Alright,
Oddly had been all my life without seeing Citizen Kane. So just saw it. Nothing special imo. Why does everyone think this is best movie ever?
The OP has requested that this thread be deleted, which we don’t do hereabouts. We will, however, lock threads, and although the OP did not provide a reason for doing so – which you really should, if you want a thread you started closed – I see no reason to leave it open.
Closed.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
Turns out the OP doesn’t want the thread closed.
People, pls. use the “report this post” function, and pls. explain clearly what you think needs to be done when you report a post.
Thread reopened.
I was expecting something much more controversial when I saw that the OP had requested this to be not only closed but deleted! I’m disappointed.
Kane developed a lot of the techniques andstyles of effective filmmaking, many of which are still used today. The movie is absurdly slow - I think even by the standards of the time. But ti has a powerful story and compelling characters.
No, it’s not particularly slow paced, even for its time. Actually much of it moves pretty rapidly. Take the breakfast sequence – showing the disintegration of a marriage over several years, all in 2:14.* I don’t know of many filmmakers even now who could show something like that as efficiently and entertainingly.
The techniques of Kane were very new at the time. Welles didn’t always invent them, but no movie used so many unusual techniques to develop the story. Visually, it had a similar impact on filmmakers that The Matrix did on moviegoers when it first came out: everyone saying, “Wow! That’s cool!” It showed filmmakers new directions. Modern moviegoers might not see just how innovative the film was.
But that’s only part of it. Kane is filled with great characters and is a great story. The dialogue is among the best in any film – wry, witty, dramatic, etc. It has dozens of great lines. Also, plotwise, its structure is complex – we learn about Kane from different narrators and each one slowly goes deeper and deeper into his character.
It is a truly great film; any list of great films that ignores it is not to be taken seriously. You don’t have to list it first – but if you don’t list it, you don’t know movies.
Just a little context – the newspaper Emily is reading in the final vignette is that of Kane’s rival
I hate doing “This” style posts, but this is pretty much it.
The story is itself is good and well written but it was Welles’s pioneering of various cinematography and film making techniques that makes it stand out in the history of cinema. He popularized the use of things like deep focus, low angle shots, and special effects to fake crowd scenes. To give an example, at the time the vast majority of films were shot on sound stages and lights and boom mics were hung overhead making low angle shots impossible. In such instances Welles would hang drapes overhead and place the microphones above the drapes to create the illusion of a ceiling.
His use of makeup to age the same actors over the course of many decades also allowed the same actors to portray the same characters which was also unusual for the time. I could be wrong about this, but I also have been given to understand that he was the first to use a “time compressed” shooting schedule. They would build a given set and then shoot all the relevant scenes on that set for the entire film, rather than shooting chronologically.
The wiki page give a good overview of the films technological breakthroughs and history.
I think that is what surprises people who see it for the first time after hearing that it is the “greatest film of all time!”
It simply isn’t. It was just the first to do things that good directors do today as a matter of routine. In other words, it is historically significant.
By way of analogy, take NBA basketball great George Mikan. In the 1950’s, he was leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else. He INVENTED the jump shot. But, you take him out of the 50’s and transport him to the modern era, and he might not even compete on the minor leagues.
Citizen Kane is the same way for me. I APPRECIATE it from a historical perspective. I respect it. But I don’t want to watch it again.
Just to emphasize, Welles did not invent most of the techniques that make Kane unique. He was a synthesizer who stood on the shoulders of giants. Welles was in the second or third generation of filmmakers (depending on how you break that down) and would have given–has given–a great deal of credit to John Ford and F.W. Murnau for many of the visual techniques that he’s given credit for.
Many things came together in Kane. Including for example Ford’s cinematographer Gregg Toland, the master of deep focus. You could have a worse education on that era of American filmmaking than checking off a list of Toland’s films. Check out The Best Years of Our Lives for a stunning example of the power of deep focus. And again, just to emphasize, deep focus cinematography was not just a gimmick, or a simple visual enhancement. With deep focus, everything in the frame is in focus–from the foreground to the deep distance. Think about how often your attention is drawn to what matters in a scene merely by virtue of its being in focus while everything behind or before it is blurry. This is so standard we hardly notice it. But when the entire frame is in focus, it’s up to the director to call attention to what’s important in the frame by other means. It offers a huge challenge to a director while simultaneously adding an entirely new dimension to the storytelling possibilities of the film.
And note, too, how carefully Welles uses even that: not every frame is in deep focus by any means. He used it judiciously, deliberately. An exception that proves how carefully aware he was of the storytelling effects of focus, note the scene with the alarm clock. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it so I’m describing this from memory, but there’s a scene where someone is sleeping in the middle ground. In the foreground is an alarm clock, and in the distance is, well, the distance; I forget what’s happening in the backdrop. The distance and the foreground are in focus, but until the alarm clock rings and he comes into focus, the sleeper in the middle ground is blurred. Again: near, middle, far; focused, blurred, focused. This is not possible, of course: Welles achieved the shot through special effects; the alarm clock was added in a process shot. I don’t know how many times I’d seen the movie before I noticed that, but it’s full of such surprises.
