Good, but not THAT good

Rating: 6/10 (8 March 2002)

Incredibly overrated, but still very good. That's how huge a chasm has been created between fantasy and reality since the Brussels World's Fair Jury voted KANE the #1 movie of all time back in 1958. No movie can live up to such unending praise.
Those 14,000 voters who rank Kane a ten have been brainwashed, as surely as the 900 or so who rank it a One are slightly clueless. The truth lies somewhere in between, around a 7. But I must admit to a kind of admiration for the Outcast 900; they're closer to right than they might think.
Audacious, only slightly derivative, landmark, indelible, smarmy biopic of Hearst in a fictional guise, utilizing the justly lauded Newsreel opening and flashback storyboard, in one reporter's search for the Meaning of Kane's last word. If you've read Hollywood Babylon, you know that Word has a double meaning, in Life and in Art. Makes the movie more fun. But, since Kane is alone when he dies, it's a puzzle how everyone seems to know his last word.
My favorite scene is Everett Sloane's Girl on the Ferry Boat speech. Beautiful and nostalgic old man reminiscence, played to perfection. I'm sorta old now myself, and my Ferry Boat Girl is Lynn Mahoney, 1951.
Meanwhile, leave us not lose sight of the fact that Citizen Kane wasn't even the best movie of 1941. That'd be The Maltese Falcon. However, both are infinitely better than the Academy's choice, How Green Was My Valley.