It's more than just a great looking movie.

Rating: 10/10 (12 December 2005)

What makes a great film? In my opinion it is the following:
#1.Photography (most important because it IS a film. If it's shot badly, then your skrood.) NOTE: I consider the best filmmakers to be great cinematographers first, such as Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Etc.
#2. Directing/Editing (I lump the two together because the director really edits what is going on while it's being filmed, then finishes the process in the cutting room)
#3. Acting (If we can't believe the people, we've lost it. But, bad acting can be corrected in the cutting room, and with multiple takes).
#4. Sound and Music (If what we hear doesn't fit, the movie might as well be silent).
Now, this is all well and good for a movie that tells a great story. Add to that a serious dose of style, ingenuity, and passion, all of which can be found in each frame of Citizen Kane.
Citizen Kane isn't just a great movie with great characters, a great cast, great music from Bernard Herrmann or great photography. At the time of its creation it was like a cannon shot from the camp of RKO at the media moguls who were dominating the minds of people at the time.
This message was not only important to the American public who had a right to objective journalism, but also because we were seeing the affects of divisiveness over the airwaves thanks to Hitler, and the power that comes from shaping the perceptions of the masses needed to be acknowledged from a semi-fictional standpoint, and Wells did it with so much energy and style you can't help but admire this work even 60+ years later. Citizen Kane shook the rafters of the media, and even though they played it down, everybody at the time was feeling the quake.
Above all else, Citizen Kane tells the story of a man who is a victim of his own success, a story that can never be told enough.
When you see Citizen Kane, you're not just watching a well made film, you're watching a piece of art, a piece of history, and a timeless story of how power corrupts.
Absolutely.