The Golden Age's Best Film

Rating: 9/10 (6 October 2013)

And imho those years 1915-1955 were the most entertaining in movie history too. I've never called myself or written down that I'm a film "reviewer": unless you get paid for it by someone else and it's your job title the internet is generally the place to simply pass comments about this, that or the other. There's more than enough reviewers out there in the world anyway, and critics or snickerers too. I dislike passing bad comments on anything because 99% of the films ever made took some effort and brainwork even if I didn't personally approve of it. I could never "review" Kane, passing some paltry comments on such a monumental film is hard enough, but over the last 40 years I've now seen it so many times think it's high time I gave my opinion too.
Disjointed story told by disparate people at different times of boy growing up to be ruthless newspaper magnate who is used to getting his own way with everything and everyone, and a newspaper reporter trying to find out what he meant by his dying word. So: It's relentlessly inventive and near perfect in every department, script, acting, production-direction, camera-work, sets, costumes etc, with the available technology they had at the time presenting a movie that still looks fresh as a daisy to someone who doesn't. A nitrate-gleaming black and white production, with no colour, cgi cartoonery, swearing, relevance to ordinary peoples' lives, sex or violence for enlightened modern audience tastes (but containing some analogue cartoonery for those who need the fix) – it's the lack of these absolute essentials that most people today can't forgive in Kane. And the plot isn't incomprehensible and no one grunts through their parts like today. On the other side are people who think that after all the decades this has now been proved to be the unbeatable ultimate in cinematic art, and all other films are simply also-rans with Kane in its somewhat traditional role of being unassailable. Both sets are wrong of course - it's all personal taste and nothing lasts forever, even criticism isn't static. However, Kane is set in the amber of the Golden Age of the movies and is to me the best movie from that celebrated era. Indubitably. Again however, if I could only take one film with me to watch on a desert island this isn't it.
Far from being mediocre the end ties everything up beautifully, and it helps make poignant sense of the previous two riveting hours. Unlike the vast majority of films, come good, bad or indifferent criticism it'll still be here after we're all gone so let's hear it for Good Old Citizen Kane!