Nope, I still don't get it

[dreamshark]

Since it showed up in my house in a red envelope, I decided to try watching "Citizen Kane" again and see if I could figure out why so many people think it's the best movie ever made. I still don't get it. Yes, it is visually stunning and I guess it introduced a lot of technical innovations to modern cinema. That certainly makes it important and worth watching.

But for my money the Best Movie Ever has to have more than technical flash. Like believable characters, or a compelling story, or emotional resonance. I don't see any of those things here. The characters are shallow and their motivations are murky (explain to me again why Kane decides to finish the mean-spirited review started by his former best friend and then... publish it? WTF?).



And as for the Central Mystery of the movie - Mr. Kane is alone in a room behind a closed door when he dies. He utters his famous parting comment, then the snow globe drops out of his hand, slowly bounces to the floor and shatters. And THEN the nurse opens the door and enters the room. So how did anybody know what his last words were? Remember, he's not living in a 50's tract house with hollow core doors. He lives in a castle made out of imported stone and huge slabs of oak, with rooms so gigantic that he and his various wives seem to have trouble hearing each other when they're in the same room. Even if the nurse had her ear pressed to the door it's hard to imagine that she could have heard him talking to himself.

Oh, yeah. "Rosebud" is the name of the sled. Or more likely the name of the company that made the sled. Whatever.

Comments

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

From Wikipedia entry on Citizen Kane:


Citizen Kane is often cited as being one of the most innovative works in the history of film. The American Film Institute placed it at number one in its list of the 100 greatest U.S. movies of all time in 1997 and again in the revised list of 2007. In a recent poll of film critics and directors conducted by the British Film Institute, Citizen Kane was ranked the number one best film of all time by both groups.

[emerdavid.livejournal.com]

The thing about Citizen Kane is that it's *not* a great movie.

It's a *significant* movie.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

And in fact my college film teacher came from AFI (I think he was dean of advanced studies there). But I wonder how many of those people would have called it a favorite?