Review - Citizen Kane (1941)

Citizen Kane, as you probably know, was mostly based on the life of news magnate William Randolph Hearst. His anger at the film’s portrayal of him and of his mistress, the actress Marion Davies, led to his papers refusing to mention the picture and intimidating most theaters into not showing it. The film quickly fizzled at the 1941 box office, but is now one of the most famous movies ever made – ironically it has become more famous than Hearst himself, who is now inextricably connected to it.
The picture begins and ends with a “No Trespassing” sign outside the massive estate of Xanadu. The camera, and we who watch, ignore it and slowly get closer to the huge mansion. One bright light shows the bedroom of the dying tycoon Charlie Kane (Orson Welles). With his final breath, Kane gasps out one word: rosebud.
A newsreel is put together announcing his death and summarizing his life, but the editor wants something more: who was Kane really? He seemed a very contradictory man; perhaps his final word could help explain it all. A reporter (William Alland) is sent on a hunt for the meaning of “rosebud.”
We follow Alland through archival research, interviews with friends and employees, even with Kane’s second wife, but nobody can tell him what “rosebud” was. We in the audience finally do learn what it was, but it proves less valuable than the rest of what we learn along with the reporter.
Charlie Kane came from a poor family in the West, who fortuitously came into a large gold mine; his mother sent him East to go to the best schools and be prepared for greatness, but he always chafed at his guardian, the banker Walter Thatcher. Upon coming of age he shows little interest in so-called respectable business ventures, instead choosing to run the New York Inquirer, a small newspaper.
Kane begins his career with a high-minded declaration of principles, but it is a mistake to think that he ever really cared more about the common man than himself. As one of his friends states when being interviewed, “he never had a conviction except Charlie Kane in his life.” He is willing almost from the start to stir up scandal for the sake of circulation, and ultimately urges the United States to go to war. Through such sensational headline-making, he turns his newspaper into one of the biggest in the nation.
Although he wields great influence through his papers, real political influence – elected office – eludes him thanks to an affair with the young singer Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore). The scandal ends his hopes for the White House, so Kane becomes determined to make his new wife an opera star, building a huge opera house for her and staging lavish productions in spite of her less-than-ideal voice.
It is this second marriage and his attempts to give his wife a career that ties together the two great aims of Charlie Kane’s life: to have influence and power over others, and to recapture his youth. (Indeed, it is on his way to look at items from his family’s old house that he first meets his second wife.) “Rosebud” was ultimately an expression of loss for the youth he never had. Once he was whisked East, he went to exclusive schools and enjoyed a very comfortable existence, but the relatively carefree and easy youth that most of us enjoy was denied him. Through his relationship with this younger woman, it is as if he wants to have the young life that he never got; the irony of all this is that he ends up pushing her into a singing career that she doesn’t want.
Simply describing the story may make you think that Citizen Kane is simply a conventional screen biography, but what makes it special is the way that this man’s life is recounted to us. The newsreel gives a quick overview of his life and career, and through flashbacks and interviews with surviving friends we learn more and more details about him. His story isn’t told in chronological order, but neither is it terribly scrambled: first we learn about his rise and fall in the business world, then his decline of morals and integrity, and finally his failed marriages. We can ultimately follow the path of Kane’s life better this way than if it had been told in a more linear way.
The unconventional structure and Orson Welles’ superb characterization are all vital to the movie and have been praised at length, but most important – and most discussed – of all is Gregg Toland’s deep-focus photography, which lets us spot small details in both the foreground and background. This allows for many long takes as the film doesn’t need to cut to a close-up of something for us to see it as everything in the frame is already in focus, which ultimately provides a much cleaner and more economical narrative; the film is only two hours long but we learn as much about Charlie Kane’s life and character as it is possible for us to know.
The camera angles and lighting style also contribute to the film; Welles shoots the film almost like a gothic melodrama or a noir, which when combined with Toland’s deep focus produces a movie that is haunting without being at all sentimental. Welles made many noirs and mystery films later in his career, but this same visual style always felt much more conspicuous and mannered in those pictures: their stories and characters weren’t nearly as compelling as this one so the photography is much more noticeable to us. In contrast, a first-time viewer will probably not notice the many visual tricks that are put to use in Citizen Kane. The visual and narrative techniques aren’t just designed to show off here, but to serve the story of this man’s life.
The film has been regarded for decades as one of the greatest films ever made, if not the greatest;  in a way this is unfortunate, as anyone now who sees it for the first time is going to have expectations that can never be matched, or will already resent it and expect not to like it.
Why is it so acclaimed? Everything I have already mentioned contributes to its reputation but the film is also one of the most entertaining you will ever see, with plenty of humor throughout and even a song and dance number. Welles was a showman first and foremost, and while he had serious points to make he never forgot to make the movie enjoyable.
That is ultimately the most appropriate way to end a review of Citizen Kane: forget about the acclaim that it’s had from highbrow cineastes and film geeks, and enjoy it as the marvelously entertaining movie that it is and was meant to be.

