Anyone seen Citizen Kane? Thoughts?

I've never seen this but have been told I should....

If you're any kind of a movie buff at all, yes, you should see it. It was a revolutionary advance in film-making, both technically and artistically, about on the order of the emergence of Babe Ruth circa 1920.

You know, as many movies as I've seen, this is one I never did. I have to see this one of these days.

Had to watch it for a graduate school class (back in 1984! I should have been watching the Tigers!). There are many inferences to William Randolph Hurst, the newspaper icon, that have led many reviewers to think this was his biography. Well, maybe not officially, but there are many similarities. For the time, 1941, it used innovative camera angles, lighting, voiceovers, and symbolism. Enjoy...all in all, it's about a very sad life in that he thought money could buy him everything.
(maybe A-rod should watch it?)

Last night I watched The Simpsons episode Rosebud and couldn't take it any more...I downloaded Citizen Kane. I watched it this morning. That episode makes SO MUCH more sense now. There's tons of episodes that reference the movie. One song sticks out in my mind from the movie - the one where they're singing about Mr. Kane and there's the line "He's Mr. Kane but to you it's Charlie" or something like that. In a Simpsons episode (not Rosebud) they sing to him and go "His name is Monty but to you it's Mr. Burns".

As for the movie, it's black & white so what do you expect? Actually, it wasn't nearly as irritating as I expected and I found myself following along. Surprisingly, the movie was pretty good. Supposedly there's tons of innovations (see wikpedia) in the movie. Overall I'll give it a pretty good score:
96.5/100
A

There are incredible innovations that showed Wells was at least 10 years ahead of his time.

hard to believe he started in radio!

Welles was practically unable to work in Hollywood after Citizen Kane. Hearst lined up all his newspapers to pan it and disgrace Welles. Main reason appears to have been that Kane's wife is portrayed as an alcoholic, and Hearst's wife Marion Davies was an alcoholic, and Hearst didn't like the inference. Actually, this was something that Welles later said he regretted, since it ruined Davies' career (she was an actress as I recall, though I don't think I've ever seen anything she was in)

In his autobio, David Niven tells a story about when he and Errol Flynn shared a villa on property that was owned by Hearst. Flynn and Niven used to throw outrageous parties there, and so much booze was consumed daily that their friends christened the house 'Cirrhosis by the Sea'. Niven and Flynn liked the name so much that they had a sign made up and stuck on the mailbox. Hearst forced them to remove it.

Marion Davies was a silent film star.

She started out that way, anyway. Wikipedia:

Davies is best remembered for her relationship with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Even during her career, her high-profile social life often obscured her professional career. In her posthumously published memoirs, Davies claimed she wasn't an actress, knew nothing about politics, and described herself as a "silly, giggly idiot."

After making her screen debut in late 1916 in a fashion newsreel, modeling gowns by Lucile (Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon), she appeared in her first feature film in 1917's Runaway Romany.[3] It was a film written by herself and directed by her brother-in-law, the prominent Broadway producer George W. Lederer. The following year she starred in three films, The Burden of Proof, Beatrice Fairfax, and Cecilia of the Pink Roses. Playing mainly light comedic roles, she quickly became a major movie personality, making a small fortune which enabled her to provide financial assistance for her family and friends.[2]

Cecilia of the Pink Roses in 1918 was her first film backed by Hearst. She was on her way to being the most famously advertised actress in the world. During the next 10 years she appeared in 29 films, an average of almost three films a year.[4]

By the mid-1920s, however, her career was often overshadowed by her relationship with the married Hearst and their fabulous social life at San Simeon and Ocean House in Santa Monica dubbed the biggest house on the beach, "the beach between San Diego and Vancouver".

Hearst had met her soon after she'd started working in movies, and formed Cosmopolitan Pictures solely to produce starring vehicles for her. Hearst's relentless efforts to promote her career instead had a detrimental effect, but he persisted, making Cosmopolitan's distribution deals first with Paramount, then Goldwyn, and then Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Davies, in her published memoirs The Times We Had, concluded that Hearst's over-the-top promotion of her career, in fact, had a negative result.


