Citizen Kane (1 Viewer)

[Holadem]

Why do so many assume that the basic purpose of a film is to tell a story? Is that what we expect from painting, sculpture, or architecture?

Sorry but this makes little sense, as you are comparing static artforms to a dynamic one. Like it or not, the purpose of most movies is to tell a story.

That we should actually be discussing this is a little absurd since we are talking about Citizen Kane here, a clearly narrative movie. All the technical marvels that CK brought were put in service of the story that Welles wished to tell, not the other way around. Problem is, for some of us, that story wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread like they would have you believe. That's all.

Better appreciation of CK innovations will come as one develops a deeper understanding of the art and science of movies. Unfortunately that will never change the fact that for me, the story was little more than interesting.

Andrew, I would certainly like to know why questioning the stature of a movie is akin to disrespecting it. Has anyone "disrespected" CK in this thread?

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Holadem

 

[andrew markworthy]

Andrew, I would certainly like to know why questioning the stature of a movie is akin to disrespecting it. Has anyone "disrespected" CK in this thread?

I said nothing about 'disrespect'. Unfortunately, the slang use of 'respect' and 'dissing' someone by a particular cohort of the population has corrupted the original meaning of the word 'respect'.

Let's try repeating my argument another way - classic films such as CK demand our admiration because of their historical importance, their technical innovations, etc, etc. However, it is not a *necessary* requirement that we *like* them or use them as escapism. Take Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will - both contain technical innovations and in their own right are brilliant movies. Equally, both contain political opinions which these days are deeply offensive to the majority of people. Yet critics still praise these films. It doesn't mean that they *like* them, however.

It's like the old analogy of apples and pears. If you happen to like pears but hate apples, does that mean that someone who breeds a new and tastier variety of apple is an asshole? Of course not - you can respect the apple grower's skill and see why they are good even if you hate the product.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Saying it "stunk" did not sound much like "respect." However, the thread's originator appears to be reconsidering his position.

 

[Dave Barth]

A LOT of it was politics. After all it received MANY Academy nominations, but when Kane was named for each nomination at the ceremony people BOOED. Why? Because he had awoken the wrath of Hearst and his publicity machine on all of Hollywood. Hearst held the town as hostage to stop Welles, and it almost worked.

But it did get the nominations before that. People did realize it was great, but nobody wanted to get wiped out by Hearst. The film struggled to get distributed or screened. Hearst threatened THEATERS with a no-adverts-accepted policy EVER AGAIN if they carried the film. At every level Hearst worked to destroy CK and Welles, including slander in his papers (which was how he made his fortune in the first place).

For another perspective, consider the view in David Nasaw's excellent 2000 Hearst biography, The Chief:

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The reviews of the film were outstanding. Time magazine called it Hollywood's "greatest creation." John O'Hara in Newsweek, after seeing a screening, reported that it was "the best picture he ever saw." Bosley Crowther, in the New York Times, said that it was "far and away the most surprising and cinematically exciting motion picture to be seen here in many a moon."

As good as the reviews were, there was, as Robert Carringer has written, trouble at the box office from the beginning. Citizen Kane was not a popular success. While RKO had anticipated being attacked directly in the Hearst papers, that, at least, never happened. "Hearst papers", Variety reported on May 7, "apparently now figure they can do Welles and the picture more harm by a campaign of silence. They neither mentioned nor printed reviews of the New York opening and apparently have allowed their campaign against Welles as a 'Communist' to flag."

