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In Reply to: I bought the new Citizen Kane DVD last week... posted by marantzman on October 01, 2001 at 12:41:51:
I haven't seen it yet and cannot find a copy in local stores. Why is it the #1 film of all time? A breakthrough of eveything!? Please don't tell me the story. I would like to see it myself. thanks
Follow Ups:
I thought people put this film on an altar just for worship, and nobody is really watching it... I will watch it soon...
Oh, there have been other great achievements in cinema art before and since, but few pushed the envelope as hard or set the bar as high as Orson Welles did in Citizen Kane. It's noirish multi-angular composition is legendary, but groundbreaking cinematography isn't the reason for Kane's revered status in my estimation. Many films have examined how easily gained wealth can corrupt the human spirit, but no one besides Welles would've dared pursue the subject as a thinly disguised biography of the most powerful newspaper magnate who ever lived, William Randolf Hearst.Hearst, who is reputed to have made news when it didn't happen on it's own, was very much alive when Citizen Kane was filmed and none too thrilled with the idea of his own private life being exposed to public scrutiny and ridicule. In the movie, the fictional Kane's death becomes a search for what was most important in the deceased character's life, a word uttered on his death bed which might be the key to some deeper meaning to his life. But through it all, is it Hearst's and Kane's life or our desire to know some ultimate truth which is being investigated?
Citizen Kane plays on so many different levels that it's rich tapestry can't be fully explored in one viewing. There are ironies within ironies and at the heart of it is America's fascination with success and voyeristic need to know everything about those who symbolize it.
After reading these impressions you might think that I've given some important element of the movie away, but let me reassure you, I haven't. A movie this great has much more to it than can be put into words. By now you should be looking up internet venders if you haven't been able to locate this awesome 2-DVD set locally; so, my friend, what are you waiting for? :o)
Cheers,
AuPh
Always with you it's a problem with America isn't it? Ya know why they say travel is broadening? If one goes to the UK or to almost any South American country one will find a *far greater* interest in such matters evinced in the press and on television.It's like bad driving and the weather: Everywhere you go people will say it's worse there.
In the above discourse the word "humanity's" serves far better than "America's" but that would depoliticize the criticism.
clark
> > > "Always with you it's a problem with America isn't it?" < < <Not by a long shot, dude!
The youthful Welles, himself a man of the world, depicted Kane as the epitome of American excess. Universal themes are certainly present, but this film is more about lost innocence as a by-product of instant wealth than it is about symbolism on a global scale.
> > > "It's like bad driving and the weather: Everywhere you go people will try to say it's worse there." < < <
What does that have to do with Citizen Kane? This movie is investigates the life of an American icon as seen through the eyes of other Americans. Are you sure that you didn't pick up a mislabled Fellini flick by mistake? ;^)
AAuPh
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(nt)
All that I could add to what 'Phlouder wrote is that "Kane" really moves cinema beyond the realm of "filmed drama" like you would see on a stage. To a very considerable degree, Welles exploits the unique abilities of film to tell a story, to be evocative and non-literal. It does not hurt that the story itself is rich with important themes and that the acting is first-rate.
The interesting thing about Kane, for me, is that while it is supremely filmic -- its exploitations of angle are *exactly* what Bela Balazs was talking about! -- it is simultaneously one of the most _theatrical_ films out there. By that I don't mean that it's miming the stage; rather, elements of _Kane_ (for example, the lighting) employ to stunning effect a sort of stylized excess typical of the stage. For example, the light through the window in the depository is something you'd expect to see on Broadway, not in Hollywood.Anyone else see parallels to German Expressionism?
d., sees this forum taking up a lot of his time from now on ;o)
The DVD version has commentary and trailer not found in video version, right?I will buy a dvd player and the movie... I guess it's time for me to buy a DVD player again. I sold my old one two years ago because I was not thrilled by surround sound. Good movies do not need surround and good surround sound almost always come with stupid movies! I found myself agonizing over suck movies just for my surround setup... This time, I won't even bother to hook it up with my main stereo system...I read your post three times...Thanks
All the best movies are in mono anyway.clark
1
Mono is available as an output option for DVD movies, especially the older ones.Tom §.
... but there are numerous weighty tomes devoted to analysing this film, try your local library.Is it the best film ever made? Well I think so, for what that's worth. It has so much which is done supurbly, nothing which is done badly, nothing missing and nothing superfluous. The story is involving and beautifully resolved, the acting first class, the ... oh, heck - it's just all good.
I first saw Citizen Kane when I was in university in the early 70s. I took a film course as a minor and part of it was a screening of a major film each week followed by a tutorial & discussion. Most films just came & went but the week we screened Kane was different. No one in the class had ever seen it before, and after it finished there was spontaneous applause and a group decision to skip the tutorial and just watch the film again, which we did. In fact we would have watched it a third time but the projectionist had to close up for the night. The tutor didn't bother setting any assignments for that week - he said he guessed that we had got the point.
Cheers
PS - After you see Kane, watch something else from the immediate pre-war period so you can appreciate just how ground-breaking it was at the time. Then watch Griffith's "Intolerance". It is a more difficult film for modern eyes to relate to, but you'll be amazed at how much of the language of cinema he invented which was then ignored for a quarter of a century until Welles came along and did it again.
Look at what it doesn't have: bullets, explosions, computer graphics, computer graphics of bullet or explosion p.o.v. shots, color imagery, Keanu Reeves, Charlize Theron, bad stereotypes, cookie cutter plot written in crayon, overblown music score (Bernard Hermann ain't no Jerry Goldsmith), insipid dialog, pause shot of adult looking in child-like wonder at incredible phenomenon (otherwise known as a "Spielberg"), bad guy coming back to life one last time to attack hero/heroine, sympathetic loser getting his scrotum caught in his zipper,...etc.All they left in was ART.
absence of mediocrity does not automatically imply greatness. Otherwise, the empty set would be the greatest work of all times.
My sarcastic point is that today's movies are made from "hot" quota items based on big studio focus group polls of target audiences. Oh no, I forgot to mention the nude scenes and the cars crashing into a fruit cart!
*
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