So what you’re saying is… it’s a test!
Just kidding.
Of course there are some of us who are “unsophisticated” (wow, what a snobbish term) and uneducated on film history who still love it anyway.
Film school graduate chiming in here.
We studied *Citizen Kane * in one of my earlier classes. Basically, nobody used the techniques and story structure that was employed in the movie before this time.
Also, there was a surprising amount of special effects used in the movie. The one that i thought was really cool was the scene of the chimney at the very end, that was actually done using a still photo of a chimney and superimposing ink being poured into water to simulate smoke.
I will definitely watch that. Of course I am not a film historian, but the only pre-Kane film I could think of that I had seen that came anywhere near Kane for camera movement/usage was Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Which is sheer genius.
Sorry, I didn’t mean that to be snobbish; what I mean is that someone who watches a film with a simple expectation of it being entertaining may have difficulty getting into a movie that requires more attention or patience. The large budget films that most people are familiar with today follow a very predictable and often linear plot, with clearly defined themes, and if that is your only exposure then watching something like Citizen Kane, with its moral ambiguities and non-chronological jumping around may be challenging. Certainly, if you’re familiar with the backstory and the life of William Randolph Hearst the entertainment value of the film is multiplied, and the number of seemingly random comments and scenes thus become clear.
This is not to disparage films that are just pure ephemeral entertainment; I love Raiders of the Lost Ark–it is easily in my top ten list–even though it is a pretty mindless popcorn movie that doesn’t stand up to any level of analysis and has more plot holes and historical errors than a stack of bibles. But watching and enjoying something like Citizen Kane demands more patience and attention that viewers of modern large budget fare are accustomed to applying.
Stranger
My primary beef with the movie is that the third act is almost uneccessary. The point was well made already, and it grew interminable.
Huh? It’s absolutely necessary. It emphasizes that most people only surrounded Kane when he had something to offer them, and abandoned him when he didn’t, while the people that loved him most were driven away by his attempts to force his ill-mannered generosity upon them. In the end, Kane was nothing more than a vast, incomplete, crumbling house with a warehouse full of treasures that he acquired but never enjoyed, and hidden amongst them was the symbol of the one thing he could never buy or return to. The last third of the movie makes the story; without it, it is just a fictionalized biopic about the rise and fall of a famous publisher.
Stranger
Just wanted to second this; I was amongst the many who had seen and not appreciated Kane until I watched it with this commentary. Ebert delineates many of the points the posters here have pointed out, and does so in an engaging and entertaining manner. It brings you a whole new appreciation of the movie.
I understand. No harm, no foul.
I also recommend Ebert’s commentary. He points out little details I never noticed before, like the appearance of the snow globe in Susan’s apartment when Kane first meets her, and the pterodactyl in background at the Florida camp-out party (Wells recycled footage from, I believe, The Lost World).
Also amusing: at one point Ebert gets mixed up about which flashback he’s watching–the butler’s or Susan’s. He realizes his mistake while speaking, but never says so, just goes on and revises what he was saying as if he’d never slipped up.
What I find so moving about Citizen Kane is the point of it all. Anybody can make
jokes about what Rosebud was, but I find it very sad to think about what it really means. The man had everything money could buy, but all he owned meant absolutely nothing to him because he couldn’t buy back what he’d lost in his childhood.
Report back! I love to hear people’s reactions to the great films of the past when most people think really great filmmaking started with Star Wars.
Similarly what I found moving was the transformation of a young idealist who cared about things like fairness transformed into wealthy Socialite who only cared about money and power, and then finally into a sad and bitter old man who longed for his childhood innocence.
Yes. Rosebud is a cliche, but it’s a very powerful image and idea. My daughter, who was probably around ten when she first saw it with us, immediately understood what it meant and how tragic it was.
But, then, it’s also just “another piece of the puzzle.” But an important one.
Citizen Kane was the greatest film in the world - in 1941.
But anything great is going to be copied. Having been exposed to six decades of other filmmakers following Welles, you’re not going to get the full impact of the original.
Plus, an expose of William Randolph Hearst is going to seem a lot less dramatic in 2009. Heck, modern viewers are going to wonder what all the fuss was about - who cares about newspapers nowadays?
So many things make it great to me…Yes, and almost all of them have become cliche. But jeez, they are great if you can watch them with a clear mind. One of the things that I love is the time thing it does. It starts with the film clip of his life, then it goes to the production room where the clip has just been created, then it goes to his youth in Colorado, then it goes to his young adulthood, then it steps back, then it moves you forward again. How many movies can handle that surreal examination of a life? Yet it does.
And the way the film is presented through different eyes…
And the character of Kane himself. He’s a loveable scoundrel, and then he is loveable, and then he is a scoundrel and then he is a shell.
And the aging of the Kane character…how many leading men have let themselves age? I mean believeably age. He does. James Dean in Giant and a few others (usually mostly for effect like Hoffman in Little Big Man) do it, but it is very rare.
I think the sign of a great novel is one where everybody sees something different in it and takes away something different from it as with Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. I think that is even harder for a film, since even less is left to the observer’s imagination. But look at all the different preceptions of the film in question just in this thread. Almost every poster has drawn something different and powerful from the film. That’s a great film.
The best part was the cane.
Not exactly nobody.
You definitely need to check out Jean Renoir’s films, too, then. While Murnau did wonders with camera mobility, he had the benefit of not having to work with sound for his seminal films (the same goes for Abel Gance).
But Renoir was using fluid, sinewy camera movements, unconventional framing, and deep-focus photography to highlight character and lay the foundation for thematic developments years before Kane. Virtually all his films of the 30s are masterpieces, though the most conspicuous, from a photographic perspective, is 1939’s The Rules of the Game.
I love that expression. Awesome.
I watched it. Thought is was good but couldn’t understand the fuss (even though I had already read that it was a great innovation in film making and all that jazz).
I eventually had someone hold my hand through the entire process, and do some very good commentary for me. Then I enjoyed it worlds better.
It is the same way I need Sister Wendy to hold my hand through great paintings and sculptures.
And Ebert is certainly my ‘Sister Wendy’ for films. He really does help me enjoy them. If one is not sophisticated, one must borrow a sophisticate.
Absolutely, ashamed not to have thought of Renoir. Boudou Saved from Drowning, La bête humaine–also worthwhile in this context.
Also: another timeless masterpiece of the pre-Kane era: Jean Vigo’s L’atalante.