Citizen Kaine

This film was very different from what I expected. It was very interesting to watch it unfold as a whole though. Kaine's character to me is obviously that of a spoiled man, that is never satisfied, no matter what. He own lots and lots of things, he has a beautiful wife, but he wants to have a beautiful mistress too. He can have one statue but he needs one more and then two more and so on. To me and probably many other viewers his longing for more probably derives from his feelings of abandonment adn neglect that he has experienced as a child when his parents gave him away. The world Kaine lives in is very unrealistic but Orson Welles does a great job of creating that world and making it seem real and true for the duration of the film. The scene that shows Kaine and his first wife at the breakfast/dinner table and several clips of them at dinners afterwards becoming more and more distant, really reminded me of "Divorce Italian style" It was a very similar scene and way of conveying the distancing of relationships over time. I think it's an awesome technique. The article by Bert Cardullo asks why is the film a story about a dead man? In my opinion, it's because once he's gone, we ask ourselves who was this man, what did he do, why should we care? When in the end we find out that he wasn't anything too special and that we really have no need to care we sometimes feel let down. As much as that is the case for me, I don't feel completely let down, in the little we learn about Kaine on a personal level. To me a life can't really be completely analyzed just by the commentary of those around them or the people that knew them. There is always something deeper about a persons true character that often we don't really see or get to know. Charlie Kaine's character has an obvious wall put up that the detective and the audience simultaneously try to uncover. The thing that is interesting to me, is that as much as we never get a concrete answer or a feel for his true self we get a small sense of closure. He was a man, hurt from being given away as a young boy, and not able to be an emotional individual that could show his true feelings. He shows his love for his wives but only for a short period of time. I think the issue that the audience and critics have is that they want to learn something more, they feel unsatisfied with knowing who Kaine was, but Kaine didn't even know himself, he didn't have the ability to express those feelings. We're waiting for an explanation that doesn't really exist.