Kane" says (CKB, p.188). Only after Kane's death will Bernstein make an independent moral judgment: he says to Thompson, "You take the Spanish-American War. I guess Mr. Le- land was right. That was Mr. Kane's war. We didn't really have anything to fight about" (CKB, p.193). Bernstein resembles the young Russian in Heart of Darkness who worshipped Kurtz's eloquence and ideas, nursed him through two illnesses, and went on worshipping him even after Kurtz threatened to murder him for his ivory. About this somewhat clownish, unreflecting Russian who failed to see through Kurtz's empty rhetoric to the savagery of his actions, Marlow says, "I did not envy his devotion to Kurtz. ... He had not meditated over it" (HD, p.127).

Boss Jim Gettys, the corrupt politician who has long been the power in the state, but who now faces the serious threat of Kane's becoming Gover- nor, uses his tested experience with political infighting to prevent Kane from achieving that power. Gettys thus resembles, to some degree, the manager of the Central Station who, till the time Kurtz came on the scene,

23 Houseman maintains that Bernstein was based entirely on "a newspaper manager" (HI).



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alone controlled the ivory flow in that part of Africa. With no learning and espousing no principles, the manager has outlasted all threats to his domain merely by remaining healthy.

Susan Alexander resembles Kurtz's native mistress. Conrad makes her symbolize the wilderness which destroys Kurtz by taking him to its bosom; Susan's affair with Kane leads to the destruction of his political career. And though Susan does not share the erroneous illusions of Kurtz's "Intended" about the man she mourns, Susan is like her in that she too continues to mourn. In spite of herself, Susan will be the keeper of Kane's memory. When Thompson first visits her, she is drunk and hostile. The captain of the cabaret tells him, 'Why, until he died, she'd just as soon talk about Mr. Kane as about anybody. Sooner-" (CKB, p.131), and her lingering involve- ment with Kane's memory is evidenced when Thompson confesses he feels sorry for the late Mr. Kane. She replies angrily, indignantly, "Don't you think I do?" (CKB, p.275).

The possibility that Conrad's style influenced Welles and Citizen Kane is far more problematical. Did Conrad's artfully constructed ambiguity help confirm the decision to employ the inherently ambiguous prismatic approach? Did Marlow's agile but penetrating habit of thought, and Conrad's method of building up layers of time and space and meaning by repeating certain words, symbols, and impressions contribute to Welles' using the fluid, probing camera and the deep focus which have achieved for the film an almost tangible sense of space and fluid sense of time? Houseman was persuaded that the "amount of thinking Welles must have done on Heart of Darkness may well have borne fruit when he was actually shooting Citi- zen Kane-especially in his going from past to present and in and out of time" (HI). To what degree can Welles' exaggerated use of light and shadow-a usage which was also rooted in his previous stage experience and which would persist long after Kane-be said to be a translation of Conrad's literary symbols of darkness and light into film terms-when the basic lan- guage of film is black and white images? It is not easy to make reliable generalizations about the impact of a prose style on a visual medium: all one dare do is call attention to what seem conspicuous similarities that may suggest influence.

I have suggested, for example, that we sense Conrad's influence in the opening sequence of the film as we are drawn through the misty darkness towards the light in the gothic castle. Even more striking, it seems to me, is the similarity between the chiaroscuro effect Conrad employs in the fol- lowing passage from Heart of Darkness and the scene in which Kane, ha- rangued by Susan because of Leland's negative review of her debut, re- ceives from Leland the "Declaration of Principles" and the check Kane had sent to Leland after he had fired him. After ripping up the "Declaration," Kane walks over to the screeching Susan sitting on the floor and silences her as much with his black, sinister shadow, which slowly and dramatically falls over her, as with his own raised and almost uncontrolled voice. Mar-



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low's experience with Kurtz's "Intended" might easily have provided the idea for the lighting in this scene. Kurtz, says Marlow,

'lived then before me; ... a shadow darker than the shadow of the night, and draped nobly in the folds of a gorgeous eloquence. The vision seemed to enter the house with me. ... It was a moment of triumph for the wilderness. . . . The room seemed to have grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy evening had taken refuge on her forehead. . . . With every word spoken the room was growing darker, and only her forehead, smooth and white, remained illumined .. ." (HD, pp. 155-158).

