"Citizen Kanes" of cinema (1 Viewer)

[Seth Paxton]

I would discount JP for the same reason as Jazz Singer - DTS was coming no matter what.

Technology changes are not Citizen Kane's of cinema films because the technology is not tied to that one film. Sound, color, cinemascope, etc are not things that brought to life by a certain film, they just simply happen to come out in one film first.

A "Citizen Kane" film is one that does something inventive, maybe even combining previous techniques, and sets a new standard or technique by it's own use. So Eisenstien was "inventing" montage and quick cuts (along with his contemporaries), but JP was not "inventing" DTS. DTS was being invented on it's own.

So DTS or other surround formats could be milestones in cinema, but the first film that used them usually is not the innovater for that reason.

As I said with Jazz Singer, if DTS was tied heavily too JP and would have never been used or thought of had it not been for JP, then JP is a Kane film.

I think JP is closer as a Kane film for proving out CGI's effectiveness, though again I think that was coming.

Tron makes more sense because no one was even thinking that way at the time, though how much impact it had on it's own is hard to say due to the latency between it and full-on CGI use. While Tron did not invent CGI, Tron was bringing CGI to cinema when no one really was thinking of that application at all. It's successful use in that film probably does have at least something to do with it's eventual widespread use.

CGI was not going to be the star of any other film to the extent it was in Tron for years to come. But sound and DTS were going to be in other films following JS and JP within months or weeks even.

 

[Brook K]

Just to throw a fly in the vaseline...
Eisenstein's montage editing was first demonstrated in Strike! which came out a year earlier than Potempkin and IMO is the better film.
The serial killer/police procedural origins credited to M are present in Hitchcock's The Lodger made almost 4 years prior, though admittedly Hitchcock used it to different effect, since he does not portray the mind of the killer.

 

[Seth Paxton]

True Brook, but a film must also have enough success to reach a larger audience if it wants to truly have direct influence over cinema.

Just like BoaN wasn't first even in DW's career for most if not everything "new" in the film, but the huge success of BoaN got it in front of everyone's face and made it a film to "duplicate" by others.

But I understand your point about them not truly being first in a literal sense.

 

[rich_d]

I guess along the lines of some of this thread I would be interested in learning what people felt:

Pioneered the modern suspense thriller?

Defines the modern suspense thriller?

Thanks,

Rich

 

[Brian W.]

Rich, three words:

Hitchcock, Hitchcock, Hitchcock.

Pioneered? Couldn't tell you. Possibly "The 39 Steps."

Defined? Many would say "Vertigo," I'd say "Psycho."

But, to me, in many ways his most perfect film is "North by Northwest." Not his most personal or his most brilliant, but it's a structural model for the suspense thriller genre. One of the most efficient films ever. No drawn out setup. Within three minutes of the start of Act One, the premise is established, and it just rolls from there, a two-hour roller coaster ride. Great, great stuff.

 

[Seth Paxton]

The shock slasher thriller - Psycho. Althought Halloween later came along and truely defined the full-on slasher films, Psycho brought the shock of more overt sex and violence brought to the screen.

But the spy adventure thriller or the talky murder thriller it's tough to say. But Hitch is right in the middle of it all.

What film was THE film of his that everyone wanted more of after seeing it. Maybe even before 39 Steps we might guess.

I think we need to hear from a Hitchock historian on this to understand where the key moments hit where Hitch became ingrained in the social conscience for the spy/murder thriller.

I mean Number 17 or Murder or something like that might have been "the" film to do it too.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Pioneered? Couldn't tell you. Possibly "The 39 Steps."

I would say "The Lodger" was Hitchcock's first full fledged "Hitchcock-brand" suspense film.
re: Psycho
"Psycho" was an interesting turn because Hitchcock played with his own preference for "suspense" versus "shock". Hitchcock normally avoided and even expressed a distaste for traditional mystery stories, preferring to let the audience in on exactly what form of jeopardy the protagonists were facing. In Psycho, he took the approach that the audience did not need to know specifically what the danger was, only that the characters were, in fact, in danger for suspense to be achieved. This allowed for moments of shock throughout and a mystery with a surprise solution in addition to his normal suspense film trademarks.
In this, Hitchcock was probably influenced by films like Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques" and the popularity of exploitation films from the late 50s. In addition, he had been having lots of fun with twist endings on his television show.
Regards,

 

[Lars Vermundsberget]

In reply to the post by Terrell about this sort of thread or polls for "number one" being worthless:

(I've noticed that there have been a couple of comments on it already.)

