Citizen Kane 1941
I first watched Citizen Kane in college when a friend who was a movie buff made a bunch of us watch it. I remember being very impressed with the movie and was happy to see it named the best movie of all time by the American Film Institute. I bought the DVD, but I’m not sure I ever actually watched it. I was able to get a Digital HD version that I hoped to watch on my iPad, but it turns out that the video service, Vudu, will only download a SD version to the iPad and the results weren’t that great. Plus I watched over a period of a couple of days while I was on the train, which isn’t the best way to enjoy any movie. I was much less impressed this time around, maybe because I’m older and have seen a lot more movies and just know more about life. So seeing Orson Welles as this outsized newspaper publisher wasn’t that impressive, but really neither were his vices, which weren’t that severe. Kane is played as someone you kind of feel sorry for as he goes through two unhappy marriages and his political ambitions are foiled by his own weaknesses (which has happened so many times, maybe most similiarly by John Edwards). So he just seems like a guy with a big ego and a lot of money who wound up unhappy, and maybe that just doesn’t work as well anymore. I still like some of the directorial flourishes, shooting stuff from odd angles or crane shots or whatever else Welles and his cameraman could think of. It gives the movie a modern flair even though some of the acting and makeup make it look really dated. It’s still a great movie, but I was a little disappointed and left wondering what all the acclaim was about. I may watch again with the commentary by Roger Ebert and find out what I am overlooking.
Written: 21 Sep 2017
Owned on: UHD, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital