Orson Welles and his dated monstrosity

Rating: 7/10 (15 November 2002)

A boy is separated from his family and is abducted into a life of luxury and money. However at the end of his life he realizes that money can't buy love nor can it replace the affection of a family.
So what? who cares? who didn't already know this? I mean, can this movie be any more insipid? Can this movie be any more cold, clinical or lackluster?
Much has been said about Citizen Kane's technical greatness, about it's innovations, and that's the reason why most people consider it the greatest film ever done. So what are you telling me? That just because Orson Welles put his camera here and used some shadows there it makes this film superior to all the other true works of art like La Strada? Are you telling me that technical values are more important than artistic values? Because that's pretty much what Citizen Kane is: a gutless exercise in style. If technical innovations were any important why isn't The Jazz Singer the greatest film ever done. It was the first film to incorporate sound to movies and that's much more important than any of the tricks Welles pulls out of his ass throughout this movie. But The Jazz Singer gets no respect (and rightfully so since it's such a mediocre movie), so why on earth does Citizen Kane gets so much praise? It's not like it was the first film to use any of those techniques. Deep focus, low camera angles, use of shadows, they had all been used before and they have all been used after, and many times they have given much better individual results. Citizen Kane is only historically significant for being the first film to use them all in one film (since then on Orson Welles has been given the credit for something he didn't come up with). Innovations are just innovations, new things, and more than half a century later it's stupid to think they still mean anything.
On top of it, Citizen Kane is pretty average in every other aspect. There's not one single memorable performance in the film. Joseph Cotton is fine but he had the bad luck of having to share the screen with Welles (belting out one of the most distastefully over-the-top performances of his career). The performances do come alive at times and that's entirely due to the great script co-written by Welles himself and Herman Mankiewicz. To tell you the truth if Herman was anything like his brother, all the witty and memorable phrases in the film are his doing. They're fast, intelligent and they provide Kane with its most relaxed moments. The rest of the script (which I suppose was Welles's work) is too melodramatic and pretentious.
But more than that, Citizen Kane fails to accomplish one of the primary goals of any movie: connect with the audience. I don't know what Welles was thinking when he thought anybody was going to identify with this megalomaniac who makes life impossible for everyone around him and stills expects them to love him, understand him, and keep an open mind about him at all times. I normally wouldn't have a problem with characters that are emotionally unavailable, they make for some interesting character studies, but this is ridiculous. Normally director's have the good judgement to show both sides of the character, his bad side and his good side, but Charles Foster Kane's personality is so big and strong he comes off as a plain simple bastard. I can't imagine anyone saying: "Gee, I watched Citizen Kane and I really felt it spoke to me", maybe Louis B. Meyer did, maybe Welles himself did, maybe Bill Gates does, but all of us this side of the socio-economical spectrum can't help but just don't care. Really, I don't care about Charles Foster Kane's life, I don't care about his feelings and I don't care about a single frame of this movie.
Maybe when the movie was released it was actually significant, with all its innovations but after so many years those innovations don't matter anymore, and that's when a movie really dates. Go ahead and watch it, but if you've seen films like Pulp Fiction, The Godfather, Persona, 8 1/2, Battleship Potemkin, Andrei Rublev, Rashomon, etc, then be prepared to be disappointed by a movie that doesn't live up to its reputation.