Citizen Kane Trailer

I remember when I was in college I took an elective class on movies and watched Citizen Kane for the first time. I enjoyed it but it was a one time thing for me and YET so many rave about this film as the greatest ever made. When this trailer was unearthed after many decades movie buffs raved about it like the Dead Sea Scrolls. Siskel and Ebert actually gave it a review! In the clip an unseen Orson Welles promotes Citizen Kane and introduces us to the cast many of whom are making their motion picture debut such as Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane and Joseph Cotton. Yes Citizen Kane is a great film but the saddest thing is that Welles spent the rest of his career in decline and in the final years of his life was reduced to narrator jobs and selling tacky products in cheap commercials. There were almost a hundred projects he was unable to make because Hollywood shoved him aside That is the real tragedy of Orson Welles so sadder then that of Charles Foster Kane.

And even the film trailer of the so-called greatest movie ever made is also a innovative masterpiece without parallel, and I don't think it has been imitated with the same greatness. The trailer for the groundbreaking and iconic "Citizen Kane" doesn't present any clips from the film, and even more peculiar is the fact that the leading man isn't shown in any capacity.

Mr. Welles' voice narrates some small facts about the title character and his massive influence on the other characters, and the major portion of the trailer relates to present his cast from the Mercury Theatre ensamble and radio brodcast, all appearing for the very first time in motion pictures (Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Everett Sloane, Ruth Warrick, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford and George Coulouris). They appear in a mix of behind the scenes screen tests and the characters are shown talking on the phone about Mr. Kane, instigating our curious minds in seeing who's the man and why he's so controversial and unique.

This trailer is a great cinema lesson in how to seduce audiences without revealing anything about the upcoming presentation. Mr. Welles gave us a "long" trailer without showing a thing about what will be shown in the actual film yet you want to see the film (if you haven't seen it already). All that came in matters of film trailers, with the notable exception of Godard trailers for his own movies, were previews that basically told the whole movie by showcasing all the great and all the exciting scenes featured. That kills any possible enjoyment or any chance of seeing some plot twist.

There's a reasoning for the magic man not show his magic trick and what's it about. The whole controversy of a film that was almost destroyed by the Hearst papers and other major film studios was already the talk of the town as a fictional version of facts related with real people. By not showing the faces and the situations portrayed Mr. Wells invites and intrigues people, enemies and admirers of the man who shook the world with his radio broadcast "War of the Worlds" in 1938 and now delivering his feature debut, into seeing the film. But "Citizen Kane" was such a different and unusual experience that the whole controversy end up almost in the background, and it was such an extraordinarily break from what was done before that audiences got confused and it bombed at the box-office. It got revaluated in the decades to come, becoming what it is today: a masterpiece to be admired. And this amazing trailer deserves credit for that too. The man was a genius! 10/10.