Citizen Kane

Watched I for the first time the other night and love it.

Not have a fundamental problem with Kubrick in that I've seen five or six of his films and not really liked any of them...although that's for another thread completely (I was thinking of starting one).
 
I love Citizen Kane. I think Orson Welles was a revolutionary. It's a terrific film.

I hated 2001 the first time I saw it. It bored the crap out of me. Everything was soooooooooooo slow, that I could only watch it in bits the second time around. The third time around, I could see that something about it was very special. The fourth time I watched it, it scared the crap out of me, and is probably the scariest film I've ever seen.

I saw A Clockwork Orange for the second time yesterday, and I still think it's a boring old load of bollocks. Who knows - maybe after another viewing I'll start to like it.

I suppose the key is to remember when these films were made.

If I compare Chocolate Orange to other films made in 1971, it would probably be streets ahead in many departments. I still think that 2001 is streets ahead now. Citizen Kane introduced new methoRAB of film-making.
 
Overrated, underrated - dunno. All I do know is that it is technically astonishing, and an amazing piece of film making. Not sure it's all that likable, but it sure is admirable.

I rate it highly, I do know that.

RegarRAB

Mark
 
As earlier, revolutionary for its time, but it is still not one of the films that draws me in each time it is on. That accolade goes to epics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Metropolis, and Life of Brian.
 
I settled down to watch this a few years ago, I'd alwasy felt it was a vast gap in my film knowledge and everyone raved about it. I liked several other thing done by Orson Welles so I thought there would be no problem and that I would be swept along and as amazed as everyone else.

I found it to be a bloated, overlong, self-indulgent, tedious, overhyped, overrated mess of a film. I was so bored by the end that I couldn't give a stuff what rosebud was. It always amazes me that it comes out so high up in various polls but I have long suspected that rather than actually liking the film many people say the like it because it is almost a requirement if you 'know' anything about film. You must like Citizen Kane otherwise you are stupid!

Still each to their own I guess, I wouldn't ever watch it again.
 
I agree with the poster above. While i will not deny that technically it is a very impressive film storywise i was bored to tears beyond belief.

I also hate the view that if you don't like citizen kane then you are stupid and have no taste in movies.
 
The meaning of Rosebud was not much of a revelation - it symbolized Kane's lost childhood - big deal. Many technical innovations, and story-telling devices, but 2001 has more visual impact.
 
Bear in mind that it was Welles first film, and he had no idea about camera shots. He was given sheets with examples of long shots, close ups and other camera angles on

Kubrick made a lot of great films, but his first one is nowhere near the level of Citizen Kane. I do need to watch 2001 again as I haven't seen it for a while

If Welles' films had not been so mistreated or Randolph Hearst had not ruined the chances of Citizen Kane succeeding at the box office, then perhaps he would have gone on to much greater things. I would love to see the full length version of The Magnificent Ambersons, but unless the missing footage is found somewhere, we'll have to make do with the edited version

I don't mind people saying that Citizen Kane is the best film ever, but only if they have seen it and also have seen a variety of other films so that they have something to compare it with
 
Can I ask why posts of this thread are talking about Stanley Kubrick?
Don't get it. Why are those posts going off on a sudden leaping tangent about Kubrick?
 
That's probably my fault. I was comparing the two directors because of their revolutionary approaches to cinema, and how they changed everything, even if the content of what they made was not the driving force behind it all.
 
I hate when people say that. :mad:

"good for its day", "compared to other films of the time". Bollocks. A good film is a good film regardless. If you're going to say "oh well it was made in the 60s so that makes it better" that's changing the goalposts and voiding any comparisons.

It's not as though older films can't match up to newer ones. Hitchcock movies, King Kong, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Diabolical Dr. Z and plenty more are all far better than a lot of the stuff today... and that's not even 70s stuff.

As for topic... I thought Citizen Kane was pretty good, but definitely nothing too spectacular.
 
Big wow. :rolleyes:



Well, in that case Nosferatu was a piece of shit because the quality was rubbish.

When I rate films, I take into account when they were made, because it's very important. The context in which the film is set changes over time, and it is important to compare it to other films of the time.

If I analysed 2001 today, comparing it with the latest CGI blockbuster, it would fail miserably. However, if I compared it with anything else out at the time, it becomes easier to see the revolutionary cinema that Kubrick created.
 
I also dislike Nosferatu.

I have never seen 2001 so I can't say. However I'd be comparing it to every other film. Films are not getting better with time.... horror films for example are definitely getting worse. CGI doesn't really make a huge difference IMO.
 
I agree with the first part of your post - it's one of the greatest films ever made even when (or especially when!)compared to today's stuff.
 
The part with the astronaut jogging - if the film came out nowadays, people would say, "it's obvious that he's jogging on the spot in a barrel."

My point was, even today it still looks decent, so when it came out in 1968, it would have been seen as godly.
 
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