This film is not a masterpiece. It's a miracle.

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2003)

This is not my favourite film, but if I try to set aside my personal taste, and judge from a general point of view (far more difficult...), I have to say this is the greatest of all time.
What's most impressive is how modern this film looks. If a movie like this was made today, I'd say it is twenty years ahead of its time. And it was made more than sixty years ago! Camera angles, directing style, originality of the framing, everything is more peculiar and, in a sense, more modern than what we're used to. The best example is maybe the multiple reflection of Kane image in the mirrors. How many modern films have a shot so original, so simple, and so evocative?
The other great aspect is that this is by far the best example of character development in all cinema history. Kane is a like a real person, always coherent with himself, but never banal or predictable: a lesser writer would have described him simply as a greedy man that makes everything to make money (and this would have been a very banal and boring story). Welles shows us the drama of a man that use his great wealth to make other people love him, and at the end of its life faces his failure, as he dies alone. Welles' performances, both acting, writing, and directing, are astonishing, given that he was only 25 at the time, and all the other actors are great too.
10/10