Technique Good! Plot Bad!

Rating: 8/10 (22 July 1999)

Add me to the list of movie-lovers who dare to call "Citizen Kane" flawed. Enough has been said about Welles's innovations and his being a prodigy. I suppose all of that to be so.
All that being so, how am I to appreciate fully the techniques when the story is so ordinary? I apologize to those who love this movie but the writers came from radio and, to judge from this work, should have headed directly to television.
I suppose that I might criticize Welles as an actor but, given the caricature he was supposed to "realize," how great could his anyone's] performance in that role have been?
Rather than ramble on, let me conclude my review with a summary of the above: if a movie has a prosaic plot and a caricature for its protagonist, all the cinematography in the world cannot make it great.