Meant to for a long time, but knew that I’d need to be in the right mood to see it. Yesterday that time finally came.
It was interesting enough. Fortunately my propensity for being oblivious to common pop culture knowledge served me well because I had no idea what the eff rosebud was until the end - and even then I initially thought it was a wooden sign - I didn’t initially make the connection of what it really was. And I’m 32 years old.
Seems to fit the bill of mundane and pointless.
It was well after I “knew” that CK was the greatest movie ever filmed that I finally stayed awake through the whole thing after dozing off many times before that. This, of course, meant that I was watching it on TV on one of the Million Dollar Movies or Films of the Fabulous Forties shows so that falling asleep wasn’t hard to do.
It is the perfect example of something I have become aware of over time, and that is that unless you’re there at the beginning of a Great Movie’s lifespan, and unless you have that movie hit you in the gut with its brilliance and greatness, there’s a good chance you will never really buy into the hype that critics and “educated viewers” lavish on the film.
And seeing where things that were invented (or discovered) in the filming of CK have been copied and only slightly revised since the early 40’s only bothers me if I have already seen an earlier copy. By that I mean that for all its technical prowess and innovations to the art of cinema, since I wasn’t there for its first screening and have seen those things that have ripped it off before I saw the original, I have less reverence for it than others do. For me, it’s just a movie about a weird guy who had a big castle on a hill in Florida (of all places to find a hill!)
Hearst Castle, the model for the big house in the movie, is indeed on a hill, but it’s on the Pacific coast, overlooking the ocean, between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“And there’s the cane from Citizen Kane. Wait, there was no cane in Citizen Kane!” - Lisa Simpson, “The Simpsons: Guess Who’s Coming to Criticize Dinner? (#11.3)” (1999)
You are right. And I’ve never understood why the Wright brothers are so famous for building the first practical airplane. I men, jeez, lots of people have built planes since then and a lot of those planes are more advanced.
We’ll see how this does in MPSIMS for now; it may be bound for Cafe Society.
I think it’s almost miraculous nobody ever spoiled the ending of Citizen Kane for me and I might’ve enjoyed it much less if they had, even though the Rosebud mystery isn’t the point of the movie at all. I saw it for the first time about 10 years ago and I think it’s a great movie.
Quite so, but Xanadu in the movie is “supposed” to be on the Gulf Coast in Florida which has a maximum elevation of 345 feet – in the panhandle. Just a very minor nitpick on an otherwise spectacular movie that I just don’t happen to worship.
Totally agree. That is part of the reason why I dont care to rewatch Schindler’s List - very powerful when I first saw it - and I dont think it’ll hold up to repeat watchings.
I’m kind of the opposite. If I see a lot of rip offs and then see the original, I immediately think less of the ripoffs. Exceptions are movies/shows that are based on pop culture rip offs - comedies, etc. Then it just makes the rip off’s more funny.
Yeah, and Shakespeare ripped off the plot for Romeo and Juliet from West Side Story. The noive!
Xanadu being in Florida on a non-existent hill seems to be just another indicator of who the movie was really about. Like so many things, it helps to understand the context when the film was made, and all of Welles’ innovations. I’ve seen it plenty of time, and it never palls. The real Hearst Castle, while amazing, has nothing on Xandadu.
The version of the movie that I have on DVD includes a commentary track by Roger Ebert. I recommend watching the movie while listening to his commentary if you want to learn more about the movie’s significance.
If you try to filter away the hype, what critics have been saying all these years, the context it was made in it’s still a spectacular movie. A great American tragedy a beautiful story, really tightly written, with great acting. Welles was 26 when the movie came out and in two hours runtime, he achieved more than most Hollywood types manage in their lifetimes.
Of course, he went downhill after that (with maybe the exception of The Third Man, I never liked Ambersons), but it still is as compelling a movie as Casablanca. Just try to filter away the hype.
As for ripoffs of plot and characterization and things bearing on the text of a movie (or book or show or whatever) if I eventually see the original (as in Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet or even Shane – of which Pale Rider wasn’t a direct ripoff but surely an offshoot from) I will also take a dimmer view (although in retrospect) of the copies, and the dimness of that new view will depend on how blatant the copy turns out to be.
What I was referring to in the case of the technical aspects of Kane has to do with such things as “deep focus” and some of the other mechanical firsts that came with that production. It’s like the zoom effect in Vertigo that has been used so much since then. In the case of Vertigo, I was there for the beginning and I still don’t get bothered that Hitchcock got ripped off a lot with that. What bothers me is stuff like Body Double and Obsession (1976) where De Palma is so blatant in the copy to produce (for me at least) such a pitiful substitute.
Said another way, I have less trouble accepting that the techniques of film-making are bound to be borrowed and copied, and the originators of those techniques deserve credit for them. But that alone doesn’t elevate a movie to Greatness. And to hear/read critics go on and on about how marvelous Kane was for all its innovations doesn’t impress me much. Knowing who Hearst was and what he was up to is more impressive, but at the time I finally got all the way through the movie I wasn’t that up on Hearst anyway. So it failed to grab me like many other “lesser” movies have. I reserve the right not to be all that impressed with Citizen Kane.
Now, if we want to talk about The Godfather…
The Third Man was not a Welles directed film. If you want to see other great Welles films, see A Touch of Evil, The Lady From Shanghai. There isn’t a Welles film that does not have moments of greatness, and a few of them are great.
That opening (or at least very early) tracking shot in Touch of Evil is impressive even by modern standards.
I understand your point, but Shakespeare really did “rip off” most of his plots from contemporary or classical fiction and/or historical events. I’m not sure how many of his plots were actually original with him, but it’s nowhere near the majority of his work.
Edited: Of course, it’s what he did with those plots that’s important, so the “ripping off” isn’t that big a deal.
Do a lot of Simpsons moments suddenly make sense now?
Just noticed that Sonny Bupp (Charles Foster Kane III) died a little over a year ago. He was the last known survivor, cast or crew, of this movie.
His best known role, for those of us that remember “Our Gang,” was as a kid who swaps places with Alfalfa in the short “Men in Fright,” when the gang goes the hospital to see Darla, recovering from a tonsilectomy.
People who have seen Kane tend to fall into two camps: those who completely miss the story and think all the hype is about its technical achievements, and those who think it’s all a “guess-what-rosebud-is” leadup to a big reveal at the end.
To me, the film is about neither. It’s about how complex a man’s life is, and how ridiculous and offensive it is to try to define or explain it with one word. The shot of an elderly CFK looking in the multiple mirrors toward the end seemed to be a pretty good metaphor for this, to me.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t see the movie until 2000 or 2001, and didn’t study it until 2004, and I totally “buy the hype”, if that’s what you want to call it. It’s my favorite movie of all time.
It’s a movie, and it needs to be seen in a movie theater. The greatness of this film is not going to be apparent on a TV screen, especially when chopped up by commercials. It was made for a huge screen and a huge room.
I was forced to watch **Citizen Kane **in high school back in the 70s as part of a film appreciation class. I thought I was going to hate it. I loved it.