I now announce a new feature: "The Greatest Films of All Time". With each post I will look at films deemed by the general public as one of the best ever made. I will analyze their "greatness" and provide my own opinions on them, and sometimes I will not share in the universal admiration. I will not use star ratings because, I mean, come on. I begin with the film many critics groups call the greatest of all time: Citizen Kane.
(These will not overlap with "My Favorite Movies".)
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HOW "GREAT" IS IT?
AFI Top 100: #1
IMDb Top 250: #37
Sight & Sound 2002 Critics' Top 10 Poll: #1
Sight & Sound 2002 Directors' Top 10 Poll: #1
"Citizen Kane is the official greatest film of all time."
-Roger Ebert
"Motion picture archives and collections across the world would be poorer without copies of this film, which will forever be recognized as a defining example of American cinema."
-James Berardinelli
"There's never been a film, as far as I'm aware of, where if you watch it for the 138th time you can still see something new you hadn't noticed before."
-Richard Dreyfuss
"It's just one of the great movies ever made. I think many people are going to agree."
-Steven Spielberg
"Citizen Kane will always be something that demands attention and respect and admiration for being another way to look at the world through the cinematic eye."
-Martin Scorsese
"Everybody's Talking About It! It's Terrific!"
-The Citizen Kane poster
I mostly consider myself a connoisseur of modern film, with many classics of old remaining unseen by me. I have no contempt for older films, in fact if I had it my way I would have seen them all, but, after all, I was born in 1991. Most films I’ve seen have been made since then, everything made before then I’ve had to seek out. Only films like Star Wars have been given to me in my young age, and the true classics still elude me, for the most part. It’s not a matter of ignorance for boring, old film, but seeing every great film ever made is HARD. There’s a century of film that was made before I was born, and more has been made since. I’ve focused much of my time on these past 19 years because it seems more relevant to me.
It was only last year I first saw Citizen Kane, something that felt more like homework than a viewing experience I was looking forward to. As such it might have come off as an experience akin to seeing the Washington Monument: “Wow. That’s impressive. What’s for lunch?” I fully appreciated its craft, its visual flair, even its greatness, but was it forever going to hold a special place in my heart for the rest of eternity? Nah, it was more of a checklist item. I left it with admiration and not necessarily adulation.
So now I have decided to write on Citizen Kane, which feels as foreboding as tackling a rhino. So let me start with a clarification that brings it into a very modern context: when I compare the fictional Mark Zuckerberg of The Social Network to Charles Foster Kane I do not mean it as a direct comparison between the two films, though I admit it may come off that way. What I mean is that as characters are similar: they shoot to unbelievable riches and infamy with such drive that something is left behind. Both Kane and Zuckerberg are left with holes in their being once all is said and done. As films they are quite different, but what they evoke is similar. Where The Social Network falls on the spectrum of great films will only be determined with time, though I believe it is great. No one can dispute the greatness of Citizen Kane.
It is routinely picked as the greatest film ever made. That does not mean it is everyone’s favorite, though I imagine it is for many. But, after all, somewhere Basic Instinct 2 is someone’s favorite movie. I cannot dispute the #1 ranking because when a viewer truly gets into Citizen Kane they are left mystified. Many younger people may not penetrate it as thoroughly, and it may seem unimportant. Really, they see it as normal because it is the first film to set the bar for modern filmmaking. No one before Citizen Kane made a film that came close. Orson Welles saw what could be done with the medium and he took it into the stratosphere. Visually, it is ahead of its time. Thematically, it is still blowing films out of the water and into next week.
The name Orson Welles is such legend today that it’s easy to forget that Citizen Kane was the first film he had made. When it came out he was known only as the guy with the Mercury Theatre who caused a wee bit of confusion with his War of the Worlds broadcast. (Let it be known that people were not grabbing their pitchforks and gearing for intergalactic war.) This notoriety got the attention of RKO Pictures, and he was allowed to make a project over which he owned every creative aspect. He directed, produced, wrote (with a bit of help from Herman Mankiewicz), and performed the lead role. As such Citizen Kane was born.
Even I have the tendency to take some of Welles’ visual tricks for granted here. Take, for instance, this shot:
This is from an early scene where Kane’s parents are about to send him off to Chicago to be raised in a better environment. In the foreground, their parents talk with Thatcher about the arrangement. Simple enough. Outside the window, however, a young Kane is playing in the snow. Today this shot is not nearly as difficult, but Citizen Kane was made in 1941. Back then, it would occur to no one to give a shot so many dynamic layers. There are similar shots throughout the film, and not one goes by without importance. This is just one way the film changed the medium.
The film begins with Kane’s death, his dying word the now famous “Rosebud”. It’s up to reporter Jerry Thompson to investigate the life of Kane, and he searched for meaning behind “rosebud”. In a series of flashbacks we go through Kane’s life, watching a man who reaches unbelievable heights but without much payoff. The meaning of the dying word is revealed at film’s end. It adds resonance to the rest of the film. He is a man who lived a life which by many standards was full, productive, and Kane became one of the most important figures not only in American media, but in American culture.
He’s completely fictional, mind you, but Welles based Kane on American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. This is no biopic, but Welles took Hearst and made him a full character. Kane uses yellow journalism to take his newspaper The New York Enquirer to the top, and is never satisfied until he reaches the next plane. He expects to be satisfied, but he never is, and it all comes back to Rosebud: (spoiler alert?) his childhood sled. Kane was a man who never had a childhood, and the final scene shows the sled being incinerated. With that, he was doomed to never live a normal life.
I have talked about its craft, its visual style and its narrative structure, but not yet about the lead performance of Orson Welles, and it’s a doozy. Welles plays Kane at every age, from the years as a young newspaper tycoon to an old, broken man. Each step is pulled off flawlessly, and aging makeup, usually acting kryptonite, actually works to the film’s advantage.
Seeing Citizen Kane again was the best thing I could have done. Gone was the necessity of seeing it, and instead I was watching it more by choice. I came out enjoying it much more instead of nodding in approval before moving on with my life. It is called the best film ever made for a reason, and it very well might be. To me, it almost definitely is the most important film ever made. It set the table for just about every film that’s been made since, and as such I have nothing but eternal admiration for it. It strikes me as a film that will only get better with further repeated viewings. That doesn’t mean I’ll watch it again tomorrow, next week, or even this year, but Citizen Kane is a movie that will live forever because it tells an important story even in an age when newspapers are dying.
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| Charles Foster Kane stands atop his lonely empire. |
Citizen Kane is also proof that where a film stands in history can only be seen when it becomes just that: history. In 1941 the Oscar for Best Picture went to How Green Was My Valley. Kane was nominated for 9 awards but only won for Best Original Screenplay. History has, obviously proven otherwise. People like me are often quick to hand out superlatives and hype “best of” lists and watch the Academy Awards religiously as if the world depended on it. Really, it’s all “heat-of-the-moment” crap, no matter how fun it may be. The true greatness and importance of a film can only be determined many years down the road, and it isn’t measured in gold statues. On that level, I’d say Kane has done awfully well for itself.
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