Why Citizen Cane is the most important movie ever made...

[Melodybe]

For those that haven't seen it, it is more than a movie about a sled. Orson Wells had the balls to go after the Rupert Murdoch of his day. Back in the 30's, 40's, and 50's almost all of the news papers of the day were owned by William Randolph Hearst. Hearst could make or break politicians, musicians, and actors at his whim. He was particularly responsible for Charlie Chaplin being kicked out of the country, the movie the Cat's Meow with Kursten Dunst and Eddie Izzard gives some insight as to why Hearst hated Caplin so much. Cane is an ambitious, creul and empty man. On his deathbed he was so miserable that they only happiness in his entire life was riding on his stupid Rosebud when he was a child.

Citizen Cane is the most important movie because the parallels between Hearst and the media whores are undeniable. Citizen Cane is valuable to audiences now b/c it shows what happens when the free press is no longer free, why having media concentration is the worst thing a country can allow.

I have the utmost respect for Orson Wells, he really was an American hero and I feel bad that he got so little respect in his later years. So what if he was a tubby fellow in his old age, his love for his country and what it could be is so very patriotic.

Was Wells the Micheal Moore of his day? If Micheal Moore was hot then most definitely.

I wanted to write this b/c Citizen Cane is one movie that we all should be watching.

It gives me hope that if the Hearsts of this world could be taken down then, the media whores can be taken down now.

As John Kerry said to the press 2 Thursday's ago, "your long reign is about to end."

[Must_B_Free]

1. And he would be rolling in his grave.

to see how Merv Griffin is supporting the facists.

[jjmalonejr]

2. Citizen Kane is a masterpiece

For the reasons you mention and so much more.

If you haven't seen it, it is a MUST watch. Modern filmmakers owe an enormous debt to Orson Wells for showing them the way.

[Laura_B_manslaughter]

3. The movie is BORING!!!!!!!!!

I saw it once years ago and never again. The fact that Kane was a newsman was not really emphasized in the film. He was just your typical american bastard.

[Melodybe]

4. Wow, I didn't think it was boring at all. Different strokes I guess.

[TlalocW]

5. I found it boring as well

I mean I got the point and all, but snooze-fest. I only wish I had paid more attention to the part of the movie when they show his big-ass house by the sea - that was actually lifted from another movie, and the birds flying around it are pterodactyls.

TlalocW

[KittyWampus]

7. If You Are Used To The Frenetic Pace Of Terminator Movies

then this would be definately boring.

No explosions.

Just great dialouge, tremendous acting and groundbreaking camerawork. :)

[MUSTANG_2004]

17. Groundbreaking camera work

may be great the first time, but decades later it doesn't make a difference to anyone but a film student. And a dull story-line can't be overcome by dialog and acting.

[Kahuna]

21. I can't agree with that. The first time I saw CK about 10 years ago..

I was in total awe of the camera work. I've seen hundreds of modern movies that still cannot touch the creativity of CK.

[TlalocW]

24. Actually, I watch all kinds of movies...

And I watched this one in college during my theater appreciation class, which also showed us Fahrenheit 451, Clockwork Orange, and the Tin Drum, amongst others. And I just hated, hated, hated this movie. I also hated Sunset Boulevard. Those two movies just were so mind-numbingly boring. Of course, thanks to Charlie Brown cartoons, I've known that, "Rosebud was his sled," since I was five so maybe it was a little anti-climatic.

TlalocW

[MUSTANG_2004]

12. Boring doesn't begin to do it justice.

If you watched it once, you've got me beat. 15 minutes into it and I couldn't watch it any longer.

[NightTrain]

15. Why? Because it had no car chases?

[AtTheEndOfTheDay]

The fact that Kane was a newsman

is blatantly obvious and extensively explored in the movie. You must have been watching something else.

[No2W2004]

6. There is so much about this move,

at it's heart, its a tragedy. It's about how someone can have all the money and power in the world, but can't obtain the love he once had.
When Susan is leaving, Kane says "Don't do this to me" and she says Is that what you think, that this is being done to just you?" Kane never thinks about Susan's feelings, just as he never thought of Jebadiah's, or Emily's. It's all about him, Charles Foster Kane.

He doesn't realize this error until he's on his deathbed.

[alvis]

13. A Viewer's Companion to 'Citizen Kane'

A Viewer's Companion to 'Citizen Kane'
BY ROGER EBERT
http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies/kcomp.html

Gossip has it that the screenwriter, Herman Mankiewicz, used "rosebud" as an inside joke, because as a friend of Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies, he knew "rosebud" was the old man's pet name for the most intimate part of her anatomy.

