Many different movies can be considered the greatest movie of all time. In fact, everyone probably has a movie they can consider the greatest. In my personal case, it’s hard for me to identify one that I consider the greatest, in fact I have multiple. But there are just some movies, that once they come out, they are considered one of the greatest. Citizen Kane is one of those movies.
Citizen Kane is a film about a journalist, Mr. Thompson, who is following the lifetime of Charles Foster Kane, a man who owned the most newspapers in the USA. Mr. Thompson travels many places to find the pieces of his story to make sure the newsreel he is creating truly shows what kind of man Kane really was. Not only that, however, but to try to uncover the secret behind Kane’s last word, “Rosebud.”
I really enjoyed this movie. In fact, I can see why people loved this movie so much. At the beginning, it was slow and I was pretty confused, but as it kept going, all the pieces started to fit together. This is one of those films that shows the end result at the beginning, and proceeds to show how we got there throughout the rest of the film. And this film did it so well. As the movie continued on, I became less and less confused. Each story would fill in the holes from the previous story, and by the end, we pretty much had the general overview of Kane’s life. All that was left to find was Rosebud.
Thompson, towards the end of the movie, didn’t find Rosebud, however at the end of the film, Rosebud was revealed. I won’t say how though, just in case those reading this haven’t seen the film.
But I will talk about some of my favorite parts of the ending sequence!
When Kane is walking away from his house staff and towards outside, there are two shots, one after the other, that are very well done mirror shots. When Kane walks out of frame in the first shot, he shows up in the mirror a second later, continuing on walking. The shot after shows Kane walking in front of a second mirror, but this time, it’s one of the cool mirror effects where it looks like there’s tens of hundreds of Kanes walking forward. I find these shots fascinating, especially happening back to back.
Charles Foster Kane had many things. Like, a lot. I mean, he had a bunch of money, so of course he would have a bunch of things. At the end of the film after he died, a lot of the stuff that was considered “junk” was being thrown into a fire. But before it showed them being thrown into it, there was a shot before that showed piles and piles of his stuff. In fact, the angle of the camera and the way it panned over made it look like the camera was panning over a city. Which I thought was super neat. It could show how Kane has all these things, all these people who supposedly love him. But in the end, it’s all just things. Just objects.
Now this movie, while being seen as one of the greatest, did have some controversy behind. Around the same time this film was made and released, a man named William Hearst was alive. He was, like Kane, the developer of the largest newspaper chain. Hearst felt as if the director and star of the film, Orson Welles, made this film in order to attack him. So he tried to do everything in his power to stop the movie from being released and seen. The movie was still released, though, and still did an amazing job in the theaters. And I mean, if a movie is considered one of the greatest films of all time, of course it was released!
This movie, I think, was very well done. I loved learning more and more about all the characters. Not just Kane, but his two ex wives, his friends, his business partners, pretty much the main people we saw him interact with. We learned so much about them, but that helped with the story. So yes, it can be controversial because it can be seen as a direct hit towards Hearst. However, Citizen Kane was a beautifully made film by Orson Welles and absolutely deserves the title as one of the greatest.
Coley Rose's Corner 