"Citizen Kane" (1941) Was Reviewed On IMDb Site 1,063 Times As Of March 17, 2013, And Here Is Review #1,064....Just What The World Needs!

Rating: 10/10 (17 March 2013)

"Citizen Kane" (1941) Was Reviewed On IMDb Site 1,063 Times As Of March 17, 2013, And Here Is Review #1,064....Just What The World Needs! -------------
I'm a movie actor (SAG-AFTRA accredited), a movie history teacher and scholar, and I've written 95 movie reviews posted on the IMDb.Com site as of today (St. Patrick's Day 2013....March 17, 2013 to any who don't know about St. Patrick and his famous anniversary day!).
I printed out my list of 95 movie review titles written for and posted on IMDb.Com, and noticed "Citizen Kane" (1941) was not included.
I supply the following movie review to make up for this oversight, and promise to review other famous and worthy classic movies in the future....my current 3/17/2013 movie review list of 95 movies includes many unknown and even a few unworthy movies, and it seems ironic and a shame movies of importance like "Citizen Kane" (1941) are not included.
About "Citizen Kane" (1941).....
Orson Welles was famously a self-promoter and opportunist of high skills and great gifts, and the widely accepted reputation of his movie "Citizen Kane" (1941) as "the greatest movie ever made" is due at least in part to his drum-beating, showmanship efforts over the decades to give the movie that label.
In fact, "Citizen Kane" (1941) is a tabloid type celebrity scandal story worthy of "The National Inquirer" tabloid newspaper and/or scandal magazine (the publication appeared in both forms over the many profitable decades it operated).
William Randolph Hearst (in the not too well disguised fictional persona of "Charles Foster Kane") is taken to task for having a pretty blonde unmarried ex-chorus girl mistress (Marion Davies named "Susan Alexander" in the movie), for living a life of profligate extravagance obviously both immoral and ridiculous, and for getting away with it all.....for living a life into advanced old age where he passes away, finally, in the care of uniformed nurses on duty at one of his mansions certainly as big as one of the Pope's summer palaces or any of French King Louis XIV's residential retreats.
In short, "Citizen Kane" (1941) "dishes the dirt" and wades through sleeze, sleeze, sleeze, all sanitized by the fact the sleeze is perpetrated by a person of wealth and power, a captain of industry of the sort demonized widely and often in the 1941 world then very much in love with Socialism and the philosophy of "sharing the wealth," meaning robbing the rich and spreading assets of rich around for the "poor" to share and enjoy.
"Rich bad guys" were very much in vogue in pre-WWII 1941 in the USA as targets for politicians and the media (the "New Deal" and Huey Long's "Share The Wealth" hustles were two of many examples of the times.....Upton Sinclair's California "EPIC"....an initialism standing for "End Poverty In California" was yet another of fame in the 1930's...).
"Citizen Kane" (1941) was a movie about a bad USA rich guy....tabloid stuff for sure.
It was presented using tried and true 1920's German art movie techniques of proved value...extreme close-ups, distorted angles, unusual and rarely used techniques of framing and scene changes.
"The Third Man" (1949) is the other movie of fame and honor Orson Welles made while still a handsome young man (middle 30's in 1949), and it also used eccentric and honored German art film techniques to portray post WWII Vienna, Austria as the dark world of "Harry Lime," the villain (another villain) Welles portrayed in "The Third Man" (1949).....
BTW, Welles was "the third man" referred to in the movie title, even though he was not officially given status as first billed movie star in "The Third Man" (1949)....Joseph Cotton was the "official" head movie star in that movie.
"Citizen Kane" (1941) became a media event due to the efforts of Orson Welles to make it so, and his efforts continued decades after "Citizen Kane" (1941) was released, and quickly forgotten by most people.
The retrospective (and in ways probably revisionist) history about the movie details....over the decades following 1941...tales of Louis B. Mayer offering almost one million dollars to burn the original negative before the movie is released, tales of the "battle" between then 76 year old Hearst and then 25 year old Welles), and blow-by-blow tales of how the movie "almost never made it to the theaters" and was "disappeared" after a brief release...
Welles became a movie star starting with "Citizen Kane" (1941), married Rita Hayworth, and was a mainstream Hollywood "player" during the 1940's and 1950's until his bad health and old age arrived early ended a not bad 20 year career in movies during which he was seen often on USA and world movie house screens.
He even became a player in the world of television, which displaced Hollywood movies by 1960.......who can forget the Orson Welles "Paul Masson Wine" TV ads promising the world that Masson wines would never reach wine customers "before it's time"? "Citizen Kane" (1941) was and is an OK black and white movie hard to enjoy the first time through which became a long range media event, and still is.
It is much more important as a media event and example of promotion and pop-scholarship than it is or was as a movie which stands on its own feet.
10 stars for "Citizen Kane" (1941) for it's place in "the big picture"......not the same as 10 stars for being a good movie, pure and simple.
"Citizen Kane" (1941) was never "pure and simple." Thank you for reading the 1,064th movie review posted on WWW.IMDb.Com for "Citizen Kane" (1941). I am grateful.
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Written by Tex (David) Allen, SAG-AFTRA accredited movie actor, movie scholar and movie history teacher, and movie reviewer.
Email Tex at TexAlleN@Rocketmal.Com