There are dozen of half-truths about William Randolph Hearst. One of the most fervently held -- and widely disseminated -- is that Citizen Kane was crushed by Hearst's retaliation. As David Thomson reminds us in his biography of Welles, "what is far more instructive about Kane's failure with the first audiences is the number of ways in which Welles had cut himself off from success." Although the decision of the major distributors not to book the film made it difficult, if not impossible, to earn back costs, it is doubtful that the film would have been a box-office hit even had Hearst's associates not interfered with its distribution. "Undoubtedly," Robert Carringer has concluded, "the distribution problems hurt, but it is unlikely they made a crucial difference; Citizen Kane is simply not a film for an ordinary commercial audience." The innovative story-telling techniques that made such an impact on critics and filmmakers may have hurt the film at the box office. "Narrative is steadily denied or evaded by Kane, especially in its opening," David Thomson has written. "The convention of giving the audience necessary information is ignored; the moods of the first few sequences are deliberately jarring; there are no characters to identify with." The soundtrack is cluttered with overlapping voices; the lighting and camera angles are bizarre; there are too many flashbacks, and few, if any, close-ups. Audiences, Thomson speculates, must have found the film "obscure, intellectual, overly complex, gloomy or cold." Citizen Kane, according to Thomson, may also have failed to attract a mass audience because it violated essential American verities: "It maintains that the pursuit of happiness and the search for meaning are futile."

"In the cities business was good initially," Simon Callow has written, "but quickly slid even in New York, where it closed after fifteen weeks. In the regional theaters, despite a low-price launch, things were much worse. Among exhibitors, the picture became a byword for disaster....By the end of the year, it has closed everywhere, not to be seen widely again in America till RKO sold its library to television.
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I have two comments about your comment, "At every level Hearst worked to destroy CK and Welles, including slander in his papers (which was how he made his fortune in the first place)."

(1) Hearst would likely have prevailed in a libel or invasion of privacy suit in response to Citizen Kane's release. Given that many people today think or assume Hearst is Kane -- there was a 1961 biography of Hearst entitled Citizen Hearst! -- certainly if we are to dislike Hearst for libel, Welles is guilty of the same (slander is spoken). You might say turnabout is fair play. But Welles' defamation is easily worst for Marion Davies, who was far from a talentless hack. Hearst's wife and mother were also far different from their portrayals in Kane.

(2) Having recently read The Chief, it is my impression that Hearst's brand of journalism is far too complex to characterize as simply libelous. Opinionated biased, and sensationalized, sure. In fact, Hearst's dramatization of true crime stories reminds me a lot of certain aspects of our media today.

In closing, I should give The Chief another plug. It's an excellent biography of a very influential and interesting person who was far more important to American history from 1880 - 1940 than I would have thought.

 

[Seth Paxton]

I just don't believe there should be a cultural status-quo

Yes, well just let me know when you find one.

Reviewing the same batch of films every year and finding similar results each time is not really that surprising, nor "status-quo".

I'll give you the same list of names every week for the next 52 weeks. You alphabetize them each time. Let's see how different the results look each week. Then we will blast you for sticking your head in the sand and preaching some dogmatic list to us.

The point is there are only 2 things that will CORRECTLY and SINCERELY alter lists like this - a sudden change in criteria or adding new films to the list that can compete. (Having different people evaluate with different criteria is still just a change in criteria).

So apparently you are in demand of a paradigm shift in the criteria for film evaluation. Fine. But what happens when we shift to this new criteria and some other film continually ranks at the top instead?

Do you want to change criteria every year then? Are you looking for some "parity" as if this is a sporting league?

And most importantly can you give an defensible argument as to why the current set of criteria need to be changed to your new criteria?

If you simply are bored with finding out that people haven't changed their minds regarding well discussed topics since last year or 10 years ago even, I don't consider that a valid reason for everyone else to concede so that you can have a "different" list for once.


As for the "lemmings" implication, were people lemmings the first time they ranked CK #1? Of course they couldn't be because they were doing something that had never been done before.

Now if their views of film haven't changed, and no new films have impressed them enough to put them above CK, then why WOULD they rank CK lower suddenly.

That's not being a lemming, that's being CONSISTENT, having INTEGRITY, and showing conviction in their opinions. They really thought it the first time and still do.