Sight & Sound

Well, I suppose it was inevitable - Citizen Kane has been dethroned at last in Sight & Sound’s latest poll. I’m not sure how much can be read into this - more than four as many critics and directors were surveyed than were surveyed ten years ago, so comparing the two results is a little difficult - but I don’t think it’s either a seismic change or simply an act of boredom, which are the two main analyses being offered.
As has often been stated, great directors who made many great films often have a hard time getting a title in the top ten; a lot of films get a respectable number of votes, but not enough to place. Alfred Hitchcock, who certainly made a lot of terrific movies, finally got Vertigo in the top ten in 1982, and from then on I think his fans started to coalesce around this film - back in 2002, Roger Ebert switched his vote from Notorious to Vertigo as he felt that the latter film had a better chance - and with each poll it has risen higher and higher, coming within five votes of besting Kane ten years ago. I noticed that Hitchcock’s other films have also gotten fewer and fewer votes with each poll, which supports this theory.
Apart from Vertigo and Kane switching places, four of the top five titles stayed the same (if you split the two Godfather films in the last poll and adjust the results). Another big surprise was Sunrise, which has continued to climb: as far as silent films go, it’s usually been Potemkin, Passion (which reliably places in every second poll), and Keaton or Chaplin. Now, with Potemkin finally dropping out of the top ten for the first time, it looks like Sunrise may be the film that fans of silents coalesce around. It’s far from my favorite silent film, but it’s a much more welcome choice than Potemkin - yes, Potemkin’s of historical value because of its technique, but it doesn’t have a whole lot to offer beyond that.
The most disappointing addition to the list was The Searchers; it’s been on the list before, and almost placed last time, so it’s not exactly a shock, but I’m always a little amazed at the acclaim for it. Like Hitchcock, John Ford began his career making silent movies, but unlike Hitchcock he never became much of an ‘actor’s director.’ He doesn’t have much of an ear for dialogue, either. I’ve never tried, but if I watched the film muted and with subtitles I might like it more. The landscapes are beautiful, to be sure, but the sets are distractingly obvious and I want to cringe almost every time a character talks.
As with the 2002 poll, I found the directors’ top ten picks more interesting - Taxi Driver and Apocalypse Now are welcome additions, a Tarkovsky film has finally cracked the top ten, and Tokyo Story going from off the list to #1 was a most pleasant surprise. The directors don’t seem quite as mired in the distant past as the critics do: no silents, and four films from the 1970s. Hopefully this means that more modern films will finally get some appreciation on best-of-all-time-lists at last. “They don’t make great films anymore” is one of the most common, and most irritating, clichés in film criticism. There weren’t any more great films being made in the 1960s than in the 1990s, but since the bad movies are forgotten over time, we tend to see past decades as better than they were.

All-time top ten lists are among the most popular items for people to make into Youtube videos or blog posts, so I suppose I’ll have to make one too - given the topic, it would probably be very bad manners if I didn’t! I’ve always found this a very difficult question and have been avoiding it for a long time. Making a top ten list for only one decade on my Youtube account was tricky enough!
A lot of critics say they spend a long time thinking about forming their list, while others make one very quickly. I think the second method is best: a person’s favorites always change, so why not make it simply a freeze-frame of your own thoughts, if I can phrase it that way?
Having said all that, and trying to put it off just a little longer, here goes:

The Right Stuff (1983) by Philip Kaufman - my all-time #1 (the rest of the list is alphabetical)
The Apartment (1960) by Billy Wilder
Bicycle Thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica
Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles
City of God (2002) by Fernando Meirelles
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) by David Lean
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) by Sergio Leone
Rear Window (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock
Schindler’s List (1993) by Steven Spielberg
Taxi Driver (1976) by Martin Scorsese

Pretty soon I’ll be doing a series on my all-time favorite films, with an ultimate goal being an all-time top hundred. The reviews won’t come in any particular order - just as they come to me - so the ones I do first will probably end up near the top of the list, as they’ll likely be the ones I’m most sure belong on such a list. The first film write-up should be finished in a week or so, with regular reviews coming out every week thereafter. It will be interesting to see what my top ten will look like after approaching it more analytically rather than just spitting it out like I’ve just done!

