Citizen Kane
(1941) dir. Orson Welles
viewed: 12/22/03 at Castro Theater, SF, CA
Citizen Kane is one of those 500-pound gorillas of cinema. It’s not as daunting as much of the European avant-garde, after all, it was made in Hollywood during the height of the “Golden Age” and has great production and verve and entertainment value that probably most people could sit through with their grandmother. Actually, this time around, I was extra impressed with how entertaining it was, so I truly mean it.
It’s one of those films though, that I think most popular “critics”, by whom I mean the ones that everyone reads in the papers and magazines and on television, who still shape popular opinion far more than they should, will put on their “Best Movies of All Time” list and most often will deem #1. It’s like they are afraid to say that they actually liked Casablanca better. Or maybe they are so keen as to differentiate between what they like best and what is best. What is best anyways?
When I first saw Citizen Kane, at the age of eighteen, on a video cassette, I was incredibly disappointed. This film that was supposed to be “The Best” was more or less a drama (albeit quite an epic one), which was not my favorite genre. I didn’t get it. It’s so culturally ingrained, this film, though, that the first place that I had ever heard of it was in Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts strip. A cultural reference from a period prior to the popularization of cultural references.
Since going to film school and having read a few texts in my time, as well as aging and (hopefully) maturing along the way, I learned more about the film, its context, Orson Welles, all of the legacy of the film, the drama of the film’s making, all of so much that is built up behind the film that does enhance its reception greatly. So, I see it now quite differently and seeing it on the big screen is also just so much more effective. And NEWSFLASH!!! It’s a great movie!!! (What did you expect?)
The other thing that I will mention here is how funny it was to see the film after all of The Simpsons reinterpretations that have been worked through. I have seen those Simpsons probably a dozen times in reruns since the last time I had seen Kane, and it was really funny to see how much of the film they use and reference, ecpecially in their Citizen Burns episode.
Yes, this is a terribly insightful site.