I have this movie on DVD and it includes a commentary track by Roger Ebert that does a nice job of explaining its significance. If you’re up to it, I recommend watching the movie again while listening to that commentary.
I’d tried to watch it on television many times and was bored to tears, never got through it. Then I saw the 50th Anniversary release with a new print, and seeing it as a captive audience on film on a big screen made me finally realize just how brilliant it was. It’s not my favorite film, not even in my Top 100, but I have no objections to anyone calling it the greatest film ever made. I would agree with that.
A few years ago I decided to rent classic films because I’ve seen so few of them in my life. Citizen Kane was one of them. I loved the movie because it told an interesting story of a man who grew to become everything he hated. I’m not to fond of tragedies, but this one pulled me in. In my personal opinion, the acting was great and the story line was compelling. After watching it I was intrigued to discover the character of Charles Foster Kane was based on William Randolph Hearst.
Anyway, I don’t know anything about movie making techniques, and who did what first, but the acting and story were enough to make me love this movie.
I see it as the first film that completely abandons the framework of filming a stage production with short action intermissions. Throughout the entire movie the camera is put in non-stage positions to give a narrator point of view that is never just from the perspective of a stage show audience member. Many movies like Stagecoach had earlier used sequences of the chase to give extended points of view from characters. Kane did it throughout the movie. Welles watched Stagecoach dozens of times in preparation for making Kane. Kane firmly established the camera as narrator. There were many other technical innovations used, many pioneered by Toland and Toland did great things in Kane based on previous things he did for other films and others had done. What Welles did was invent camera as narrator. At least that is what I feel. I could be wrong.
I’m not the kind of movie fan who loves what critics say we are supposed to love. I hate most “art” films and I hate almost all foreign films.
But I absolutely LOVE Citizen Kane. It does everything a movie is supposed to do, does it extremely well, does it in new and innovative ways (even by today’s standards), and does it with a perfect blend of humor and drama. It don’t get no better than that!..TRM
Citizen Kane was a particularly deep social commentary. It was a commentary on William Randolph Hearst who made a pretty big splash with his decadent excess. That kind of wealth was simply anomalous, it wasn’t until the industrial age that people had been that wealthy in all of history, that kind of wealth was the preserve of Emperors, not even Kings had that much power for the most part with a few rare exceptions. It examined the rise of media and the power that media could have over our lives.
What the story is really about is that despite the media scrutiny, despite people living their entire lives on the stage, in front of the cameras, that we cannot truly know another person.
I find the movie ponderous and difficult to watch, but I do understand why it’s considered special.
Hijack nit: Mikan is famous for the hook shot, not the jump shot. Ken Sailors is credited with inventing the jump shot.
Please Resume your regularly scheduled Citizen Kane thread. 
While Welles was certainly a master of this approach, you might appreciate watching Murnau for some historical perspective on this. Particularly The Last Laugh.
This is sort of like when my wife watches an old episode of the Twilight Zone and says “Meh, They’ve done that a million times before”.
Yes, they have. And they copied it from the Twilight Zone. The reason why you and anyone else watching Citizen Kane for the first time are not impressed is because you have seen it done before, but Kane was the first to do it. It was novel then; it isn’t now.
Citizen Kane may not be one of the greatest movies of all time, but it is unquestionably one of the most influential movies, both in the cinematography and the storytelling techniques. Modern viewers may find it a bit trite, as they’ve been done and done and done again since. I have to take exception with anyone who considers the movie “slow”; it moves at a breakneck pace, slowing only to ponder on the thing that Kane most lacks, and wants most; love, affection, and security, all of which he lost as a child.
It is unsurprising that an unsophisticated viewer may find the movie “boring” while a viewer educated and experienced in the history of film would find the film fascinating and engaging. The movie demands rapt attention to follow the unforgiving speed of the plot. The acting, especially by Welles and Joseph Cotton, is first-rate. And for the historian, the backstory of the making and distribution of the film is as fascinating as the story itself. Like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, the director’s attempt to display his own vision ran afoul of the conservative, anti-creative money-making machinery of the Hollywood studio system.
Stranger
I just want to jump in and reinforce this. People today watch movies on their TV. This is like listening to full orchestra music on an AM radio. You are just not getting the experience that was intended. Admittedly, it is nearly impossible to see the great movies of the past on the big screen, unless you are in a large metropolitan area with an active film society. All I can suggest is that if you are seeing one of the classics on TV you’ve got to discount the experience accordingly. And if you are really interested, seek out the big screen presentations, you won’t be disappointed.