I definitely don't think this is worthless. I'll agree in the sense that a list of five or ten or a hundred "greatest" movies could never really be absolute or final. But such lists and debating them give people like myself ideas for more classic movies to check out. So I think that's worth quite a bit.

 

[Terrell]

Meant to address the above. My response: no it's not.

Participating in the process is not worthless. But there is no way you can look me in the face and tell me that you can definitively and accurately list the Top 50 or Top 100 films in order from #1 to #100. Nobody on here can agree on every one in the supposed list. Critics can't agree on it. So trying to list the films accurately is useless, because everyone has their opinions and they usually are completely different.
That doesn't mean discussing it and trying to cme up with a list is worthless. But ultimately, few will agree. That's my opinion. And just to prove my point, your's is different. So we can't even agree on that. How are we gonna agree on #1-#50? Answer? We won't.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Forgive me. I thought you were saying discussions such as this one are useless. But, of course, a definitive list of the greatest-ever films can only be reached through consensus--and no two parties involved in reaching said consensus will entirely agree. So, I see your point!

 

[Terrell]

No, I think these discussions have merit. It's ranking the Top 100 films that I think is ultimately worthless. Mainly because I don't think you can quanitfy what's best and how the films should rank. It's different for everyone. One man's trash is another man's treasure, so to speak.

 

[Jay E]

Since most of the most influential films have already been mentioned, I'll name some films which introduced, influenced or launched new genres to the screen (for better or worse):
The Wild Angels - Although The Wild One can be considered the first motorcycle film, it was Wild Angels that started the whole rash of biker films in the late 60's & 70's
Night of the Living Dead - Not the first gore film, but the one that was most influential on modern horror's emphasis on blood & guts
The Maltese Falcon - the first Film Noir or at least the most influential on the future genre
Curse of Frankenstein - ushered in the second age of horror films, made Hammer a household name and probably the first "gore" film (although tame today, it was the first film to show blood in all it's red glory)
Destination Moon - although Rocketship XM was the first on the screen, DM was first in production & was the film that launched the Golden Age of Sci-Fi films in the 50's.
I would also like to second the mention of Easy Rider. No other film influenced the look and style of the great Hollywood films of the early 70's as this is the film that allowed young & realitivly inexperienced directors the chance to make the films they wanted in Hollywood.

 

[Lars Vermundsberget]

Quote: "Participating in the process is not worthless. But there is no way you can look me in the face and tell me that you can definitively and accurately list the Top 50 or Top 100 films in order from #1 to #100."

---

Very true. A list like the AFI top 100 can be useful in the sense that people get to know about possibly interesting titles that they otherwise would not have known about, but a list can hardly be seen as final. It should be taken with a grain of salt... A list is ultimately subjective and others will disagree about the titles and their rankings. I even find it very hard to make my own ranked list of best movies. I may disagree with my own list the next week.

 

[rich_d]

Night of the Living Dead - Not the first gore film, but the one that was most influential on modern horror's emphasis on blood & guts

If you would agree to modifying that statement to the 70's and 80" I would agree. I don't think that Romero's over the top use of blood and gore has been pertinent for many years. The 90's + have been more about restraint of blood and gore. Even the movies that have had gore have been comedies/or tongue-in-cheek parodies of the genre such as Peter Jackson's Dead Alive or Bad Taste. Even Sam Raimi, after a seriously intended Evil Dead film moved to comedy with Evil Dead II and even further away with Army of Darkness. Wes Craven? While Scream is more a parody of the Slasher films, certainly he made fun of the use of gore and blood in them and these films probably saved his career.

