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In Reply to: It just goes to show you... posted by Audiophilander on December 29, 2003 at 00:38:21:

***the one unequivocal conclusion reached is that film history would certainly be the poorer if this film didn't exist.
I already said that earlier.
Influence is though one tricky thing: it flows both ways.
No one is denying that Welles, in addition to being an extremely rotten person (that is undenyable), was also an incredibly talented one - his whole life (especially the early one) cries of that, but one would be extremely foolish, or else, ill-informed, to proclaim that every good thing in the film was invented by him and his crew.
His greates contribution was not in those small things that he created or borrowed, but in building the huge monument. Unfortunately this is also his failure, as that monument is too overblown, to the point of becoming burdensome both to the director and the viewer.
One would also be foolish to uverlook the fact that the film had the same missguided drive behind it as some other "scandalous" films in the world history - namely things like Salo, where the director is not being solely guided by his internal desire to investigate new things, but to a large degree by the intention (almost evel one in case of Pasolini) to shock and unpleasantly surprise.
Pasolini was already bitter at the whole world, and all his talent got wasted on his ugly "monument", and there IS thatelement in Kane as well, as Welles was just too absorbed in his personal misfortunes and failures at the time, being driven to "show them". That is never a good guide.
So life is usually much more complex than a few simple proclamations.
Citizen Kane indeed deserves to be examined carefully, and it does represent a significant even in the world cinema development, but one should not be wearing blinds when looking at it.

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Re: It just goes to show you...