Almost from the moment you take a serious interest in film, you start coming across references to Citizen Kane (1941). You can't avoid it. It's on every list of great films. Argue, if you will, about which is the greatest, but Citizen Kane is on your list somewhere.
All this adulation causes newbies (typically young people) to cringe when they finally get to see the actual movie. Shock! Horror! It's in B&W.
The trailer for Citizen Kane is less a sales pitch than a mystery. It shows plenty about the people behind the making of the movie but nothing from the actual film. Based solely on the trailer, you don’t know what Kane is about, short of being about a shadowy, complicated character called Kane.
Welles wasn’t just being cagey for the sake of building audience interest. He was trying to head off a fight. Though Welles publicly claimed that Kane was not about media baron William Randolph Hearst, you can hardly blame the tycoon for feeling otherwise. Hearst was a newspaper magnate with a showgirl mistress who built himself a preposterously opulent castle. Citizen Kane is about a newspaper magnate with a showgirl wife who built himself a preposterously opulent castle.
Hearst did everything he could to stop the movie’s production – and he could do quite a lot. When he failed to kill the picture by pressuring the studio, he pressured theater owners. He used his media empire to slander Welles – using the director’s complicated personal life as tabloid fodder and even implying that he was a Communist. Hearst’s campaign to discredit Welles was so successful that when the director’s name came up during the 1942 Academy Awards, it elicited boos.
If you want to get a sense of just why Citizen Kane is revered then check out this exhaustive documentary below about the film.
Whatever you think of the argument over Three-Act Structure, Syd Field's book is a good read and has many helpful things things to say.
The following excerpt (from Chapter 3, The Creation of Character) illustrates the maxim about using pictures to tell a story.
My favorite film marriage is seen in Citizen Kane. Kane's marriage is revealed in one incredible sequence, which begins with the marriage and honeymoon of Kane and his first wife. In the next cut, we see them at breakfast having an intimate conversation.
There is a swish pan (the camera swishes quickly out of the frame) and we see them in different clothes talking and reading the paper at breakfast.Swish pan and we see them at a slightly larger table having a very heated discussion.Swish pan to them having a more vocal argument about his spending so much time at his newspaper.
Swish pan to them at a much larger table, both silent, both reading the paper, he reading The Inquirer, she reading the Post [actually, the Chronicle], his primary competitor. She asks him something and he simply grunts in reply.
Swish pan to them at a very long table eating in total silence. A significant period of time covered in about a minute [just over two minutes, actually]. The sequence tells us so much about their relationship, and it's all done in brief shots, using pictures instead of words.
A screenplay, remember, is a story told with pictures.
The book contains a number of small factual errors, but keep in mind that Syd Field was writing this in 1979, when he didn't have the benefit of DVDs. I assume he wrote his description of the scene from memory. The screenplay for Citizen Kane has none of this. It restricts the elements to two sentences in a single scene.
EXT. STREET OUTSIDE ENQUIRER BUILDING - DAY
High angle downward - what Bernstein and Miss Townsend see from the window.
Kane is just stepping into an elegant barouch, drawn up at the curb, in which sits Miss Emily Norton. He kisses her full on the lips before he sits down. She acts a bit taken aback, because of the public nature of the scene, but she isn't really annoyed. As the barouche starts off, she is looking at him adoringly. He, however, has turned his head and is looking adoringly at the "Enquirer." He apparently sees Bernstein and Miss Townsend and waves his hand.
I think Orson Welles improved on the screenplay (which he co-wrote with Herman J. Mankiewicz) in this scene, but I wonder if it was a sudden inspiration at the last minute or a disagreement with Mankiewicz, which Welles, as director, decided in his own favor.
Almost from the moment you take a serious interest in film, you start coming across references to Citizen Kane (1941). You can't avoid it. It's on every list of great films. Argue, if you will, about which is the greatest, but Citizen Kane is on your list somewhere.
All this adulation causes newbies (typically young people) to cringe when they finally get to see the actual movie. Shock! Horror! It's in B&W.
The trailer for Citizen Kane is less a sales pitch than a mystery. It shows plenty about the people behind the making of the movie but nothing from the actual film. Based solely on the trailer, you don’t know what Kane is about, short of being about a shadowy, complicated character called Kane.
