News Marches in Place

That Citizen Kane's newsreel serves a complex of functions in the scheme of the film is evident from the various explanations that have been put forward for its inclusion. Assessed (and often dismissed) as everything from a mere parody of March of Time and a structural gimmickl to a device [for] establishing the biographical premises of the film2 and for dispens[ing] with a strictly logical narrative style,3 the News on the March sequence has also been seen as a graphic demonstration of the inadequacy of simple biographical facts to the task of elucidating a man's life, and as a vivid counterpart against which to pose in the remainder of the film a more ambiguous and less reducible understanding of existence.4 This last suggestion is particularly persuasive, for it is abundantly clear that Welles intended the newsreel to be taken as a seriously deficient summation of Kane's life. He has Rawlston, the editor, emphasize: All we saw on that screen was Charles Foster Kane is dead. I know that; and later reemphasize: It isn't enough to tell us what a man did, you've got to tell us who he was. failure of the newsreel is in fact the narrative premise of the film, the reason Thompson, the reporter, is sent on his search-to find the truth about Kane which the newsreel has missed. Moreover, as Joseph McBride correctly observes: The reporter's subsequent inquiries are for him and for us a kind of criticism of the magniloquent News on the March.5

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