"Citizen Kanes" of cinema (1 Viewer)

[DeeF]

My original point, or opinion, stands.
Citizen Kane is precisely great, because there are no other movies like it. It stands alone. It is the exception, a movie made in Hollywood like no studio product, and yet entertaining in the great Hollywood way, and yet still with more substance like an art film, almost European in its sensibility.
Gregg Toland continued to use deep focus, as he had done before and often for William Wyler, but those films are very different than Kane, focused on dialogue for characterization. The most successful of Welles's collaborators was Herrmann, who never had another film of Kane's calibre either, though he continued to turn out masterpiece after masterpiece for lesser directors, Hitchcock excepted.
Citizen Kane's biggest influence, was in its very artistic success (years later). Other people wanted that success. No question: other people have wanted to be Welles. But nobody copied his specific style, a mix of theatrical artifice and cinematic tricks. Perhaps this is the key: most of the directors following him did not come from theater (some did, of course, like Lumet, but the great directors usually came from the lower ranks of film production, starting out as writers or editors.)
Truth be told, Welles himself couldn't top Kane. He couldn't refashion the team to suit anybody (and he died trying). I quote him:
Everybody denied that I was a genius, but nobody ever called me one.
After the critics weighed in on Kane in the 60s, movie makers (who often felt bad about what happened to him) began to sing his praises. Too late, for much of the film world had passed him by.
I like that remark that he gave jobs to film critics and would-be director/auteurs all over the world. Not one of them could match Kane.

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[Dome Vongvises]

I'll go with what I know. Here goes.
Citizen Kane
- A textbook unto itself. It's basically the guide to technical and narrative filmmaking.
Jaws
- Gave birth to the modern summer blockbuster.
Star Wars
- It made significant contributions to the areas of film editing known as special effects work. And for better or worse, marked a film to have a large impact on society, both culturally and commercially. No other film has made quite an impact beyond the boundaries of the film strip on which it was printed. But the most overlooked contribution of Star Wars is its innovations in sound, particularly the use of "offscreen" space. No longer were "offscreen" sounds limited to just left and right, but sounds coming from behind the audience as well. There was an excellent article on this by Giancoli, but my copy of it is locked up somewhere on my sister's computer in her dorm room. Would it surprise anybody there's a quote from Pauline Kael being dismissive of the sound mix in Star Wars as being loud.
2001: A Space Odyessey
- It is the definitive film to which science fiction can be a genre to be taken seriously. Science fiction is no longer relegated to just rubber monsters and plate spaceships, but a medium to explore man's consequences. Also noted for special effects work.
Matrix
- I don't know how many of these I'll be getting, but I stand by my guns. The film The Matrix combined a sense of over-the-top martial arts and firearms action with a compelling story of reality versus virtual reality. But it's contribution comes in the vast implications involved with the camera work done in The Matrix, the perfect marriage between technology and cinematic craftsmanship. The "360 degree" shot opens up vast potentials for and may even redefine the traditional establishing shot. "Bullet time" as it has been popularly called can be an immensely helpful tool for the filmmaker to manipulate story, plot, and screen time.
Gone With the Wind
- The prototype for the Hollywood epic film.
Psycho
- I really can't think of better words to say it, but it basically laid down the groundwork for the execution of slasher films. Of course, the implication here is that no one has done it as well as Alfred Hitchcock.
Battleship Pokemon
- Introduced montage. I'm hazy on what "montage" means, so correct me if I'm wrong. Is montage a cinematic technique in which Sergei Eisenstein edited together scenes together in such a matter that the audience makes a "subconscience" connection among the scenes. If I remember correctly, an example given was two scenes edited together, one showing the thrusting of bayonet and a baby carriage, the idea being that while no penetration of the carriage is shown, nonetheless the audience makes a connection in their minds that the carriage has indeed been stabbed. Or something like that.
Jack Briggs said:

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.

You aren't going to even mention the films by name? I'm curious, but are you bitter about something here? You're more than welcome to elaborate on your displeasure regarding these films.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Can somebody move this one to polls or something?

 

[Scott Weinberg]

Why? Looks like a lot of discussion is going on in this thread...

 

[Holadem]

It's not very popular to support recent movies around here, but here we go
There is Something about Mary: I never got around to watching it, but I understand it set new standard for gross out comedy.

--
Holadem

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Why? Looks like a lot of discussion is going on in this thread...

Eh, no reasons in particular. It seems like everytime a thread of this nature comes up. It always ends up in polls. I figure I just go ahead and raise my hand.

 

[Chris Liberti]

Here are my top 10:

1. Citizen Kane

2. 8 1/2

3. 2001

4. Fantasia

5. Seven Samurai

6. Godfather

7. Rope (for use of a single continuous take)

8. Modern Times

9. Metropolis (1927)

10. Dark City

 

[Damin J Toell]

The most successful of Welles's collaborators was Herrmann

Robert Wise sure did pretty well for himself, too...

DJ

 

[Agee Bassett]

Quote:

Just as many have wanted to be Sturges. It can be said that this era of ironic filmmaking finds its genesis in Sturges; yet no one has directly aped his style.
I continue to maintain that a film can be influential, even immensely so, without necessarily spawning meticulous facsimiles of the original’s stylistic texture.

 

[Paul McElligott]

I would throw in Saving Private Ryan. This film raised the bar on the realistic depiction of war in movies.

Movies like Blackhawk Down and We Were Soldiers would probably have been toned down considerably compared to what we did see, had SPR not proven that realistically graphic war violence would not completely repel the audience.

 

[Seth Paxton]

A confusing thread. Are we going for great films or influential films?

It was supposed to be films that altered what filmmaking was forever.

Thus Star Wars is a Citizen Kane like movie, or Snow White.

Battleship Potemkin has to be one as well.