Newer movies of horror: The Sixth Sense, The Others, What Lies Beneath, Dracula 2000, Jeepers Creepers have made limited if not economical use of blood and gore. Some of this has been to get a R or even a PG-13 movie rating, no doubt. I would hope that some of it is due to what Hitchcock knew, sometimes less is more.

Speaking of less is more, hopefully we're not back here in 20 years discussing what director made the first inappropriate use of blue screened effects in movies and the words Citizen Kane in the same thread.

 

[David Oliver]

I am surprised no one has mentioned Jurassic Park. Maybe my recollection is incorrect, but that seems to me to be the first movie (or maybe truly major) that truly made a CGI a semaless part of a live action movie (unlike, say Toy story).

 

[David Oliver]

Never mind, I thought I had read the whole thread, when obviously I had not

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

In some ways, a lot of this thread has been about "firsts", but in a lot of ways, Citizen Kane is remarkable as a culmination of the cinematic arts to that time moreso than for what it pioneered.

This has me thinking that those mentioning films like "Birth of a Nation", "Battleship Potemkin" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" were on the right track.

Regards,

 

[Jude Faelnar]

Among westerns, I thought Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" (1969) was quite revolutionary. And in their own ways, so were Clint Eastwood's "The Unforgiven" (1992) and Sergio Leone's "Per Un Pugno Di Dollari" aka "A Fistful of Dollars" aka "The Magnificent Gunfighter" (1964) . Although some might say that the latter was a rip-off of Akira Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" (1961), I put it in here because it was probably the best known among the films that started a trend, the so-called "spaghetti westerns," a trend that, obviously, did not endure. And, indeed, "Yojimbo" was influential in its own right.
Directed by Wei Lo, "Tang Shan Da Xiong" aka "The Big Boss," (1971) which starred Bruce Lee, put Oriental martial arts films into the mainstream.
All IMHO, of course.
JUDE

 

[Andrew 'Ange Hamm' Hamm]

I can't buy the argument that The Jazz Singer and Jurassic Park are irrelevant just because the technology that they pioneered was in the works by others already. Are you suggesting that if they hadn't done it, someone else would have? Doesn't that seem incredibly simplistic? Is America's moon landing insignificant because if we hadn't done it the Russians would have?
And I can't believe only one person seconded my nomination of The Wizard of Oz. Have you guys seen that movie? It's the most significant pioneer of speculative film ever! Without the fantastical/realistic imagery in Oz, there would be no Star Wars, no 2001, no Lord of the Rings.

 

[Seth Paxton]

I second Wizard of Oz Ange.
And yes, someone else was already achieving those technologies OUTSIDE of that film's production. Sound films existed BEFORE Jazz Singer, just not in that technology.
It's not like the production behind Jazz Singer was going in directions that no one could imagine. People had been imagining it for some time as well as successfully working on it. IF the success of sound films hung on the success of Jazz Singer, that might be different.
Like the Wright Bros. flight is a step in airtravel. But an early passenger on their plane is not an innovator. In contrast, Lindbergh WAS an innovator because he took enormous risk to go in a direction that technology was going to go in anyway, yet needed someone to take the first risky step or suffer a major setback.
As I said, Jazz Singer was not going to make or break sound films in the least, it was just the first one finished and distributed. Same with Jurassic Park and DTS.
For surround sound a better Kane example would be Fantasia. Walt DID take a risk, and took it well before anyone else was going that way.
And had Jazz Singer UTILIZED sound in some way that become a standard usage, then that might qualify. That's where something like M is better Kane version of sound films because Lang DID use this new sound technology in a manner that was innovative AND would then be copied again and again. Sound in M plays critical role as a plot device, and works as a motif. The killer has a song he whistles every time he is going off the deep end. This idea of a musical motif IS innovative to sound films and something that wasn't inherently "obvious".
I would be more able to accept Jurrassic Park as a CGI innovater because it was the first major film to utilize the "wonder" of CGI to capture an audience's imagination. And the results of that caught filmmakers attention which led to the concept being repeated time and again. CGI as the film's "star". I mentioned this already of course, along with Tron as the first film to really commit to using CGI in a central capacity.