One of my new favorites

Rating: 10/10 (2 November 2012)

I had always admired Orson Welles but I'd never seen any of his films. I admired him because like myself he was an actor, magician and film director. I've always known that Citizen Kane was considered to be the greatest film of all time by many critics and yet, I still hadn't seen it. I finally got the opportunity to watch the film for the first time recently and it's climbed to become one of my favorites. Citizen Kane has themes as old as literature itself: love, ambition, corruption and the price of success to name a few. These themes are part of the human condition and some of my personal favorites, so the film strongly appealed to me. The most impressive asset of the film was Welles. In addition to directing and writing the film, he also starred in it. Considering that this was his first film and he was given complete creative control by RKO, it was monumental. The film's cinematography for its time was groundbreaking material, with camera shots that had never been seen before or had just been emerging, such as the use of deep focus so the audience looks at the whole scene. Knowing a little on Welles' personal life, one of the film's most interesting aspects was that in many ways Welles was Kane, gifted and a slave to his own hubris. The film portrays a life of riches as poor substitutes to love. All Kane ever wanted was to be loved like every human being, but he was stripped away from the moment he was taken away from his parents at a young age. He spends the rest of his life trying to relive that childlike wonder, which is what his sled is symbolic of. If he can't be happy, then he makes the lives of those around him miserable as well, such as pushing his second wife Susan towards an opera career that she never wanted. He spends his later years in Xandu, his own castle. He spends fortunes on statues, to the extent that they completely occupy his home and he even has doubles of the same ones. The only two possessions he cared about were his snow globe and his sled, which reminded him of the life he wanted to rekindle. This is filmmaking at its finest. Welles pushed the boundaries and made the film his way, with his people without RKO breathing down his neck. I believe the only criticism a person could give is that it is boring to them, which is a fair complaint considering the plethora of films that are out there today and how much more technologically advanced Hollywood has become since the early 40's. I feel as if ambitious or intellectual men will get the most fulfillment out of Citizen Kane. I personally give it a perfect rating.