You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …
The Product:
Citizen Kane
The Promotion:
The Pitch:
Those of you who haven’t yet orgasmed from the sound of my voice, just watch the movie – it’ll get you there.
Citizen Kane – one of the most lauded, respected movies of all time. Praised especially for its evolution of film as an art form, developing new ways of telling a story with a camera, ways that have been imitated so frequently since then, it can be difficult for modern audiences to appreciate the innovation on display.
Well, when it came time to make a trailer for Citizen Kane, Orson Welles wasn’t about to stop being innovative.
This here trailer is nearly four minutes long, and contains approximately fifty seconds of actual Citizen Kane footage – and that consists entirely of the people-talking-on-the-phone montage from early in the movie, barely featuring the main cast. Those are instead introduced to us through out-of-character, behind-the-scenes footage of the actors – but not them saying anything, just milling about while Orson Welles narrates. But despite providing said narration, and despite being the star of the movie, portraying the titular Kane, Welles never once appears on screen during the trailer – all we get is their voice (that beautiful, beautiful voice).
This is a very odd way to make a movie trailer – even back in the 1940’s, when trailers were more narration-heavy, they weren’t usually like this. But it does all make sense when viewed in the proper context, coming hot on the heels of the popular radio show The Mercury Theatre on the Air.
Welles is very much selling Citizen Kane as being Mercury Theatre: The Movie. Unless you happened to catch them on stage in New York, this’d be your first chance to actually see these radio stars. By showing us the actors, the trailer whets our appetite for that, but by avoiding showing them in action, still makes seeing the movie itself feel essential. And by keeping themself hidden, Welles makes sure there’s still one of them you haven’t seen – that pleasure is reserved for ticket buyers alone.
So, those creative decisions: those I get. What’s a little harder for me to parse is … like, were they trying to sell Citizen Kane as a comedy? Not that there’s no humor in Citizen Kane, but if you go in expecting it to match the tone of this trailer, wowzers, are you in for a shock!