It should come as no surprise Donald Trump’s favorite movie is the 1941 Orson Wells classic Citizen Kane. In a 1998 review, critic Roger Ebert opens with the following.

“I don’t think any word can explain a man’s life,” says one of the searchers through the warehouse of treasures left behind by Charles Foster Kane. Then we get the famous series of shots leading to the closeup of the word “Rosebud” on a sled that has been tossed into a furnace, its paint curling in the flames. We remember that this was Kane’s childhood sled, taken from him as he was torn from his family and sent east to boarding school.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the president-elect’s final words are, “Cornwall-on-Hudson,”the site of the military boarding school where his parents sent him at the age of thirteen.

However, 1941 gives us an alternative cinematic analogy of Donald Trump’s rise to power.  In his March 1941 review of Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe, then New York Times movie critic Bosley Crowther describes the title character as:

…a young fellow, a genial and aimless tramp, who is hoaxed into playing the role of a cynical social firebrand for the sake of a newspaper stunt. At first he lolls in luxury while articles ag’in this and that are ghost-written for him and printed in the aggressive, unscrupulous sheet. Then, under the pleasantly romantic influence of his beautiful “ghost,” he goes on the radio with a stirring and encouraging appeal to the “little man.”

If only life was as black and white as these two cinema classics.  Donald Trump is hardly a one-dimensional personality.  Like Charles Foster Kane, he has parlayed his standing as the head of a business empire into a political career.  And a la John Willoughby (Gary Cooper’s character in Meet John Doe), Trump is, to some extent, the creation of ghostwriters such as Tony Schwartz (The Art of the Deal).  Add a pinch of Willie Stark (All the King’s Men) and you’ve got an very mottled concoction.

Though the most obvious comparisons are between the president-elect and the title characters in each of these films, what I find more intriguing is the extent to which  the Trump electoral coalition responded to the populist themes embedded in the three screenplays.  Consider the following .  In Citizen Kane, the protagonist lays out his “declaration of principles.”

I will provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly. I will also provide them with a fighting and tireless champion of their rights as citizens and as human beings.

In Meet John Doe, John Willoughby includes the following to explain his emergence as a champion of the people.

If anybody should ask you what the average John Doe is like, you couldn’t tell him because he’s a million and one things. He’s Mr. Big and Mr. Small. He’s simple and he’s wise. He’s inherently honest, but he’s got a streak of larceny in his heart. He seldom walks up to a public telephone without shoving his finger into the slot to see if somebody left a nickel there.

And finally, Willie Stark explains how tragic events triggered his evolution from a self-interested lawyer to the voice of the common person.

Now I’m not gonna lie to ya. He (referring to himself) didn’t start off thinkin’ about the hicks and all the wonderful things he was gonna do for ’em. Naw, naw, he started off thinkin’ of number one. But something came to him on the way. How he could do nothin’ for himself without the help of the people. That’s what came to him. And it also came to him with the powerful force of God’s own lightning back in his home county when the school building collapsed ’cause it was built of politics’ rotten brick. It killed and mangled a dozen kids. But you know that story. The people were his friends because he’d fought that rotten brick. And some of the politicians down in the city, they knew that, so they rode up to his house in a big, fine, shiny car and said as how they wanted him to run for Governor.

Two of these stories end in tragedy.  Willie Stark is assassinated by the brother of the Governor’s mistress.  Charles Foster Kane dies a broken man, morally and spiritually, who is said to have been loved by millions and hated by millions more.  Only John Willoughby emerges unscathed when he acknowledges he has deceived his followers and atones by exposing those who have used him for their own political purposes.

I wish I knew which ending best fits the real-life drama of 2016 and the forthcoming Trump administration. They say life imitates art.  I guess the course of history depends on which masterpieces hang on your walls or which Netflix videos you save to “My List.”

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP