Addressing Current Expectations

Rating: 10/10 (26 June 2012)

In 2012 writing a Review of Kane is a lose-lose effort. So many Critics and Film Scholars have exalted this excellent Experiment that almost anything said here has been said there. So addressing the current Expectations of watching this Today might have some Relevance.
There is a strange closed Cynical modern Perception and some in the audience absolutely hate this Film. Probably because They have been told so Loudly and Affirmatively that this is either the greatest Film ever made or one of the greatest and therefore it is a huge Letdown. It could hardly live up to the Anticipation and Expectations. Especially when it so Off-Beat and Avant Garde and was the first to use Techniques that have become so common as to be pedestrian.
There is that matter of Taste. It is not for Everyone. But must be Respected, if not liked, for its place in the Evolution of the Art form. It changed the very Thinking about what to do with the Palette and how to hold the Brush and Broke the Boundaries and shed the shackles of the those who Painted with Film.
One would have to, and this is the Framework for most Ancient on the Fringe Films, understand Cinema Chronology. The Paradigm of the Picture industry and the Historical body of work at the Time of Release, and the general Anticipated Acceptance of what was then being Offered for Consumption.
One could even say it is a Stand Alone Film.
In 1941 there was Nothing Like this at all. The Style was as New as anything that came before. Think Jackson Pollock. Or any other breakthrough Artistic Form. Movie fans Today have to accept that most of the Awe about Citizen Kane has been a Progression of Appreciation for the Audacious and Anti Establishment use of the Tools of the Cinema that were always there but arranged in Anarchy and that spun a New Direction and Citizen Kane changed the Language of Film Making.