*You know, I’ve been listening to the White Stripes’ “Union Forever” for years with no awareness that the whole song is basically an allusion to this movie. I liked it before, now I like it even more.
Citizen Kane is a great movie, but not considering the context of the way it (supposedly) “reinvented movies” as my Netflix case says, I have a hard time seeing how this is the best movie of all time.
For starters, the opening “News on the March” sequence is just lazy storytelling. I know that standards were different at the time, and it may even have been pretty original for Welles to have his voiceover actually grounded in the story. Still this isn’t Casablanca where a modern director would find a way to tell us what we need to know through dialogue, but it’s hard to imagine anyone relating those details in a genuine way. No, everything that we learn in “News on the March” could be told in a more organic way in the story proper, and, in fact, we are told most of it again anyway.
Voiceover should be used only if you absolutely cannot tell it in a different way, or if it adds a lot. Certainly moviemakers didn’t think like that then, and that’s fine, but even then it must have been frowned upon to use it when it is completely unnecessary, and, if not, revolutionary Welles should have realized that anyway, no?
That’s not to say the scene serves no purpose. It sets a frame for the whole film, but that’s easily solvable. The shots of Xanadu and the quotation from “Kubla Khan” sets a stark, symbolic contrast with the haunted house feel it’s given in the first scene, and that certainly is important.
It also lets us know all the basic details of Kane’s life before the story begins, which Welles must have thought was important. But wouldn’t it have been nicer to only know that he was this super rich guy who died, and let us fit in the other stuff as the movie went along?
I guess that’s actually my only serious criticism. I was a little skeptical of this being told as a “frame story” through a series of flashbacks, but it’s necessary for the “rosebud” mystery, and even without that, it would be totally worth it just for seeing Jedediah as an old man—man, that dude was awesome. That the flashbacks all travel linearly through time is a little unbelievable, but I’ll forgive that.
Otherwise, Citizen Kane really is a great movie and would probably be even better if I didn’t know what rosebud was. If you’re one of the ten people in the world that doesn’t know what it is, I won’t ruin it for you, but it is a wonderful bit of symbolism, the “missing piece” that, in a way, explains everything.
The acting is generally superb—particularly for such an old movie, when standards were somewhat different—the cinematography is great, especially the shots inside Xanadu toward the end though the aforementioned “haunted house” shots do feel a little tacky. Also, the make-up work on Welles as Kane gets older is also pretty amazing for 1941.
It does suffer a little from There Will Be Blood syndrome in that the emotional context is mostly dark, repressed emotion. It didn’t bother me so much this time though. In fact, I think I may be overcoming that mental block, actually.
Also, I just want to mention how awesome it is that Welles gives essentially all the principal actors their own screen in the credits, and then sticks his own credit for playing Kane as one line on a screen with ten others. Now that’s modesty.
So, all in all, Citizen Kane is great, but I wasn’t blown away the way I was with Casablanca, or Network, or even Adaptation, American Beauty or Memento. There are enough minor flaws, the symbolism sometimes a bit too overdone, the storytelling occasionally weak enough to keep it out of the “perfect” category and consideration of best movie I’ve ever seen, but those are minor complaints. A
Also, totally unrelated, but I just acquired my copy of Juno (view count: 4), and on the back it proclaims—it, not a critic mind you—that “Juno delivers huge laughs…without even trying!” Ugh. This is why people hate Juno. Why must it market itself as the self-conscious super “indie” film that all its detractors think it is. I don’t know, maybe Diablo Cody thought that, but Jason Reitman clearly saw how much more it could be. Man, it’s really well-directed. Anyway, that’s all.
Citizen Kane is a great movie, but not considering the context of the way it (supposedly) “reinvented movies” as my Netflix case says, I have a hard time seeing how this is the best movie of all time.
For starters, the opening “News on the March” sequence is just lazy storytelling. I know that standards were different at the time, and it may even have been pretty original for Welles to have his voiceover actually grounded in the story. Still this isn’t Casablanca where a modern director would find a way to tell us what we need to know through dialogue, but it’s hard to imagine anyone relating those details in a genuine way. No, everything that we learn in “News on the March” could be told in a more organic way in the story proper, and, in fact, we are told most of it again anyway.
