This Week's Featured Artifact: 
New York Times Friday, May 2, 1941 Edition

As is often true of the pieces I collect, our first exhibit item in this virtual museum represents those seemingly mundane items that can reveal an important moment in history…

Late spring and War has not yet come to America, although it dominates the front-page headlines of the New York Times and foreshadows our coming involvement. Enlarged typescript touting “Washington Shifts Fifty Oil Tankers to British Service,” “Thrifty Patriots Wait in Line to Buy Bonds for Defense,” “British ask U.S. Aid on War Blacklist” and others must have brought an unsettled pang in the bellies of readers populating morning streets, offices and homes. The Times and its ilk were still the main source of information, especially if one wanted more than a sound bite’s worth of detail.

I acquired an original copy of this particular edition, not because of my fascination with the seeds of World War II, but for what appeared on page 25, in the Amusements section. 1941 was a banner year for films. This week was a landmark. Stars such as James Stewart, Lawrence Olivier, Judy Garland, Vivien Leigh, Henry Fonda, Barbara Stanwick, and more graced the screens in this one un-unique week of options for moviegoers. Fantasia was in its sixth month of a marathon run and Ziegfeld Girl was starting just its second week at the Capitol Theater. More than any of that, on this day, a in-depth review of a film that had premiered the night before graced page 25. It is this historical bookmark that moved me to purchase this artifact.

Citizen Kane is widely recognized as the greatest American film, if not simply the greatest film, ever made.

Ever. Most film buffs know the story of how Orsen Welles wrote, produced, directed, and starred in this film before turning 30 years old. It is also known that its overt and unflattering homage to newspaper mogul William Randolf Hurst almost prevented its release and surely cost it an Oscar. To this day, the notion of giving the Oscar to How Green Was My Valley is less a classic example of how great art is seldom appreciated in its own time than it is of the power of the media business.

 

I was 19 years old before I had ever seen Citizen Kane; and then, not by choice but by obligation. This film, as well as A Clockwork Orange, created the centerpiece of an undergraduate film class I took to fill requirements in a less painful manner. While I was overwhelmed by the techniques that made each film so powerful, I was totally mesmerized by the former. I admired Kubrick’s success in developing empathy for the demonic main character in making Clockwork so powerful, but that brilliance was overshadowed by it being so disturbing.

Welles used a bottomless well of cinematic devices—lighting, blocking, editing, acting, music, scenery, and so on—to create what is nearly a perfect work of monochromatic art. The Times reviewer detailed its accomplishments, as well as the minor flaws that keep it from realizing pure perfection. The review is insightful, interesting for its timing, and worth the read. To do so, click here for a GigaPan version of the page you can enlarge. If you’ve never seen this American film treasure, rent it or catch it at the next classic film fest. Or see it again, after reading the review. Like the accompanying advertisement boasts, “Now you know, it’s terrific!” Actually, it’s much more than that.