After watching Citizen Kane,
I have to disagree with the people that deem it the best movie of all time. In
my opinion, Citizen Kane is a GOOD movie, but definitely not the best.
The main reason I would only classify it as decent is because of my personal preference
in movies. I’d rather watch something along the lines of Lord of the Rings or
Harry Potter.
I enjoy fantasy films with action, romance, and humour in
them instead of a drawn out mystery involving politics and a sad life story. Basically,
I find Citizen Kane boring. The main
conflict (attempting to find out about Kane’s life) is just not as exciting as
a giant war between men, elves, wizards, hobbits, dwarves, and orcs, or the
adventures of a young wizard forced to save the world from evil. This is
entirely based on my preference of genres. Looking at the technical or
film-making perspective, I can see why Citizen Kane may be seen as such an
amazing movie. One impressive aspect is the acting. Excellent acting is demonstrated by
all cast members, but can be particularly seen by Kane (Orson Welles) and Susan
Alexander (Dorothy Comingore). One of Welles' best scenes was when Susan leaves
Kane and he goes completely insane in anger and misery. He walks around her
room upturning tables, ripping pictures from the walls and smashing a wide
variety of items. Orson Welles manages to make this look very emotional and
easily conveys to the audience how distraught Kane is by the loss of his second
wife. Worse actors may just look funny running around a room destroying things.
Dorothy Comingore is also an exemplary actor. She does a
very convincing impression of a depressed drunk person during both of Susan's
interviews with the reporter Thompson. She was also quite good when she freaks
out at Kane for allowing a bad review of her debut opera performance to be in
his newspaper, "The Inquirer". She seems genuinely angry even in
Susan’s annoying squeaky voice. This acting is particularly amazing when
compared to the awfulness seen in the Twilight
series. Kristen Stewart can’t act unless you count biting your lip, grabbing
your hair and breathing heavily as great acting. She only has one expression
which is a kind of zombie-like blank look.
Twilight is
absolutely awful and it is partially (but not entirely) due to extremely poor
acting. Citizen Kane did a fantastic
job in comparison. Another positive part of this movie was the creative filming techniques and special effects. For an old
film without a lot of technology, they managed many interesting and impressive
shots. A few specific examples include putting the camera through a sign before
and after Susan Alexander’s interviews, and through a table when Kane’s parents
are discussing sending him away with Thatcher. A great shot was when a nurse
enters Kane’s room to find him dead and she’s shown in the broken remains of
his snow globe.
Some awesome special effects were also seen at the beginning
when Xanadu was shown surrounded by fog on a hill. The giant palace actually
looked realistic, which is a great accomplishment for such an old movie.
These effects were way better than the ones in the 1981 movie
Clash of the Titans. Although it may
have come out 40 years after Citizen Kane,
the mythical creatures are nowhere near as realistic as anything in Orson
Welles' film. Sure, creating a static castle on a hill is a lot easier than
animating moving monsters, but it is more enjoyable look at a nicely created
palace than a giant slithering piece of play-dough (see video below). Citizen
Kane did a marvellous job using special effects that were not noticeably (or distractingly)
fake, particularly when considering its age.
Overall, I don’t believe Citizen Kane is the best movie
ever. I personally was not overly interested in the topic, making it a bit
boring. Despite this, the excellent acting and creative film-making made up for the slightly dull plot. All things considered, Citizen Kane was a decent and fairly enjoyable film even with my personal preference in movies.
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