As well, here’s a video I’ve made of the results of each Sight & Sound poll from 1952 to now. For the 2002 results I’ve split the two Godfather films but this doesn’t change the result all that much:

Now that Potemkin has fallen off the list, Renoir’s The Rules of the Game is the only film that has placed every time. Citizen Kane didn’t make it in 1952 (it hadn’t been seen since its modest 1941 release), but came pretty close.

Now for discussions, assuming anyone still reads what I put up here. What do you think of this year’s list? What about past polls? What would you have chosen instead? Let’s talk about anything and everything - this year has been pretty dreary so far, movie-wise, so this is as good a subject as any!

Postmortem

I didn't write anything about the Oscars pre-ceremony, mainly because wasn't much suspense in any big category except maybe Best Actress. There's been no frontrunner that got derailed by last-minute precursor awards. Why bother making predictions that are probably going to match everyone else's?
There also hasn't been much passion behind any movie released last year - 2011 saw a number of very good movies, to be sure, but not the fistful of great ones to come out the year before.
In my opinion, The Tree of Life was the best movie of last year. Some agreed, plenty more didn't - its reviews were generally raves or pans. One of the so-called suspenseless categories was Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki had won just about everything there was to win, and enough Academy voters saw the movie to give it Picture & Director nods, so it seemed only logical, no? Apparently no.
Apart from Cinematography, Actress and Editing (even the winners didn't seem to see that one coming), the only surprise for me was the number of wins rolled up by Hugo. The only real difference between people's predictions was on the size of The Artist's tailcoats - would it just win a few big prizes or take in a few technical ones too? Given what happened with other so-called smaller films that got a lot of unexpected year-end buzz followed by a Best Picture win (Slumdog Millionaire, The Hurt Locker), I was expecting a bucketful for the silent film. One category where it did come through was on Score, which was one category that I wasn't sure it would take: just about every negative review of the movie (and a lot of positive ones too) jumped on the use of the Vertigo score, but the voters obviously didn't care.
I guess Oscar voters did this year what they used to do decades ago: give lots of nominations (and then wins) to a big film that needed some help at the box office. After all, The Artist has already more than made back its budget and will probably make a pile more. Perhaps this outcome will get more people to see Hugo - I certainly hope so.
Also on the good side of the ledger, Billy Crystal was back at last - maybe not as funny as he was twenty years ago (I could say the same for his movies too), but still better than just about everyone else; the lack of musical numbers didn't hurt either - that stuff really plays better in person than on TV.

Review - The Tree of Life

“Ambitious” is a word I keep hearing in connection with Terrence Malick’s latest movie, The Tree of Life. Given a title like that, it had better be – however, genuine ambition of this kind is not likely to find much of an audience. Answers of life are not likely ever to be found, so too often we deride even attempts to think about them, never mind find them. I’ve been to see this movie twice now, and both times I was probably the only person under forty in the theater.

The Tree of Life contains a story of a family in Waco, Texas, in the 1950s, intercut with footage of the universe being created and different stages in the life of the Earth. Most of these sequences are in the film’s first half, and contain some of the most striking shots Malick has ever made, which is saying a lot. After the first hour, the film is almost exclusively about the family’s oldest son Jack (Hunter McCracken), and in particular his relationships with his father and brother. His father (Brad Pitt) is an old-fashioned disciplinarian, a veteran of the Second World War, and unsuccessful in most of his business ventures. As the children get older, Jack becomes more distant towards his father, while simultaneously becoming more like his father as he tries to dominate his younger brother (Laramie Eppler).

