"Citizen Kanes" of cinema (1 Viewer)

[Tim RH]

FANTASIA

THE GODFATHER

PULP FICTION

 

[Agee Bassett]

Polls like this can be ambigious in definition, so I'm going to provide my list of 10 of the most important films ever made (a slight adaptation of my "10 most important ever" list).
The Great Train Robbery, 1903 (Cinema's original pioneer; film's first Western, plot, close-ups, and subjective techniques.)
Birth of a Nation, 1915 (Established cinema's unique language, with pioneering storytelling, editing, cinematography, mise-en-scene, and epic scale.)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1919 (Pioneered the use of expressionism in filmmaking, it was the tree from which all films of horror and the macabre have since fallen from.)
The Battleship Potemkin, 1925 (Forged cinema's first modern, highly-charged editing techniques.)
The Jazz Singer, 1927 (The first mainstream sound film, it christened the dawn of the "talkie" revolution.)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937 (The first feature-length animated film, it spawned the medium's modern era.)
Gone With the Wind, 1939 (The first "event" picture, it established the benchmark for "epic" filmmaking for subsequent generations.)
Citizen Kane, 1941 (Reviving, as it did, many long-neglected filmmaking techniques, it has become cinema's single most admired film in modern filmmaking.)
Psycho, 1960 (Provided the formula for modern marketing and "shock filmmaking" techniques.)
Star Wars, 1977 (Architect of the modern Hollywood "blockbuster" formula.)

 

[Steve Enemark]

One movie you're all forgetting:
This is Cinerama (1952)
A technical watershed, it started a new whole new era of widescreen picture and multi-channel sound.

 

[Steve_Ch]

>>Citizen Kane has been #1 every year since 1962.

 

[Guy Martin]

Amazing as Psycho is, I've always felt the whole serial killer/ slasher genre really started with Fritz Lang's M in 1931.
I'd include Buenel and Dali's Un Chien Andalou since it really began the avante-garde cinema tradition. Also I think Flaherty's Nanook of the North warrants a mention as the real start of documentary filmmaking.
- Guy

 

[Andrew 'Ange Hamm' Hamm]

The Jazz Singer--a talkie!

Showboatand Oklahoma--groundbreaking musicals.

The Greatest Story Ever Told--every bit the visual equal to Lawrence of Arabia.

The Wizard of Oz--for a multitude of reasons.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Brian, I retract Ben-Hur on further thought.

Snow White agreed. Or do we give it to Steamboat Willy instead. One established the power of animation, the other showed that animation could play as a feature length film.

Patrick explained the Birth of a Nation situation well. Many of the techniques were actually things Griffith had been doing/inventing himself and had previously used. But BoaN brought them all together under one roof and in refined forms.

I don't think M established the slasher/killer line like Psycho did. Despite Lang and Hitch coming from the same school of work (both studying in Germany at the same time IIRC), I don't think the work in M is anywhere nearly pure enough as a murder film as Psycho is. After Psycho the floodgates opened on "shock" techniques.

I highly disagree with Jazz Singer because sound was coming. Nothing about how sound is used in Jazz Singer was really carried over to filmmaking. If no one had even though of sound before Jazz Singer then maybe or if Jazz Singer needed a miracle to make sound come about. But even if Jazz Singer failed, sound was coming to film as we know it now.

In fact Edison started off some 30 years before synching his phonograph with films before filmmaking went in a different direction mostly due to technical limitations that Edison was running into.

I disagree on Bonnie and Clyde as well because of all the gangster films before it. White Heat, for example, already gave us an anti-hero. It was a big film in the new "ultra violent" films however.

Casablanca is, but not so much to mainstream thought. Rather Casablanca is regarded as one of the templates for studying narrative film writing. In that regard it has an influence over filmmaking from that point on, much in the same way that Kane was a wonderful compilation of many visual/cinematic techniques that were then studied and used later.

For method acting and a clear transition in acting styles due to it's use we must look to Streetcar Named Desire. After Brando was in that, acting was never to be the same again.

What about the film that established film noir? I don't know what we would cite there. Maybe Maltese Falcon or Big Sleep?

 

[Seth Paxton]

Flaherty's Nanook of the North

YES!

Definately a film that spurred on the documentary genre and established many techniques that became fixtures of the genre.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

In addition to most of the others mentioned:
Superman: The Movie - This was the first film that had a believable portrayal of human flight. What can now be easily done using CG digital compositing had to be painstakingly filmed and optically composited back in '78. A true acheivement in cinema. (Had it not been for the grain introduced in compositing, I would have totally believed the effect. Many modern flights like Harry Potter are visually flawless, but the way the actors act gives it away... no wind impack, no aerodynamic considerations.)

 

[Raymond Grimmy]

Satantango.

