the greatest film ever made?

Rating: 9/10 (19 May 2004)

Somehow you feel like everything has already been said about this movie: often at the top of best of' lists, certainly regarded as the greatest first film ever made by any director, and the best of all the films to be associated with Orson Welles. Of course he was only in his twenties when he not only co-wrote and directed Citizen Kane', but also appeared as the central character over a span of decades  from fresh-faced young entrepreneur to crabby old man of wealth, trapped in his white castle of mirrors and jigsaws.
The structure of the film  a series of interviews about the man who has just passed on, plus incidents from his life in flashback  doesn't always come off, but for sheer scope and inventiveness this piece has few peers. We see Charlie' Kane right from the early moments of his life, when he is sent from his parents to a better life, fit to govern, through his highs and lows as a newspaper magnate. We meet those who loved him, those who hated him, those who weren't sure. We get swept along by the momentum of the movie.
Other films would be directed by Welles in the future that are worth seeing (The Magnificent Ambersons, plus his own takes on Macbeth and Othello with himself in the lead) but Citizen Kane' is the most memorable and the most important. His own Mercury Theatre group play the various parts within the saga  names such as Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead, both of whom would have long careers after 1942. Others such as Dorothy Comingore didn't live up to their initial promise but at least have left us this film to remember them by.
Citizen Kane' is certainly worth the time of anyone remotely interested in the history of film.