There is more to the story than I describe, but, like The Thin Red Line, this movie does not have a very clear plotline. Instead, it serves more as a collection of disparate memories that combine to form a fairly clear idea of what Jack’s childhood was like and how it affected him. In the early sequences, for instance, when the children are younger, the outdoors is shot very brightly as a young child seeing it for the first time would see it, and the camera usually tends to be at a low level looking upward – again, providing a young boy’s point of view. As the boys get older the film becomes darker and shot more inside the house, as the focus becomes more on Jack’s relationship with his father.

Malick has an obvious fascination with this story (it supposedly has some basis in his own childhood), but doesn’t really let on to us what it is beyond that – his approach is more one of, “I found this really interesting; take a look and see if you do too!” He doesn’t give us much more than that, leaving us to form our own conclusions almost entirely on our own, but his own obvious interest and enthusiasm helps keep us interested too.

The one part of the movie that really doesn’t work is the modern-day stuff featuring a grown-up Jack still thinking about his father and dead brother. I am not suggesting they should have taken it out – we need to see how he has ultimately turned out, I think – but rather there is so little of it. We don’t see how his childhood has affected him later beyond the fact that he still thinks about his father and dead brother. Because of this, the final sequence where he imagines revisiting his parents and neighbors is not nearly as potent as it ought to be.

Some have criticized the use of the special-effects sequences outlining the history of the universe, claiming it tries to elevate the story to a grandeur it has not earned. I think it does the opposite: it puts into perspective our own problems as relatively small when compared to the grand scope of the world and universe over untold billions of years, but still important to the people who have actually lived them and been personally affected by them. The story and issues faced by a small boy in Texas are neither pumped up to a ridiculous level nor minimized into worthlessness.

Just as with 2001: A Space Odyssey, there are plenty of interpretations to be given to this film, and no doubt many people will argue for a long time to come what they are. When the subjects of a film are the origins and meaning and significance of the earth, life and living, simply getting us to talk about them again is daring and achievement enough.

Past Years and Decades . . .

On my old YouTube account I had made a montage using old posters of Siskel's, Ebert's & Roeper's end-of-decade lists. However, as my account is gone (and thanks to a computer crash, the original video is gone too), I decided to make a new one and include their alphabetical best-of-the-1970s lists too.

I've decided to put this up again now partly as a reaction to the rather uninteresting year for movies it has been so far - there's not too much to talk about as far as current films go, so why not discuss about some past treasures?

I won't begin by dissecting their picks in any great detail, just mentioning a few that I strongly agree with, don't at all agree with, or feel were left out. Take a look at what they chose and see what you think:

1970s:
The biggest surprise is Ebert's omission of Taxi Driver - he's since called it the best movie of the decade (which I agree with), and even in 1982 he called it one of the ten best films of all time. I guess it was just overlooked, or it took a little longer to grow on him.
He's also packed a lot of movies from the decade's final two years, allowing The Deer Hunter to come in rather unexpectedly (not that I disapprove of including it!)
Siskel mentions some films that are not mentioned on such lists that often that I'm glad he remembered, particularly The Conversation, which might be my favorite Coppola movie. I wouldn't have included The Last Detail on such a list, but am still a bit glad he put it in: it's not nearly well-remembered enough today, and Jack Nicholson is just fabulous in it.

1980s:
When I first saw this list, I was surprised by how high The Right Stuff ranked - again, it's not a film too many people remember now, but it's easily my favorite for the decade and probably for all time, so I'm very pleased they put it in.
I have mixed feelings about My Dinner with Andre; I still am not quite sure whether I like that film or not, but I've watched it more than a lot of other movies on the list so it certainly has me curious.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit & Mississippi Burning are two movies that, while I probably wouldn't include them on a list of mine, I am still rather pleased were included here. Roger Rabbit is probably as fun a movie as you could ever find, while Mississippi Burning is a very good crime story (though not so much a history lesson, which is unfortunately how it was marketed), with Gene Hackman at his very best (which is saying a lot).
The only film on any of these lists that I flat-out dislike is E.T. - even when I was eight and saw it for the first time, I felt like I had to scrape the sugar off myself with a spatula. Spielberg is sometimes called too sentimental, which I often think is unfair, but in the case of this film it's more than deserved. He pulls on my heartstrings so relentlessly (not just at the end, but much of the way through) that I just became irritated.

