More Personal Onslaught on Randolph Hearst than Great Movie

Rating: 6/10 (28 June 2014)

I've seen this now 3 times, once in a full-size cinema, and while really wanting to admire it I think it's only possible to do that if you can judge it in 1940s context.
The camera-work is - I'm informed, I have no expertise - ground-breaking but almost all of the plot is mundane (esp the parts on his electoral hopes and second marriage) and overall it drags. The official nub may be intended to be, what did Kane mean by Rosebud, but overriding that is the Emperor's Clothes question: why on earth should we care? And the answer is no we shouldn't!
Kane is another ambitious tragic soul and with respect to Orson Welles (who must surely have known this) that subject has been more covered in art than almost everything else. Yes, the fictional Charles Kane is very likely modelled on Randolph Hearst, which may be the real point of making the movie, but if so, its interest lies in it being a personal onslaught, not a great production.
Most of the 6/10 rating is for the visual ingenuity... in the end here is just another old man who sacrificed too much of his humanity on the path to material fortune. Citizen Kane is I'd imagine best viewed if you don't expect anything special - although the final 15 minutes, showing the ageing beast in his sad finery, are probably worth a look.