As If It Were Made Yesterday

Rating: 10/10 (16 October 2001)

Orson Welles' indisputable masterpiece has a modernity that shocks you upon viewing: it could have been made yesterday, it seems that contemporary. It has innovation writ large all over it, from Gregg Toland's deep focus cinematography to Bernard Herrmann's moody score to the natural interplay of the performers (especially Welles with his wonderfully modulated voice) and it never flags, not even for a minute. The screenplay, by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, is a model of perfection, cutting, as it does, through a life as seen through the eyes of those who knew Charles Foster Kane at various points. All in all, it's impossible to conceive improving upon what is quite possibly the greatest, most influential film ever made.