1990s:
Schindler's List is by far my top film of this decade, so I'm actually a bit surprised Ebert ranked it outside of his top five, but at least he mentioned it. The Three Colors films are perhaps my all-time favorite film trilogy, and Leaving Las Vegas & Breaking the Waves, while I wouldn't include either of them on my own list, are not nearly well-remembered enough today, so I'm happy he put them in as well. As for Fargo, Goodfellas & Pulp Fiction . . . what can I say? They appear on just about every 1990s list, and deservedly so. Glengarry Glen Ross & The Big Lebowski are more cult films (though Ebert seems to have come round to both of them quite heavily in recent years) and are among my favorites of the decade, but no way would Ebert ever have included them here.

2000s:
Ebert seemed to go almost out of his way to include little-known or little-seen movies here, especially in comparison with past decades, but they are all good - in particular The Son. Almost Famous was my favorite of 2000, and 25th Hour is great, but I find myself more in agreement with Roeper's list: The Departed, his top pick, is a favorite of mine (it seems to have suffered from post-Oscar revisionism, which is a shame), as is Mystic River. Ebert's honorable mentions list does have some jewels in it, though: No Country for Old Men, Minority Report, Pan's Labyrinth and especially City of God (my favorite of the decade).

Let the Ranting Begin

Now that the Oscars have actually been handed out there's not a lot more to say as there were pretty well no surprises this year, even in the technical categories.


The King's Speech proved to have fairly limited coattails, winning Director & Screenplay (which usually follow Picture anyway) as well as Actor for Colin Firth. The Social Network winning three categories, including Editing (which also tends to follow Picture), indicates that it wasn't too far from winning Best Picture.
As for the ceremony itself, it seemed a bit shorter than the norm, with less unnecessary stuff added in; perhaps this is a good sign for future years, though I doubt it. They ought to go back to just one host - as with last year, having two just doesn't seem to work well.

Going to what I said before - that the reputations of the losers often tend to hold up better than those of the winners - Steven Spielberg mentioned past Best Picture winners & losers before opening the envelope, citing Citizen Kane, The Graduate & Raging Bull as legendary losers.

From a historical perspective, this is a bit of a change from recent years: the Academy, for most of its history, has tended to pick movies that were somewhere in between critical & commercial success (and in the process usually satisfied neither critics nor audiences with its choices). However, perhaps in recognition of the complaints by reviewers (and movie fans) that never seem to end no matter how many years have passed, for the last few years they've come down on the side of critical acclaim, picking movies like No Country for Old Men & The Hurt Locker that weren't big audience favorites. This year, they've gone back to their old ways, choosing a movie that's an audience hit, as well as being well-reviewed.

The Flip Side

Eyes are still on the Oscars tomorrow, but today I'd like to cast a brief glance at the enjoyably silly Razzies.

M. Night Shyamalan has won Worst Director once already for Lady in the Water, but no movie of his has ever won Worst Picture. I suspect that will be corrected tonight. The Last Airbender is easily the worst-reviewed movie he has made, the worst-reviewed of the nominees, and one of the worst-reviewed movies of the year overall. Shyamalan will win too (for Director and probably Screenplay), and Rathbone will likely get Supporting (he's up for both Airbender and Eclipse, so it's a way to ridicule both films with one vote). It may get the Worst Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3-D prize as well, as things like that are often used to pad the tallies of films they want to give lots of berries.

If The Last Airbender doesn't win, then Eclipse will. It's hardly the worst of the series, but its nods are likely in recognition of the first two movies (think of the avalanche of Oscars given to the third Lord of the Rings film). As there are more Twilights coming, I suspect that the final one will sweep the Razzies. Robert Pattinson, however, will probably win, for both Twilight and Remember Me.

As for Worst Actress, there's a good possibility for any of them, but the most likely are the Sex & the City 2 cast (a way to slam that film), Miley Cyrus (music stars tend to win - think Neil Diamond & the Spice Girls), and Megan Fox (in recognition of just about every movie she has made and of her almost instant punchline status). If pressed, I'd say Fox will take it. For the same reasons, I'd say Alba is likely to get Supporting.

I'll likely be totally wrong on most of this, but what the hell? It's all in good fun.

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Wow - I was actually right on most of them. Airbender takes home Picture, Supporting Actor, Director, Screenplay & 3-D, and Jessica Alba wins Supporting Actress.

Sex & the City 2 did rather well (or badly, I suppose), taking Actress, Ensemble & Sequel. Ashton Kutcher won Worst Actor, which should please Richard Roeper.