Originally posted by Dottie
Watched Citizen Kane today. Yeah I know its considered a classic and that I should have seen it before, but anyway...
This was probably one of the most dissapointing movies I've ever seen. I cant at all understand why as liked as it is... If I understood it correctly its suppsed to be some statement about what money can buy, but the plot is utterly boring and in addition you have to suffer through atempts of "humor" every now and then. In the entire first half of the movie every scene also gives a silly and chaotic impression.
Would be happy if anyone explaines exactly whats so great about this one, Is there some historic reason? Or am I just incapable of understanding the true meaning of it?
First, technique. Citizen Kane was the first Hollywood film to break with the overwhelming German UFA style that developed in the mid 1920s. Instead of being rich, romantic, subtly lit and accompanied by slurping strings, Citizen Kane was fast-paced, jagged, filled with unbalanced shadows and had a gutsy score. It annoyed the hell out of the Hollywood conservatives who ruled the roost. That one scene, for instance, where the hero and his wife show their deteriorating relationship over the dinnertable in conversation as the years fly by, is now considered a classic textbook illustration of how to tell a story through symbols.
Second, the story is based (loosely!) on the life of William Randolph Hearst, the first of the big newspaper tycoons, the man who invented "yellow journalism." As such, it was viewed as a dirty laundry film, a look behind the scenes, which it wasn't. but the man who wrote the film had it in for Hearst, and deliberately made him, and his girlfriend, look terrible in it.
Third, as a synthesis of directing, acting, music and script, it is brilliant. (The team of actors that worked with Welles were people he had known and acted with for more than a decade, ther Mercury Theater crew. People like Joseph Cotton and Agnes Morehead were rightly accounted among the most brilliant character actors in the US.) It is an extremely "tight" film; there are no weak or wobbly moments. Everything contributes to effect. It is enormously concentrated, and doesn't yield one-quarter its value at a first sitting.
Fourth, it is a story that can be taken at several levels, without ever pushing too hard at any. It is a morality tale about losing one's soul in the search of money. It is a tragedy of character, as we follow a person who keeps catching on to what he's lost one step to late all the time down the road of life, until he realizes, on his deathbed, what he truly lacked and wished for, most--too late. It is a mystery: what do the hero's last words mean?
If you didn't like it, don't bother seeing it, again. But if you're curious about it, try it a second time, keeping the above in mind. Try to see it after seeing some very good 1930s Hollywood films; that will give you a sense of what a monster Citizen Kane was to the tinsel city, and why so many higher-ups were delighted when it wasn't an overnight success.