Also:

Great Movies: CITIZEN KANE
BY ROGER EBERT
http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies/kane.html

[JohnKleeb]

14. hah thanks I didnt know that

[Minstrel Boy]

8. Great political art. Hearst was right to fear it.

[CaTeacher]

9. It was a good movie--but

Wells was a weirdo personally. He had a problem with rage and violence--did you know that the LAPD investigated him for murder--he was one of the suspects in the infamoous Black Dahlia case. (They never could pin the killing on anyone--but the victims family and relatives still think that he was the killer.) He was a strange and often dangerous man.

I don't think he did that killing--but there were some good reasons why his name was up at the top of the suspects list.

[JohnKleeb]

10. I didnt know that

btw enjoyed the film much, I believe I watched the day in film where I got a whole pizza and ate the whole thing, I was so sick after that heh but it was a fun day.

[Melodybe]

11. I don't believe a word of it, Hearst was out to get him.

[CaTeacher]

18. Well--Hearst must have been quite good--

because William Randolph Hearst died in 1951. Wells was first named as a suspect in the case in 1955. So do you attribute this to the long arm of Hearst reaching out from the grave (?).

The murder took place in 1949--but Wells was not as suspect until many years later--when it came out that he may have known the victim--they frequented some of the same Hollywood spots (WRH was long dead when this came out).

If you want to know more--Read the book: Childhood Shadows: The Hidden Story of the Black Dahlia Murder by Mary Pacios

Personally, I do not believe that Wells was the murderer (Gilmore's theory fits the evidence best) but--Wells was without doubt a violent and irrational person. How do you justify him strangling his wife to the point where she would pass out? (she later sued him for divorce)
How about the man in London who Wells stabbed with a sword (!) who ended up permanently disabled? Wells was a rage-aholic and a nut.

But I do agree with you about Citizen Kane--I think it is one of the 10 best movies of all time--it is a masterpiece. But Wells still was a lunatic.

[Minstrel Boy]

16. That's a spurious accusation.

Welles was not a suspect. The charge that he killed the Black Dahlia comes from a 1999 vanity press book by a woman who says she was a friend of Elizabeth Short, but who was only 12 at the time of her killing. She offers evidence such as Welles' performed a magic act of sawing a woman in half, and he travelled to Europe immediately after the murder. It's unconvincing libel, made only after his death.

[CaTeacher]

19. I agree that her book was not convincing--I

I do not believe that Wells was the murderer (I am 100% with Gilmore that it was that house painter).

However--Wells WAS investigated for the murder by LAPD and he is still on their suspect lists (and no--the woman who wrote the book was not responsible for this--she was a mere teenager at the time when Wells came to the attention of the LAPD. WRH was not responsible either--because he was long dead)

And I do believe the things about Wells problems with violence--I have read several biographies of him--he could be a frightening man. These incidents (violence to other actors, wives, etc) were well publicized during his lifetime.

[thebigidea]

25. I suppose none of those biographies spelled his name right?

[CaTeacher]

29. No--I suppose that I unthinkingly

allowed spell check to change it.

[thebigidea]

30. what incidents of violence, exactly? In which bios?

I heard he once strangled a man to death and back before dying himself in the midst of recording his voiceover for "TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE" - of course, this was during the period in which his greatest collaborator was ficticious McDonald's spokesman "Hamburglar" - who by all accounts, was a terrible influence on that troubled genius Welles.



true story: I once asked the actress who played "Vampira" about Orson Welles giving her "the clap." She did a pretty good imitation of his voice and cackled.

Now that's an icebreaking conversation for parties: "say, I ever tell you how I got some VD from that guy who sells no wine before its time?"

[CaTeacher]

33. no--I am thinking of the things that Rita Hayworth

said about him. She was apparently quite terrified of him when they divorced and she claimed that he had been violent toward her on many occasions.

The sword incident happened when he was doing Shakespeare in London--he insisted on using real swords (said he could not get into the scene without the real thing) and then he got into a tiff with another actor and stabbed him with the sword.

He also regularly got into vicious fights in bars--stuff like that. He was quite a character!

[Chomskyite]

26. More substantiation on this please

I just read the book Black Dahlia Avenger and while it's a fairly exhaustive book it never mentions that Welles was a suspect. But John Huston was a good friend of the suspect the author favors as the most likely culprit.

[CaTeacher]

32. I never bothered to read the book

"Black Dahlia Avenger" as it is completely discredited by the experts. The general consensus is that that Gilmore book had the correct suspect, all the others are just trying to cash in--or get attention.

