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Citizen Kane Movie Review

Citizen Kane is a 1941 drama film directed by and starring Orson Welles. It is considered to be the greatest movie of all time, but I wholeheartedly disagree.

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“Rosebud“

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Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance – “Rosebud”. While the movie isn’t based on a real person, the similarities between Kane and William Randolph Hearst are larger than superficial and similar things can be said for Welles himself.

Thus, I would still consider it a biopic and that is where my biggest issue arises – this is one of those historical biographical pictures that were popular back in the thirties and forties that span an entirety of a person’s life, and I am simply not a fan of those movies.

The only difference here is that the movie acknowledges that you can never really know a person from various different accounts, thus we get to see Kane that is not as he must have been. The differing perspectives on his personality and his life as judged by the people who were around him were fascinating to witness. Undoubtedly, this theme was the highlight of the picture.

But other than that interesting examination of the differing opinions of any cult figure, the film doesn’t really offer any other interesting themes. In fact, the narrative is rather straightforward with only that framing device being different, but still I’ve seen movies framed like this that are much greater. The rosebud being all about his childhood sled was certainly quite moving, but other than that, I did not feel anything watching this rather cold and uninteresting movie.

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There is this overlong, honestly boring documentarian opening in Citizen Kane that is composed entirely of newsreel footage. I found it to be too extended and not the best way to start the movie. Admittedly, the very opening and ending are amazing and iconic, but everything in-between did not engage me properly. There were so many dull sequences of opera singing, newsreels and uninteresting conversations that made the film tough to sit through.

Kane included a lot of previously unknown actors in its cast, which makes it important even on that front. Orson Welles directed the movie with lots of flair, but I found him more interesting as an actor as his performance here is magnetic and quite memorable. He is very charismatic. Dorothy Comingore as his failed opera star wife was terrific and their relationship mirroring his relationship with his mother was well realized. I also really liked Joseph Cotton as his best friend. All of the others are utterly forgettable.

Citizen Kane is technically masterful, there is no denying that. The cinematography is particularly polished and advanced for its period as the usage of the deep focus technique made the movie meticulously crafted and interesting to dissect in every single scene. The production design, the costumes and the editing are also outstanding while the score is terrific as well.

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But I just did not care. I continue to not care for this movie after all these years. I do respect it tremendously as it obviously was hugely important for cinema history, but it just doesn’t hold a lot of interest to me besides its technicalities. I usually love classic movies, but this one does not appeal to me and it always bores me unfortunately as it’s so slowly paced and uninvolving.