One of the greatest films of all time - beautifully shot and directed

Rating: 10/10 (1 September 2015)

Many critics and fans alike regard Citizen Kane as the greatest film of all time, and it's easy to see how that endearing reputation has befitted its audacious production for so many decades. In experiencing the film on Blu-ray (the 70th Anniversary Edition, to be exact), the film holds up magnificently well through the innovative and distinctive structure, make-up/visual effects, and lighting employed by Orson and his team all those years ago.
Citizen Kane, of course, was the directorial debut of Orson Welles, whose booming and authoritative voice had made a him career in radio after co-founding the Mercury Theatre with John Houseman in 1937. By 1938, they created the Mercury Theatre on Air which would showcase their famous reading of the H.G. Wells classic, 'War of the Worlds,' a prank many took serious upon first hearing. Eventually, RKO Radio Pictures would grant Welles total freedom to make any picture he wanted; needless to say, Citizen Kane was born and became the darling it now is with both critics and fans around the world. While the picture did lose RKO money initially, the financial loss says nothing of its considerable contribution to cinema.
The film is known for its incredibly poetic composition, deep focus, and nonlinear storytelling, which I must say, allows revisiting the picture to be a much more pleasurable experience since one is always trying to dissect all these wonderfully visual elements. Much of this credit should go to cinematographer Gregg Toland, whose use of 'deep focus,' a terrific technique whereby the back and foregrounds are equally in focus, became essential in giving Citizen Kane its unique and often-times deceptive appearance. Toland of course won the Academy Award for cinematography for William Wyler's 'Wuthering Heights' the year prior, and would subsequently assist Welles in making a picture that allowed the audience themselves to decide the importance of what was on screen without obvious dictation from the director or crew. So many of these incredible shots allow for plenty of clever effects and underlining of character foreshadowing as the story moves along.
The acting is also a remarkable standout, in particular Joseph Cotton and Agnes Moorehead, both of whom were friends with Welles from his Mercury Theatre on the Air radio crew, as were most of the actors in the film, in fact. The latter however - the stunningly enigmatic Agnes Moorehead - is my favorite performance of the entire picture. There's such a restraint and composure to her character that goes unmatched by anyone else. Sadly, she has less screen time than her co-stars, but this of course makes her no less effective in my view. Her performance is so boldly pronounced that she alone is responsible for quickly hooking the audience into the story of young Charles Foster Kane; we cannot help but want to learn of what happens to this young man through seeing his mother portrayed so fearlessly in such an important context of the movie. Bernard Herrmann's music is also a grand addition to the picture, loaning its duties to all sorts of emotions - drama, comedy, suspense; he even supplies an original aria for one of Kane's opera- singing mistresses. It's a fantastic, widespread composition for which brings a lot of weight to Welles' vision. The Blu-ray of course is great and features the stunning, Academy Award-nominated documentary, The Battle for Citizen Kane, along with commentaries and other features. It's definitely worth upgrading from the DVD and I urge anyone who has yet to see this film to purchase it immediately.
Citizen Kane is a fine example of how motion pictures can establish themselves as true art and what young filmmakers should focus on as an influence over their own productions. Let us not forget those who laid these tracks before us; they surely lead back to some magnificent places, don't they?