I am not trying to say that Orson did the crime--I have never believed that he did. All I said was that he did make the suspect list--and he DID. That is a true fact. BTW--the doctor who is the subject of the Black Dahlia Avenger was NEVER a suspect according to the LAPD (even though his estranged son claimed that he was in the book--and he was threatened with a lawsuit for making the false claim).

But, Orson is another story! He was a suspect--and was investigated for the crime. It was not pinned on him and there was not any convincing evidence--except for his horrible temper--his history of violence toward women--and his possible acquaintance with the victim.

Most people agree that the smart money is on that house painter guy as the murderer (I can't remember his name off-hand)

[Chomskyite]

38. I'll definitely check into what is being said about BDA

The case made in that book seems circumstantial, certainly. I'll definitely check on the Gilmore book as well.

[Shadow30]

20. excellent film

I just saw Citizen Cain again just a few weeks ago it is a great movie.Hearst really did hate that movie of course,tried to stop it from being released, HBO made a movie about that a few years ago called RKO281,worth watching in and of itself.

[davekriss]

22. It's a cliche to say Kane the best movie ever made

(Or one of the best.)

For that reason alone it stays off my top 10 list. However, I have to admit it is one of the best films ever made. I've seen it more than a dozen times and I have to say it was "new" for at least the first half dozen viewings (I'd see yet another dimension I hadn't seen in a previous viewing). This depth, captured by craft, is why it is a great, enduring work of art.

However, I'm more apt to name A Touch of Evil first (or even The Lady from Shanghai) because Kane finds itself named on almost everyone else's list.

My "top 10": Fellini's La Dolce Vita (the sudden pause on the blonde "angel from an Umbrian church" -- or the crack of thunder that has the laughing kids run into the room full of adults talking angstful arty subjects -- just classic!), Kurasowa's Rashomon, Carol Reed's The Third Man (who can forget Welles in the ferris wheel scene?), Cocteau's Orpheus, Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, Welles' A Touch of Evil, Truffaut's The 400 Blows, Godard's Breathless, Casablanca (OK, cliches find their way on my list too), Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, Fritz Lang's M, OK OK Citizen Kane, Fellini's La Strada, Hawkes' To Have and Have Not (named for the wonderful interplay between Bogie and Lauren Bacall) -- argh, that's more than 10 (I love film!), maybe just a few more -- The Hustler, On the Waterfront and Streetcar Named Desire, Suddenly Last Summer, a half-dozen Hitchcock films, Sling Blade and Pulp Fiction, and my favortite independent film, Jarmusch's Stranger than Paradise!

(Note my top 10 changes daily, as there have just been way too many great movies made over the years!)

(I have to add, the previous generation of my family were all in the film business and I was an editor for awhile...we're always talkin' film...)

[thebigidea]

28. Touch of Evil is definetely a lot more fun

Though lately I've grown really fond of his goofy take on Kafka, The Trial...

[davekriss]

34. Yes, the Trial

I'd forgotten that. With nerves-abuzzing Anthony Perkins as Josef K! While I prefer Touch of Evil over the Trial, I put it right up there at the heights of the Welles panoply and should be named ahead of the Lady from Shanghai -- the latter I love for the hall of mirrors scene, and of course for the towering closeups on Rita Hayworth (first saw it in a full screen movie theater).

(As an aside: I suspect the poster who said he/she was bored with Kane would be rendered comatose by The Trial, however both A Touch of Evil and The Lady from Shanghai might keem him/her awake.)

[no_hypocrisy]

23. "Really, Charles. People will think . . . " "What I tell them to think!"

Best line of dialogue in the whole movie.

[Warren DeMontague]

27. In terms of cinematography and narrative filmmaking

it was light-years ahead of anything that had come before it.

An amazing, amazing film.

My pick for the "Citizen Kane" of the 2nd half of the 20th Century?

Terry Gilliam's BRAZIL.

[Gothic Sponge]

31. Great Film! One of the best!

Way ahead of its time.

[proud patriot]

35. That's my Dad's favorite movie of all time

:hi:

[Coventina]

36. Peter Griffin (Family Guy) on CK:

"Rosebud was his sled. There, I've saved you two long boring boobless hours!"

I have to say----I'm inclined to agree with him. Yes, it is a great movie. I can admire it intellectually, but it doesn't "touch" me in anyway. YMMV.

[AngryAmish]

37. "Citizen Cane" is no "Shakes the Clown"

Shakes is easily the most important film. Was there a single drunk clown in CK? No.