Outdated, possibly used to be great

Rating: 2/10 (23 September 2009)

Citizen Kane is one of these films that one feels obliged to watch in order to be able to discuss it with other film fans.
I found that as sound take is still 1941 technology the low quality of the sound makes the dialogue nearly impossible to follow. Am I unfair? Possibly, but when Orson Wells rejoices in background noise over spoken dialogue, not so much
Actors are awfully static, and they do not convey emotions, they do not raise empathy, I found it impossible to connect with them.
The shooting is sometimes innovative, fairly modern, but I do not judge the merits of a film for the impact it had on other films, nor how good or how new it was when it came out, I judge it for what it produces on me now.
As for the story, the "mystery" of Rosebud being the sort of philosophical thought that a man always longs for his childhood happiness, sorry about that, but it does not justify 90 minutes.
I resent the lack of clues towards that mystery too. It seems that Orson Wells thought "I'm going to do the biography of a media tycoon, what could I do to pretend there is a story?" and then came up with some sort of vague philosophical idea about the meaning of life, et voila!
If you disagree with this opinion and think "He did not get the true meaning of the film", just remember this one thing: I judge a film for what it brings to me now, not for what it brought others a long time ago.
By today's standards, Citizen Kane has fallen into the "old boring film" category.