Voiceover should be used only if you absolutely cannot tell it in a different way, or if it adds a lot. Certainly moviemakers didn’t think like that then, and that’s fine, but even then it must have been frowned upon to use it when it is completely unnecessary, and, if not, revolutionary Welles should have realized that anyway, no?
That’s not to say the scene serves no purpose. It sets a frame for the whole film, but that’s easily solvable. The shots of Xanadu and the quotation from “Kubla Khan” sets a stark, symbolic contrast with the haunted house feel it’s given in the first scene, and that certainly is important.
It also lets us know all the basic details of Kane’s life before the story begins, which Welles must have thought was important. But wouldn’t it have been nicer to only know that he was this super rich guy who died, and let us fit in the other stuff as the movie went along?
I guess that’s actually my only serious criticism. I was a little skeptical of this being told as a “frame story” through a series of flashbacks, but it’s necessary for the “rosebud” mystery, and even without that, it would be totally worth it just for seeing Jedediah as an old man—man, that dude was awesome. That the flashbacks all travel linearly through time is a little unbelievable, but I’ll forgive that.
Otherwise, Citizen Kane really is a great movie and would probably be even better if I didn’t know what rosebud was. If you’re one of the ten people in the world that doesn’t know what it is, I won’t ruin it for you, but it is a wonderful bit of symbolism, the “missing piece” that, in a way, explains everything.
The acting is generally superb—particularly for such an old movie, when standards were somewhat different—the cinematography is great, especially the shots inside Xanadu toward the end though the aforementioned “haunted house” shots do feel a little tacky. Also, the make-up work on Welles as Kane gets older is also pretty amazing for 1941.
It does suffer a little from There Will Be Blood syndrome in that the emotional context is mostly dark, repressed emotion. It didn’t bother me so much this time though. In fact, I think I may be overcoming that mental block, actually.
Also, I just want to mention how awesome it is that Welles gives essentially all the principal actors their own screen in the credits, and then sticks his own credit for playing Kane as one line on a screen with ten others. Now that’s modesty.
So, all in all, Citizen Kane is great, but I wasn’t blown away the way I was with Casablanca, or Network, or even Adaptation, American Beauty or Memento. There are enough minor flaws, the symbolism sometimes a bit too overdone, the storytelling occasionally weak enough to keep it out of the “perfect” category and consideration of best movie I’ve ever seen, but those are minor complaints. A
Also, totally unrelated, but I just acquired my copy of Juno (view count: 4), and on the back it proclaims—it, not a critic mind you—that “Juno delivers huge laughs…without even trying!” Ugh. This is why people hate Juno. Why must it market itself as the self-conscious super “indie” film that all its detractors think it is. I don’t know, maybe Diablo Cody thought that, but Jason Reitman clearly saw how much more it could be. Man, it’s really well-directed. Anyway, that’s all.
4 comments:
I must say that I think that Citizen Kane really is one of the greatest films ever made, not by looking at it as a film by itself, but rather the effect it had on the movie industry. It was one of the first movies that really turned movie making into an art. It introduced a plethora of new filming and editing techniques to the industry, and was one of the first films to be shot outside of the studio.
And I actually like the whole news reel and whatnot, giving the background on his life in the beginning, since it lets the viewer focus more on the main point of the film, which is finding out what Rosebud is, which, like you, i was unfortunately told before i saw the movie, making it very anti-climactic for me.
All in all, while it is a favorite of mine to watch, its really a movie thats more famous for its effect on movies in the future than the movie itself, at least I think.
Unrelated: What is this, I can't post a comment under a nick name any more, only with a google/blogger username, or OpenID thing. Blasphemy.
Yeah, that's what I figured. I'm generally of the opinion though that while movies should be judged in their context (i.e. I would have been a lot harsher on the newsreel if the movie came out today), when you say a movie is X good, or the best movie of all time or whatever, it should be based purely on how good the movie is, not on how important it was. I understand most people disagree.
Also, on the comment thing, I was just trying to get rid of anonymous comments, I guess I messed up. I'll change it back.
oh ok, I thought it was something Blogger did to the site
Also I understand what you mean, I'll rephrase that to its a great movie, but one of the most important films ever made
Post a Comment