#1: Citizen Kane

I'm really ahead of pace as of right now. In 18 days I've gotten through 9 movies. The pace won't last, because pretty soon my spring classes start. I might as well try to get as far ahead of pace as possible before then.
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1942)

Take a look at any 'best movie of all time' poll, and Citizen Kane will be #1. There are a handful of movies that will always appear in the top 20 or so (Vertigo, 2001, Rashomon, Bicycle Thieves, etc), but there'll be in all different orders. I never understood that. It's undeniably a great movie, but I don't understand what puts it so far above every other movie ever made that it monopolizes the #1 spot. Maybe the real reason is that while people disagree that it's #1, nobody puts it lower than #10 or so. (You're no respectable critic if you don't love Citizen Kane!)

Of course, I've never watched the movie objectively. It hasn't been possible to watch objectively for at least 20 years. Anyone with any exposure to pop culture knows what Rosebud is, and anyone in a position to want to watch Citizen Kane has probably been told it's the greatest movie ever made. Those are the standards to now judge it against, and you can't even watch it the way it was intended anymore, in the dark about Rosebud.

Orson Welles saw film as a means to espouse his world views and his values. He was well known as a hot headed fiercely opinionated egotist, and it came through in many of his roles. He played a lot of characters who made moral compromises which they rationalized throughout the film, only to be revealed as hateful and evil. In Citizen Kane his agenda is to display the hollow inhumanity of fame and fortune, and his methodology is brilliant. The first thing we see is the public face of Charles Kane, then we gradually investigate the private face. The attention to detail and the deliberate camera movement highlight perfectly everything we're supposed to see about the scene in addition to what all the characters are saying. It was the first film to use many of these techniques (Not that I care whether a film is influential). Flaws in the film production-wise are hard to find. The only flaws lie in Orson Welles' ideological conceits. If you don't accept those conceits that the pursuit of money and the pursuit of love are mutually destructive on Mr Welles' terms, just like Charles Kane wanted to be loved on his own terms, all you've got is a bunch of masterfully presented drama. (And one might argue it drags toward the end.)

Does it deserve the automatic '#1 film of all time' nod? Maybe it deserves to be considered #1, but not automatically in every single poll. Maybe I should take a look at the individual submissions that make up those polls and find out whether a lot of people put it as #1 on their own lists, or if it just happens to be the one not left off any individual list. (Whereas other films may get more #1 placements but also more omissions.)

On a side note, why don't they make puzzles like that anymore, with pieces all different shapes? Now puzzles are just a bunch of square pieces with bulges.

Rating: *****/5

9/100