Greatest Movie Ever?

Rating: 8/10 (1 April 2002)

Most of the IMDb-comments singularly focus on whether or not this film is the Greatest Movie Ever Made. To me, the question is completely irrelevant. I feel you can't appreciate movies without somehow connecting them to your own system of experiences and resulting convictions. Since everyone has different experiences (that goes for the movie viewing experiences as well) we all connect differently to different films. I believe it's impossible to look at a film from an objective perspective external to yourself. Even if you could scale the variables there's no objective way of saying this film has the Best Script, the Best Acting or Directing or whatever. What such judgements frequently represent is some form of idea that objectiveness is attainable. What they really mean is hard to determine. Does this film with its story of a man having every physical possession anyone could ever want, but not that which he truly desires, (still) strike a chord with that many people? Or is it a self-fulfilling prophecy in that when people watch the film known as The Greatest Ever, they will see exactly that?
Maybe it's a little bit of both, but a definite and undeniable important factor is how it revolutionized moviemaking. We can in the least and objectively say Orson Welles' debut did that. Everything from its non-linear story structure to its visual ambitions were extremely novel at the time (especially in American cinema), far more so than what we're used to hailing as 'revolutionay' moviemaking nowadays. Cameras that seem more mobile than ever before, extraordinary use of Gregg Toland's deep-focus photography, brilliant make-up and innovative editing (the shot fading into a newspaper picture) are some examples of the film's technical inventiveness.
The inventiveness employed in writing Citizen Kane is slightly less impressive if you look at the film retrospectively, as it did not revolutionize moviemaking as much as the film's techniques did. However, the script still stands tall above most others. It paints the life of Charles Foster Kane post-mortem, as a collection of visually-represented memories of him related to an investigating reporter by the people who 'knew' Kane best. In this manner, the movie builds brick upon brick of an idea of who Charles Foster Kane was, but only in our heads. The film continually shows him not from his own perspective but from that of others. This does not necessarily lead to contemplating in how far there still is an 'real' Kane, and in how far he is just the product of the people's subjective memories. But it does lead to starkly contrasting perspectives of the man. A foolish arrogant businessman, a ruthless megalomaniacal man uncapable of love or a enthusiastic young man brought down by his own success? The character of Kane is all and neither and only in our minds do the differing views of him coalesce to an idea of the complete man. Important for forming this idea is the grounding of the story in the newsreel which starts the film. It serves as a media perspective on the man, a perspective created by media he himself helped to create. It's completely over the top with its narration and totally believable as an actual newsreel, and here it serves as a skeleton.
Central to the story is its plot of a faceless reporter trying to find the meaning behind Kane's final spoken word 'Rosebud'. When we find out what it means we don't. We find out what if refers too, but are we ever told why is it exactly this word he chose to use as his last one? No, because we're meant to fill it in ourselves. In my mind it refers to the only time in his life where he had but did not consciously acknowledge the one thing he really wanted, namely love. The rest of his life he pursues it but finds he himself has none to give. What he has to give is money, charisma, talent and more money, but as a man he's as emotionally bankrupt as he could be. Therefore he never receives any and dies a bitter man. The most important question this always raises to me is why did Kane have no love to give? For me, the answer lies, at least in part, in the ridiculous ammount of assets entrusted to the man. Kane is a man who, from a certain (early) point in his life was trained to be of of the leading men in the world's economy. But also a man who was given the resources to indulge in anything he might want to do. A product of and for the industrial age if there ever was one. 'Regular' people growing up in 'regular' environments have to develop a capacity for loving other ones, independent of whether or not the are known to them. Kane never has to develop this capacity. To put it in his words:"If I wouldn't have had so much money, I would've been a great man. Under the circumstances I think I did pretty well."
A term like Greatest Film Ever may sound like nonsense to me, but that doesn't mean I have no opinion. There's no doubting Citizen Kane's importance in the history of cinema and there's no doubting how intricate this film is in presenting a picture of a man (who, of course, was to great extent William Randolph Hurst - Orson Welles even uses dialogue that quotes the man!). I enjoyed it tremendously, also not in the least due to the expert performances by Joseph Cotton and Welles himself. And I feel it's techniques are dynamic enough to stand up to most of today's efforts. It did never connect to me in a way that made me think it's the undisputed masterpiece people say it is. Indeed, it found it emotionally too distant at times. For me, not The Greatest Film, not My Favourite Film (something I do believe in), just a really good one.
Rating: 8/10