re: Can someone explain why Citizen Kane is the greatest movie of all time?

Filmed in Technicolor

That's one of the 2 so-called "All Time Classic Movies" that I can't seem to sit through. The other is "Gone With The Wind".


I can't seem to get more than 1/2 hour in either one and I'm bored to death and looking for something more interesting to watch.

I'm pretty sure all movies were linear before Citizen Kane, never mind the lighting and film techniques and that boy wonder wrote, directed and starred in it at 25 years old.

I think The story is great. Its political, dramatical, wistful and an allegory. I mean it did so much when most movies of the time were just crime dramas or Westerns. Black hat/White hat...everything was surface level.

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Citizen Kane is definitely a visionary film, but it didn’t come up with the flashback.

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There were lots of films in the 30s that used flashbacks, but I can’t think of one prior to Kane that used them out of chronological order.

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It's not. That award goes to Rocky 2

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Rocky 1 > the rest of the Rocky movies.

Sigh. I tend to hate threads like these because the question is so rarely posed in good faith. But we'll assume that it is.

First, the idea of "best movie ever" is a fool's errand. There's no one answer and there's plenty of great movies which are all trying to do different things. It's like asking what the best kind of food there is. The answer is "yes." But Citizen Kane at least ha claim to the "most important" movie ever made, and it's hard to be a movie fan without some knowledge of the movie. So what makes it so impactful?

The technique. OK, we've talked about it. the dolly crane shot to enter the bar for the interview with Mrs. Kane, the fish-eye of Kane's death scene. The long takes. The radical use of deep focus lens, just invented, which allowed for both the fore and the background to be in focus, giving viewers more to look at and absorb. The use of wipes and dissolves. The only reason the movie doesn't seem radical is because it essentially invented a cinematic language we stil use today. A truly influential film doesn't seem influential to the future because you don't even notice the changes, as they are so ingrained into what we know as a movie. But that's nerdy shite, and you likely don't care. That's cool.

The director. Orson Welles was a hot proerty at the time. He had already conquered radio and the stage. You've heard about War of the Worlds, but his version of Othello was every bit the sensation. With that, he was given the keys to the kingdom and near unprecedented control of his first film project. While the auteur theory has taken it in the shorts the past few years, this was peak One Man's Vision (even if there is some argument over who wrote the screenplay, and I side with Mank). But even if he did have colloborators, he dominated the production. He financed it, cast it, had final edit, rewrote dialogue, and even painted the sets. This was one man's vision. Hubris, some would say. But it's hard not to admire the sheer audacity of the thing.

The controversy. Citizen Kane is a thinly veiled attack on William Randolph Hearst, one of the most powerful men in America at the time. And this was before the internet or even TV. You didn't get people criticizing media moguls like that because... how could you? Hearst would effectively blackball the movie and keep it from movie theaters. They would have to have special showings in alternative venues just to get the movie seen. In a way, this makes it the first major independent film.

The Great Amercian Novel. For decades, people have tried to write the mythical Great American Novel Kike the best movie ever, this is impossible, as no one book can sum up the totality of the American experience (though I'd nominate Grapes of Wrath as the best attempt). Still, Citizen Kane is the Great American Novel as a film. Kane starts from nothing, becomes rich due mainly to blind luck, takes on the establishment, and eventually dies broken and alone, remembering the only time of his life he was happy, before he became wealthy and had the cares of a child. It's a rejection of America's obsession with wealth, and it also has some extra punches to throw at populists who "represent the people" when they've clearly never hung out with the people in their lives.

Tone. For such an "important" movie, it's fun as hell. It has a song and dance number. The jokes are on point. Welles is funny. The movie doesn't take itself as serious as it would seem after everything I've said about it. It doesn't sniff its own farts, basically.

Structure. If nothing else, the movie is a genius of structure. The story bounces through time, hung on a central mystery which is essentially a MacGuffin. The rejection of linear stroytelling is not new, the German Bauhaus movement was way ahead of us on that front, but it was rare in a movie aimed at a big American audience which took such bold, narrative chances. again, it's normal these days, but it was radical in its day.

All that said, Casablanca is even better.

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All that said, Casablanca is even better.

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I was with you up til this.

Don’t get me wrong - Casablanca is a great, great movie, and extremely satisfying. I probably watch it far more often than Kane, if only because it’s a far more romantic “date night” film.

But at its heart, it’s basically a wartime melodrama. Its very formulaic, which is why virtually none of the participants thought it was going to be very memorable. What gives it its reputation is, while it doesn’t take nearly as many chances as Kane, it is executed with stylish perfection. In fact, it is as close to a perfect Hollywood movie as has ever been made - and the exotic locale and wartime setting help put it in the ideal historic context. Plus it features one of the most gorgeous women ever to grace the screen.

Kane, OTOH, is far from formulaic: it is a true auteur’s vision, with all of its youthful creator’s ego (and id) on full display. Unlike the satisfying familiarity of Casablanca’s expertly executed tropes, Kane is a rollercoaster of originality. I see something I never noticed before every time I watch it.

Tl;dr - both Citizen Kane and Casablanca are worthy of all the praise they have received over the decades since their release - but they are two decidedly different movie experiences, and can’t really be compared directly.