And the bottom line is that we do see flucuations in these lists, representing slight changes in criteria (often by a change in voters) and new films coming forward or films aging well.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

(1) Hearst would likely have prevailed in a libel or invasion of privacy suit in response to Citizen Kane's release. Given that many people today think or assume Hearst is Kane -- there was a 1961 biography of Hearst entitled Citizen Hearst! -- certainly if we are to dislike Hearst for libel, Welles is guilty of the same

Is it Welles' fault that people have drawn that connection since? The film is certainly based on the life of Hearst, but the main character was named Charles Foster Kane for a reason. To deny someone the right to use the archtypes of the rich and powerful would stand to stifle art at it's roots. It's not like the film was called Citizen Kane: The William Randolph Hearst Story. Orson Welles apparently saw dramatic possibilites that interested him in Hearst's life and used the true story as a springboard to his dramatic point, changing details as neccessary.

 

[Seth Paxton]

"The convention of giving the audience necessary information is ignored; the moods of the first few sequences are deliberately jarring; there are no characters to identify with."

Now Fantasia does explain a bit to the audience about what is going on, but it's not a consistent narrative, only a couple sequences are narrative really. Most of the film is abstract art set to classical music.
So I question the explanantion that Kane was so different that audiences couldn't handle it when they could handle other unconvential films that DIDN'T have Hearst against them.
PS - let me add that another one of the biggest money makers of the era came in 1946 with The Best Years of Our Lives, which was also a real groundbreaking film and a bit of a shock in how it portrayed war and its effects.

 

[Dave Barth]

Quote:

And thank goodness he did! I appreciate Kane's high stature and acclaim; it is a phenomenal film. I don't think that depends on whether the film was fair or accurate to Hearst, only whether the changes helped to tell a better story.

 

[Dave Barth]

Seth, I am going to disagree with you, agree that reasonable people may have different opinions on the subject, and leave it at that plus these comments on your argument:

I would caution about overgeneralizing based on a few examples. I think the moviegoing American audience tends to dislike films with downbeat endings, with cold main characters, and with complex narrative structure. The success of certain films with these tendencies does not disprove that these are barriers to success for other, different films. Nor does it "prove" those factors are responsible for the success of the films with those tendencies--a point you yourself make but proceed to seemingly ignore, when you attribute the success of the films you list to the factors listed.

 

[Mark Palermo]

Seth I want to discuss this with you, but I'm getting the impression that the moderators don't want me touching this subject. So let me be very brief. First, I believe film is a progressive medium, to be constantly studied and considered, not canonized. And second, I would never like to see any movie approach the ridiculous level of untouchable worship that Citizen Kane has. Whether or not it can be argued that of the 100, 000 or so movies in existence Citizen Kane is objectively the best by a landslide--that it unanimously appears at number one on the majority of greatest films lists, and is the top choice of many of the voters--to me it signals convenience over continued critical consideration. Picking Citizen Kane allows critics to reach toward tradition rather than acknowledge the cultural and artistic impact of other films. I'm not saying Kane is a weak choice, I'm only questioning the lazy reliance of SO MANY VOTERS--even as new voters replace old ones--selecting it over and over again.

Mark

 

[Jack Briggs]

It's simply tiring to see this subject so belabored in this one thread. Read more about the movies. Immerse yourself in the history of the medium. Get some perspective. Develope informed opinions. Otherwise, just let the issue go.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Instead they are reasons for success.

I am not saying that. I'm saying that the argument could just as well be made FOR those qualities as against, which makes them NEUTRAL in my book. And my meaning in saying that "they are reasons for success" for those films is that those factors ARE CITED by others as reasons for success, why those film stood out with audiences.

And the reason it's just a few examples is because I looked at the TOP MONEY MAKERS of that era. I didn't cherry pick from the top 100 or something.

If someone says "These things cause failure" and you immediately see 2 or 3 of the most successful films with those qualities, then the theory just doesn't look very good. While happy endings or formula films have been popular, I think it's far too much of a stereotype to say that films that break those conventions just can't make money. Way too many of them do to defend that point. You end up needing a laundry list of escape clauses to explain why those factors DIDN'T cause failure in each of those other films.

All the while a more obvious UNIQUE factor to Kane is the wrath and power of Hearst going against it. Maybe it's not what caused it, but without proven evidence I will continue to suspect this more circumstantially obvious factor as the cause.

(how do you explain the boos at the Oscars for a film so respected that it received 9 nominations - they suddenly hated Kane, I wonder why, or they always hated him but not too much to not nominate him??)


It also seems rather odd that a public that made Hearst rich for its hunger for gossip/sensationalism would turn their back on watching a film about Hearst's life that had all the juicy gossip/truth of the day in it.



Mark,

It still seems like you are ignoring the possiblity that CK might just be that good to people. For arguments sake only, let's BOTH assume that CK is the greatest thing ever in film. How would the voting differ?

It wouldn't. It would continue to win and dominate year after year, even with new voters. The truth of it's strength would simply shine through again and again.

So pointing to the outcome of the voting and saying that this is EVIDENCE of laziness isn't valid as an argument, because I can use that same outcome as evidence of greatness.

We need some other indicator to differentiate here.

At this point it seems as though our indicator happens to be personal opinion of the film. I see it as that great and so I accept the voting as an indicator of such. You see it as good, but not THAT great, so you question the voting morals/methods.

Or perhaps you are more cynical of others than I am, or of the "establishment". Maybe I am naive enough to accept the voters as honest and open-minded.

And I'm not really calling you wrong at this point, I'm just saying that I don't think we have any good evidence that it is just laziness, and personally I don't think it's that cool to think the worst of others automatically.

Maybe these voters would disappoint me if we were to get them on a lie detector (or whatever method to find out their real voting methods), but I just feel enough respect for this group of critics to take their opinion at face value for now.

 

[RobertR]

I agree with Seth. Mark seems to assume that CK's dominance is prima facie evidence of laziness on the part of people. He seems very reluctant to conclude that people genuinely consider it to be at the top of the list, and he seems to base this reluctance on his personal opinion of the film.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Which is why I posted vis. belaboring the issue.

 

[Mark Palermo]

I've said many times (several in this thread) that I think Citizen Kane is a great film. I have no problem buying that some people think it's the best ever--and I'm not even arguing that it isn't. The issue for me is only its continued dominance on these lists. Sorry, I don't buy that so many Sight and Sound voters could independently agree on what's the best movie ever, without catering to the influence of prior lists and prominent critical discourse. And why should they? Even people who know nothing about Kane, know that it's supposedly "The Best Movie of All-Time."

And Jack, thanks for the advice, but I am thoroughly, absolutely fluent in film culture and aesthetics. I know the history. I've studied Kane extensively...in numerous courses...for months. Again, I'm not denying its brilliance.

OK, I admit it's getting belaboured now.

Mark

 

[Robert Crawford]

That's a big assumption on your part!




Crawdaddy

 

[Mark Palermo]

It's true, I have a cynical nature. But when it's always the same greats, I start to question things.

Mark

 

[Jack Briggs]

Well, as has been stated by yours truly previously in this thread, until something better comes along, the critics and writers and directors and editors and cinematographers for whom Sight & Sound is published will probably vote that film at number one.

Now, let's either move past this sticking point or just call this thread quits.

 

[Mike Broadman]

Before the lock, lemme thank the folks who recommended watching the film with Ebert's commentary (I almost never care for commentaries). He explained things like deep focus and the use of matte drawings which I found pretty interesting. The scene where Welles fires Cotton was fascinating- they filmed only have the scene with one side blacked out then edited them together- all because of the shadow in between the two halves.

PS- It is a great movie.

 

[Michael Reuben]

At this point, there's no reason to lock the thread. Other actions have been taken to address the problem.

M.