"Citizen Kane" or Citizen Disdain? This is the jest I'd been making as I dodged that film like the draft for five years now. I'd been avoiding this film like the plague since starting my film pursuits. But all similes and comparisons aside, my reasons of disdain for "Citizen Kane" is due to all of the hype that the film has received. What I am about to say may be considered film blasphemy, but "Citizen Kane" is not the best film that ever will be made. I say this because regardless of all of the film's hype, for there to be a singular final peak in an artform is to deem pointless the efforts of artists existing and creating after that work's creation. To say this about "Citizen Kane" is to kill in an instant the ambitions of film students and aspiring filmmakers everywhere. It seems to say that there is no reason to create anything further in the film medium. I believe and you the masses of the internet should agree to it that there will never be a single greatest film that will ever be made just as there will never be a single greatest painting that ever will be made, or song, or sculpture, or masterpiece of any form. Brand me a heretic, but "Citizen Kane" simply is not the greatest film that will ever be made, nor does that peak even exist.
Having said that, Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" is a grand film and deserving of the American Film Institute's #1 place on their top 100 films of all time list. However, this list is of American films only and herein lies an additional problem: "Citizen Kane" is not compared with all films of not only American cinema, but of Indian, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, etc. While "Citizen Kane" was well ahead of it's time with its composition, shots, and camera angles(many of which were invented by Orson Welles for the film) in terms of American Cinema, it is not so innovative when weighed against French Cinema or German Cinema of the decade prior to its release. Let us take the long uninterrupted shots that occur at points in the film particularly during interviews of the people in C.F. Kane's life. These long uninterrupted shots had been used in French Cinema in the late 1930s with Jean Renoir's "La grande illusion"(1937). And the multiple fade-ins in transitions were achieved in German Cinema as early as Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"(1927). Orson Welles' artistic eye seems to take from the French and German cinema, and in this regard his film "Citizen Kane" could be viewed as more befitting a grouping in with the great European films of the day.
Orson Welles' directorial debut was so very un-American in its film composure at the time. In fact, the very sustained uninterrupted shots are still a characteristic of French cinema to this day. Much of American Cinema of the late 1930s and early 1940s was very different from what Orson Welles presented in his film. Cinematographer Gregg Toland as per Welles' request, made sure that everything in the frame was in focus. Many filmmakers even today utilize that near cliche technique of focusing in on one or two particular objects in the frame as emphasis. "Citizen Kane" doesn't do this. Instead, the film chooses to present us with full-focus, as much as the human eye would take in. This is a film that leaves the audience left in as much mystery over "Rosebud" as the characters in the film sent to uncover the meaning of these dieing words are. Ergo, it seems fitting to have the entirety of the frame coming at the viewer all at once as the many pieces of Charles Foster Kane's life came flying out at once.
Enfin, "Citizen Kane" was 20 years ahead of its time with its film noir dark mystery later seen in the 1950s in American Cinema and continues to be an inspiration to filmmakers and film students who continue to see it as the Michael Angello's David of cinema. It is not the greatest film that will ever be made because the greatest that will ever be made is a rank which will never be reached in any art form. It is, however, one of the greatest films and will most likely maintain this status for decades and possibly centuries to come. If you disagree with my less-than-the-hype appraisal of "Citizen Kane", ask yourself this: is it right to insist that nothing will ever be as great as a work created in the early days of an art form which when compared to the painted art medium would place the work at around the equivalent artistic era of early ancient civilization? Is it right to say that in the first half of the first century of a still very new canon of film art that already we have the so-called "greatest that will ever be made"? And is it right for film educators, film schools, and the industry to insist that it is the peak and that there will be nothing higher than it?
If you find that the answer to these questions is that it is right, then why create or aspire to something greater in one's work if rather than a bar set high, there is an impenetrable ceiling?
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