 

[Dave Barth]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Breathless or Pulp Fiction so far.

 

[Josh_Hill]

I'd like to add:

Natural Born Killers

Clockwork Orange

Fight Club

 

[Larry Sutliff]

BIRTH OF A NATION(1915)

THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI(1919)

NOSFERATU(1922)

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS(1923)

THE GOLD RUSH(1925)

SUNRISE(1927)

THE JAZZ SINGER(1927)

FRANKENSTEIN(1931)

42nd STREET(1933)

KING KONG(1933)

CAPTAIN BLOOD(1935)

SNOW WHITE(1937)

CITIZEN KANE(1941)

THE KILLING(1956)

PSYCHO(1960)

2001(1969)

STAR WARS(1977)

I'm sure there are scores of titles I'm missing but every one of these films revolutionized film making and started new genres(or made them palatable to audiences). I'm surprised THE KILLING hasn't been mentioned by anyone else because it's a much earlier example of having a story take place out of sequence than PULP FICTION. It's the film that truly established Kubrick as a master filmmaker.

Edit: Oops, If I would have read the whole thread through carefully I would have seen that THE KILLING was mentioned. My apologies!:b

 

[Ike]

The Killing indeed had fractured story telling earlier than Pulp Fiction, though it wasn't as drastic as Pulp.

Though it's probably been stated before, I'll say The 400 Blows. It's one of the founding films of French New Wave, and it really feels more modern than films of the same era.

 

[Josh_Hill]

All three of those films were revolutionary. How could you not see it.

I'd also like to add Superman. Never before was a comic book actually taken seriously and given proper treatment. Pretty much created the comic book genre in film.

 

[Brian Lawrence]

I would add Napoleon to the list
Also Voyage to the Moon (1902) directed by Georges Méliès, which to my knowledge is the first film to attempt visual effects and create a new world on screen.
And for better or worse Top Gun, a film that launched the slick, glossy and utterly vapid MTV style of filmaking, that has overtaken film today. Before Top Gun most big budget Hollywood films at least tried to be great films even if they failed. Top Gun showed that all you had to do was throw money up on the screen, pump it up with a hit soundtrack and watch the money roll in.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Interesting thread here. Though I think some of the films being mentioned are simply ones the participants like as opposed to films that redefine the state of the art--and that's what the original post was in effect asking: What films since Kane have had a similar effect on the art of cinema?

Open City is a seriously good candidate, as has been mentioned. Laura, to me, seems the definitive statement of the noir art. Somehow, I see Sunset Boulevard in this list.

Much earlier, there's Potemkin, which served notice to the film world of the importance of montage.

Bonnie and Clyde made a statement about film narrative and points of view--and ushered in the era of the antihero.

And, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey redefined the very form of cinema.

Easy Rider ushered in a new era that pointed in the direction of what would one day be called "independent cinema."

Then there was the early 1970s, the last truly great era of American cinema--The Conversation, The Godfather, Chinatown, and the like.

I would call the 1975 and 1977 blockbuster, popcorn precursors from Spielberg and Lucas significant because of what they portended vis. the dumbing down of mainstream American cinema.

Oh, I could go on. ...

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Easy Rider ushered in a new era that pointed in the direction of what would one day be called "independent cinema."

Hmmm. This has me thinking about independent films. I think John Cassavetes' "Shadows" from 1959 is arguably the one that blazed the trail for what we today consider "independent film". Interestingly, this came out in America around the same time the "new wave" was taking off in France.

Regards,

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

One film which will be overlooked as a film, but for culture I think it was very meaningful: Gunga Din (1939).
I don't know how often film historians mention this film, but it really did mark a cultural departure, as a non-white was allowed to be a hero, and was granted dignity.
Although Gunga Din was actually played by a white guy, essentially in BLack Face- I think it marks a really important point in culture where ideals and steroetypes were slowly morphing.
-Vince

 

[Steve_Ch]

I don't think I've seen Bullitt mentioned yet. That's an absolutely clear cut case of a movie that created the 30+ years running, multibillion dollar car chase business. There was a poll on the greatest car chase movie at the polls section not that long ago, after a few weeks, hundreds of posts and many many movies nominated, there was NOT ONE car chase mentioned that was made before Bullitt, because until Bullitt came along, there was no such thing as "car chase" movie, except the totally cheesy stuff (and that inlcudes the Aston Martin chase in Goldfinger). Now, Bullitt is not Citizen Kane, but I think it's influence on film making simply cannot be disputed.

Also Seven Samurai, the plot of rounding up/interviewing a small group of people for an impossible/suicide task is something that had not existed before (as far as I know) and it's been used many many times since (such as the Guns of Navarone, Dirty Dozen,...).