And in an earlier scene in Citizen Kane, does Welles intend that we take as sinister the fact that when Kane, having turned off the gas light on the wall of his Inquirer office, reads aloud his "Principles," his face is in such deep shadow that we can barely make out his features? Or did Welles and Gregg Toland light the scene in this manner to make sure that nothing distracted the audience's attention from the crucial information, the sincere and eloquent articulation in Welles' incomparably spellbinding voice?24 Or is this

carefully controlled shading meant to forewarn us that Kane eventually will betray these principles, just as in Heart of Darkness the picture Kurtz

painted, symbolizing the bringing of the beacon of civilization to a savage land, contained within itself signs that Kurtz's mission and his ideals were doomed? "I noticed," says Marlow, "a small sketch in oils, on a panel, rep- resenting a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The

background was sombre-almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister." (HD, p.79). To what extent is Conrad the source of Welles' preoccupation with light and shadow as visual metaphors?25 Speculation about who deserves the credit for these effects will undoubtedly remain even after Bogdano- vich's full-length study is in our hands. I wish merely to remind the reader of Welles' being "in love with the idea" of reenacting the roles of Marlow and Kurtz he had performed on the radio, of his promising to do another film free if he could put on the screen the script he had written of Heart of Darkness, and of the fact that not too long after actually shooting some footage for Heart of Darkness, he was involved in his new project, Citizen Kane.

My evidence for Conrad's influence on Welles and on Kane has necessari- ly been circumstantial and inferential. There can be no incontrovertible proof which establishes these connections. Welles, who, as I have argued, is

24 Undoubtedly, one reason the role of Kurtz was so attractive to Welles is that Kurtz is described as having a voice as resoundingly grand and effective as Welles' own.

25Another intriguing coincidence involves Welles receiving George Coulouris at the Brentwood mansion when Coulouris came there to talk about his role in Kane. Welles seemed to be thinking in Conradian terms: "Orson called me to his house one evening. It was on a mountaintop outside Los Angeles. We went out on to the terrace and saw the whole city lit up. The war [the dark force antithetical to civilization] was on. 'Look,' he said, 'one of the few cities left in the world with the lights on.' Then he described Citizen Kane to me." Sight and Sound (Spring, 1972), p. 73.



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the chief link between Conrad and Kane, is the only participant left who could specify the sources of influence. He may be reluctant to credit Con- rad with ideas that till now have passed for his or Mankiewicz's; in any case, he may be unable to isolate those influences from Conrad which by now he has absorbed and integrated into his own mind.

What then is the value of this study which suggests the influence of Con- rad's Heart of Darkness on Citizen Kane? First, if the claim is correct, we can gain additional insight into the process of translating a prose narrative into film. Second, my findings may help clarify the degree to which Hearst, McCormick, the "boss" from Welles' early play, or Kurtz was the motivating impulse for Kane.26 Finally, there is the point Houseman made at the end of our interview: "I don't think you have enough facts to prove your case, but you can ask some very interesting questions that are certainly relevant to Orson as a filmmaker." I agree and, in addition, I would suggest that these findings can aid us further in understanding the eclectic nature of Citizen Kane which may be the most eclectic "popular" masterpiece ever made.

Let me sum up by noting that given the history of Welles' interest in film- ing Heart of Darkness and the possible influence he and his script may have had on the conception, writing, and shooting of Citizen Kane, the parallels must be considered carefully. Whether the process of influence was conscious or unconscious or, as is more probably the case, a mixture of both, the probability seems high that Citizen Kane would not be the film it is without Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

26Baffling is the fact that in her essay, though she notes that the "personal emptiness" or 'hollow-man explanation" (CKB, p. 71) frequently has been offered to explain Kane's career, Pauline Kael fails to comment on the apparent connection between Kane and prose literature's most famous '"hollow-man."



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