A good movie, but only average for its time

Rating: 4/10 (3 March 2006)

It was a good movie. For many years I avoided this movie because all my life it was touted by "elite" movie critics as the best movie ever made. I finally saw it in January 2006. In its original uncut form. It was a pretty darn good movie. However I thought that the screenplay and acting, especially by Orsen Welles, was rather stiff, formulaic, and contrived. I think that the only reason it received high acclaim was the fact that it was very controversial at the time, was not a hit at the box office, and was generally not liked by the general populace. Remember the context of the time in which it was filmed. World war II was in its infancy. People were just not in the mood to see this kind of autocratic genre, particularly the opulence of Xanadu. People just were not in the mood for this type of movie. There was one movie, however, that the people were looking for that was very relevant at the time, family oriented and emotional. To the credit of the Academy, this other movie (go ahead look it up) won the Oscar for best movie in 1941, beating Citizen Kane. It also won other Oscars. If Citizen had been produced in the 60s, I would have rated it higher than 4, but I believe it has been vastly overrated. Gold standard, not hardly.