Welles wasn’t just being cagey for the sake of building audience interest. He was trying to head off a fight. Though Welles publicly claimed that Kane was not about media baron William Randolph Hearst, you can hardly blame the tycoon for feeling otherwise. Hearst was a newspaper magnate with a showgirl mistress who built himself a preposterously opulent castle. Citizen Kane is about a newspaper magnate with a showgirl wife who built himself a preposterously opulent castle.
Hearst did everything he could to stop the movie’s production – and he could do quite a lot. When he failed to kill the picture by pressuring the studio, he pressured theater owners. He used his media empire to slander Welles – using the director’s complicated personal life as tabloid fodder and even implying that he was a Communist. Hearst’s campaign to discredit Welles was so successful that when the director’s name came up during the 1942 Academy Awards, it elicited boos.
If you want to get a sense of just why Citizen Kane is revered then check out this exhaustive documentary below about the film.
Whatever you think of the argument over Three-Act Structure, Syd Field's book is a good read and has many helpful things things to say.
The following excerpt (from Chapter 3, The Creation of Character) illustrates the maxim about using pictures to tell a story.
My favorite film marriage is seen in Citizen Kane. Kane's marriage is revealed in one incredible sequence, which begins with the marriage and honeymoon of Kane and his first wife. In the next cut, we see them at breakfast having an intimate conversation.
There is a swish pan (the camera swishes quickly out of the frame) and we see them in different clothes talking and reading the paper at breakfast.Swish pan and we see them at a slightly larger table having a very heated discussion.Swish pan to them having a more vocal argument about his spending so much time at his newspaper.
Swish pan to them at a much larger table, both silent, both reading the paper, he reading The Inquirer, she reading the Post [actually, the Chronicle], his primary competitor. She asks him something and he simply grunts in reply.
Swish pan to them at a very long table eating in total silence. A significant period of time covered in about a minute [just over two minutes, actually]. The sequence tells us so much about their relationship, and it's all done in brief shots, using pictures instead of words.
A screenplay, remember, is a story told with pictures.
The book contains a number of small factual errors, but keep in mind that Syd Field was writing this in 1979, when he didn't have the benefit of DVDs. I assume he wrote his description of the scene from memory. The screenplay for Citizen Kane has none of this. It restricts the elements to two sentences in a single scene.
EXT. STREET OUTSIDE ENQUIRER BUILDING - DAY
High angle downward - what Bernstein and Miss Townsend see from the window.
Kane is just stepping into an elegant barouch, drawn up at the curb, in which sits Miss Emily Norton. He kisses her full on the lips before he sits down. She acts a bit taken aback, because of the public nature of the scene, but she isn't really annoyed. As the barouche starts off, she is looking at him adoringly. He, however, has turned his head and is looking adoringly at the "Enquirer." He apparently sees Bernstein and Miss Townsend and waves his hand.
I think Orson Welles improved on the screenplay (which he co-wrote with Herman J. Mankiewicz) in this scene, but I wonder if it was a sudden inspiration at the last minute or a disagreement with Mankiewicz, which Welles, as director, decided in his own favor.
Once every ten years, the BFI asks film critics and filmmakers—taking into account artistic merit and historical influence—to submit their choices for the ten greatest movies of all time, with Sight & Sound publishing shortlists of both Critics and Directors opinions. The poll is considered one of the most influential and respected movie lists there is.
For my part, I don't believe there is any such thing as the "greatest" movie of all time. There are a number of excellent films which every film buff should see. Beyond that, you can argue over relative rankings all you want, but I think you're wasting your time. The value of the lists is that they help keep alive the memory of great films which have gone before.
The most common response to the 2012 poll results was shock that Citizen Kane had been toppled from the #1 perch for the first time since the list began in 1952. That brought to mind the many complaints I've heard over the years from younger people after seeing Citizen Kane for the first time: It's slow, It's dull, It's boring, What was great about that?
Rather than bore you with my opinions, here are a few short video clips which might give you a starting point for deciding the question for yourself.
Almost from the moment you take a serious interest in film, you start coming across references to Citizen Kane (1941). You can't avoid it. It's on every list of great films. Argue, if you will, about which is the greatest, but Citizen Kane is on your list somewhere.
back in 1979. The book enjoyed enormous success, but became a bit of a target for critics in later years.