Hearst loved seeing her in expensive costume pictures, but she also appeared in contemporary comedies like Tillie the Toiler, The Fair Co-Ed (both 1927), and especially two directed by King Vidor, The Patsy and the backstage-in-Hollywood saga Show People (both 1928). The Patsy contains her imitations, that she usually did for friends, of silent stars Lillian Gish, Mae Murray and Pola Negri.

The coming of sound made Davies nervous, because she had never completely overcome a childhood stutter.[4] Her career survived, however, and she made several comedies and musicals during the 1930s, including Marianne (1929), Not So Dumb (1930), The Florodora Girl (1930), The Bachelor Father (1931), Five and Ten (1931) with Leslie Howard, Polly of the Circus (1932) with Clark Gable, Blondie of the Follies (1932), Peg o' My Heart (1933), Going Hollywood (1933) with Bing Crosby, and Operator 13 (1934) with Gary Cooper. She was involved with many aspects of her films and was considered an astute businesswoman. Her career, however, was hampered by Hearst's insistence that she play distinguished, dramatic parts, as opposed to the comic roles that were her forte. She also harboured an increasing dependence on alcohol, hiding bottles of liquor in San Simeon's toilet tanks. However, her body of work has often been praised by contemporary critics.

Hearst reportedly had tried to push MGM executives to hire Davies for the role of Marie Antoinette in Marie Antoinette (1938). Louis B. Mayer hired producer Irving Thalberg's wife Norma Shearer for the part instead. Hearst reacted by pulling his newspaper support for MGM, and moved Cosmopolitan Pictures to Warner Bros.'s studios, but stayed only a few years. Davies' films there included Page Miss Glory (1935), Hearts Divided, Cain and Mabel (both 1936), and Ever Since Eve (1937), her last film. Cosmopolitan Pictures folded, so she left the screen and retreated to San Simeon. Marion would later state in her autobiography that after many years of work, she had had enough, and decided to devote herself to being Mr. Hearst's "companion." In truth, Marion was intensely ambitious, but realized that at the age of forty, she still hadn't won over the public.

I remember the experts said that the camera work in Citizen Kane was what was ahead of its time. The use of shadows only works well in b&w films and is a lost art now. With color films, shadowing just does not have the dramatic effect.

What I enjoyed most was the camera angles...especially in that scene showing Kane and his wife at the breakfast table in the twilight of their marriage...the camera angled so deep that you could almost feel the gulf that was between them of emotional distance!

People think color films are great, but most have never been exposed to QUALITY black and white films.

any more that you can think of right off?

My all time fav B&Ws are:
City Lights
Birth of a Nation
Metropolis

Wasn't some new movie (like last year) shot in B&W?

one of the newer Bruce Willis movies was but the name escapes me.

After careful consideration, I have decided to alter the score of this movie. I realize this is a controversial move but after careful consideration of the themes and innovations of this movie I feel a score of 89.5 is unjust.

New score:
96.5
A

there ya go!

I agree more with your new score, I give it a 95/100

gotta love it!

We are lucky to still be able to watch that movie. Hearst and Co. with the help of Rockefeller Jr. were trying to get this movie destroyed, threatening to shut down any theater that played it, and even getting Orson Welles blacklisted. Sometimes what the movie went through to get made is almost as impressive as the movie itself.

Welles sure went through a lot to practice his craft. He went through a media frenzy after his rendition of War of the Worlds, broadcast in 1938 that many thought was a real invasion....then Citizen Kane...

I just watched the documentary The Battle For Citizen Kane. This documentary was quite well-done. It was quite interesting and does a good job explaining why we're so lucky this film is still around. It also shows how this film sort of ruined Welles' career before it even got going in the movies. Welles was quite a genius, but this film basically ruined his chances at doing much else in the US. He was in The Third Man which is pretty good and critically acclaimed, but that was a British film and he did not direct it.

Birth was weird good. It had a lot of new innovations for the day and was probably a best-selling novel at the time. (Kinda like Gone with the Wind, only in 1915.) It dealt with racism, also kind of a no-no back then, as the Civil War had only been overwith for 50 years.