 

[Seth Paxton]

What I meant was, there really are no other films like Citizen Kane.

Just because no one can ever copy it, and why would the great filmmakers, the ones who might be capable, care to try?

The influence is in the more subtle style changes in all aspects of filmmaking. Contemporaries and young artists after that point which saw the film and were impressed most certainly had to walk away thinking about approaching narrative in a whole new way.

While DePalma mimics Hitchcock most often, who is to say that his love of artificial deep focus shots doesn't stem from Wells/Toland's work?

Who's to say that the opening of Patton doesn't have some hints of Kane's speach with the giant picture of himself as the enormous backdrop?

How many people started using whip pans becuase of this film? Approached lighting differently, etc etc.

And it's not just a matter of being first. Perhaps we can cite earlier uses of any of the techniques found in Kane. However, it is how Wells/Toland/Wise used them, how they presented them as a whole, that brought more attention to them, made them more attractive and interesting to other filmmakers.

 

[Seth Paxton]

The "footsteps of the 9th" quote by Brahms is referring to Beethoven, a very influential composer, not to Bach. Bach did not write symphonies.

I believe Agee is/was quite aware of this. His point is to note that other great artists are RELUCTANT to follow in the shadow of some dominating work done by another great artist.

Thus, we have a lack of "influence", though the very avoidence of the same territory because it seems so dominated by the other work must be considered an influence.

Attraction and repulsion are both influences (even in a literal, physical sense such as magnetic or electric fields). Being afraid to pale in comparison to Kane and therefore avoiding the style altogether is just as much an influence as creating the desire to mimic it is.

Brahms pointed out this very thing, his reluctance to follow in the footsteps of Beethoven and his 9th.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Indeed, perhaps no other film has been heralded as the great champion of the auteurist philosophy than Kane.

Agee has struck upon the most influential aspect of Kane, the birthing of the "auteur" director. Wells and Kane allowed critics (was it Kael that started this movement, or was she against it??) to start to view films as creations of one supreme visionary, usually the director.

As Agee points out, this is where we derived this attitude of viewing films as a work by a certain director, rather than a product of a studio system. Suddenly the director's vision was moved to the forefront in critics minds, so that a director's vision was a more distinctive stamp on a film than that of the studio backing it or even the actors starring in it.

And this idea first really started to take fruition with Kubrick. But it was the idea of Wells, what he was, what his unique short-lived power had meant, what his film had become by 1960, that helped enable that auteur vision that was to bloom with Kubrick's career as an independent filmmaker.

 

[Damin J Toell]

Quote:

I think it was Truffaut that got his own theory to bloom; a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
DJ

 

[Lew Crippen]

The "footsteps of the 9th" quote by Brahms is referring to Beethoven, a very influential composer, not to Bach. Bach did not write symphonies.

Of course. I’m sure that I should have separated my two points into two paragraphs to make myself better understood.

Point the first was that Bach, was indeed an innovator. Hence my reference to the Well Tempered Clavier.

Point the second was that a reluctance to follow a great work with a similar one, might be due to the ‘greatness’ of the work itself and a hesitation to have one’s own work directly compared to a masterpiece. Hence my reference to what I assumed was the very well known comment by Brahms. My fault for assuming that everyone knew to which symphony the ‘footsteps of the 9th’ referred. Mea Culpa

At least Seth was not confused.

 

[DeeF]

A Birth of a Nation is thought to be a total showing of how far cinema has gone at that time. Citizen Kane is thought to be the second film of this kind.

What films do you think accomplished this feat of showing how far film has gone at their time like Nation and Kane?

I see now that I have misinterpreted the original thesis question of this thread, quoted above. The question isn't really one of influence, although if a film is great, its influence on future projects is assured.

The question posed implies that each project we choose will be the culmination of what has come before it. Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane certainly apply.

I would add these films to the list (some prior to Citizen Kane 1941). These are American films, which I know best, but there are plenty of international films which qualify.

Gone with the Wind, for epic storytelling and technicolor

The Wizard of Oz, for successful integration of reality, fantasy, and song

Snow White, for successful animated fantasy, plus song

Raging Bull/Goodfellas, for successful post-war naturalism (note: The Godfather series is splendid, but it is a throwback to an older, more theatrical narrative and visual style -- hence I don't include it here).

E.T., an updating of naturalistic fantasy, with integrated effects

Schindler's List, which superbly integrated grim history with fast editing techniques of Spielberg, usually more associated with fantasy and adventure films

Toy Story, for successful updating of animation, by using computers

 

[Agee Bassett]

Damin.
Kane is really, for lack of a better term, the great "Piltdown Man" of the auteurist camp. Because of the relatively, and atypically, autonomous influence wielded by the film's primary creative force, in it the Cahiers du Cinema group (and, later, Sarris and his partisans) found a tailor-made example with which they could champion their radical theory of director authorship (while, not incidentally, paradoxically pooh-poohing William Dieterle's effort on The Devil and Daniel Webster, crafted under circumstances almost identical to Kane [in the same year, for the same studio, with many of the same collaborators!]).
The dubious foundation of this claim does not, however, in any way frivolize either its influence or status as the great template from which the auteur theory has been propogated.

 

[Agee Bassett]

I would replace Raging Bull with Mean Streets, as the former showcases significant moments of high theatricality.

 

[DeeF]

Two areas I left off my list need to be explored: the use of widescreen, and the continued expansion of sound -- dialogue, effects, and music.

For excellent application of cinematic techniques for widescreen, I might choose either Lawrence of Arabia, or 2001:A Space Odyssey.

But for sound, I'm in the dark. Star Wars certainly used sound very effectively. But is it a great film? I'm not sure. But then again, perhaps sound and music is its most memorable element, so maybe it qualifies after all.