One of the greats...

Rating: 10/10 (22 March 2000)

This film's greatness is everything that Hollywood has seemed to have forgotten these days. First of all, a great script. Very little can save a poor script, and great ones these days, with the exception of Good Will Hunting, are fairly rare these days. The script provides a framework from which a director and actors flesh things out, and Mankiewicz and Welles have provided just that. Secondly, great cinematic effects are used best when complementing and at the service of great filmmaking and a good story, not in place of it. The use of music overlapping scenes, the camera coming from the ground to give the illusion of size, and the track backwards from the young Kane to into the cabin are marvelous, and add a great sense of perspective and almost commentary on their respective scenes- and these are just two of many examples from the film. The reinvention in plot structure, something that's happened only once this decade, in another great film called Pulp Fiction. All of these elements combine to make an absolutely fascinating portrait of the rise and fall of an infamous, legendary man. Arguably the greatest film of all time, and definitely one of my favorites.