What, you haven't heard enough already?

Rating: 10/10 (6 February 2001)

It's clearly no secret by now that Citizen Kane is considered to be a pretty good movie. It's also no secret that it is considered to be the greatest film of all time by more people than any other film. Probably the only thing that is left to be said about Citizen Kane is peoples' opinions, and that's what I'm gonna give you, my opinion.
(spoilers) I've seen Citizen Kane several times now, and I still learn something new about it every time I see it. I've come to the conclusion that this film is so highly acclaimed because of the sheer brilliance of the direction, as well as the excellent acting. This isn't exactly an original idea, but when I say that, I mean that the story of the film itself was nothing particularly groundbreaking. In extremely simplified form, it's about a newspaper mogul who basically runs himself and his newspaper into the ground because of his incredible stubbornness. He spends his life of wealth cluttering his ridiculously huge house with meaningless junk, making it impossible for him to find the one meaningful thing in his life, Rosebud. I think that Kane's loss of Rosebud represents his fall from innocence, and the story of Citizen Kane is unbelievably well presented. Citizen Kane is literally an encyclopedia of film technique, because every single shot in the film is completely packed with visual information that goes far beyond just pointing at the action to show what's happening.
However, it's not the fact that Orson Welles utilized these techniques or the idea that he created or invented them, because nearly all of these techniques can be seen in films that came before Citizen Kane. The amazing thing here is that there are dozens and dozens of those techniques that can be found in various earlier films, but EVERYTHING is here, and there is so much going on and it is presented so carefully and with such a calculated result that its style dwarfs anything seen before or since.

Citizen Kane is not a movie that is likely to thrill or keep an audience on the edge of their seats, especially a modern audience. It is definitely a drama, and it does move fairly slowly at many points, but it is such an amazing thing to watch if you know what to look for. The first time I saw it, I was bored out of my skull. But as I read and learned more and more about it, I realized what things symbolize in the film and I learned about angles and distance and character position and frame composition, which has made me come to realize more and more why it is considered to be the greatest American film ever made. Watch it more than once, because no one can see all that there is to see in Citizen Kane after just one viewing.