Defending the Greatest Movie Ever Made
Sometimes we are told something is great before we can judge it ourselves. William Shakespeare, Bob Dylan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Harper Lee, the Mona Lisa, and of course Citizen Kane. Just as no one can read Romeo and Juliet without knowing its reputation, it would take an almost impossible coincidence to find yourself streaming Orson Welles’ masterpiece from the couch wondering what you’re in for. Kane does not come to you, you come to Kane. And therein lies the problem.
For a film dubbed “the greatest of all time” by so many critics and filmmakers, Citizen Kane receives a lot of hostility from contemporary cinephiles. Of course, it’s difficult to truly measure greatness, but the evidence is everywhere. On Letterboxd, a sort of cinema social media where users can post reviews, many of the top liked reviews are highly negative. None better summarize the sentiment than Penny, who writes that: “Anyone who says this is their favorite movie is lying.”
When one sees something that is supposed to be the best and doesn't like it, there are a few ways to react. The first, and probably most common, is to pretend to love it. Why appear uncultured when you could just lie? Alternatively, one might say something like “I didn’t get it, but I probably need to read/watch/listen again.” This is an honorable and mature reaction. Rather than rejecting the material outright, this person is willing to consider that they did not engage with it properly.
But when someone decides not to lie about their feelings and not to give it another chance, they can arrive at something like Penny’s review. The thinking goes something like this: “I was embarrassed that I found Citizen Kane boring and thought about pretending to like it, therefore anyone who says they like Citizen Kane is being dishonest to avoid embarrassment.” There is one other path, and it goes something like this: “I didn’t personally enjoy ____, but I can appreciate what it did for the art form.” This answer, while a cop-out, isn’t so insidious. After all, everyone is entitled to their preferences. Sometimes this person is being honest, but other times it’s another way to say, “I don’t like ____ but who am I to reject it?” Certainly, a better answer than suggesting everyone who likes it is a fraud.
When you talk about Citizen Kane with college students, you’ll hear a lot of these reactions. I want to explore the phenomena of the last two discussed. For brevity, let's refer to them as the “you’re all just lying” attack and the “I can appreciate what it did” defense. Both answers, per my unscientific polling, have reached a staggering critical support amongst my generation, and so it’s time for me to do the easiest thing I have ever done: defend the greatest movie ever made.
We’re drawn into Xanadu mansion by Bernard Herrman’s haunting orchestral score. A series of still images stitched together through cross fades paints a limited yet visceral picture, stimulating our imagination. And then, “Rosebud,” the snow globe rolls out of Kane’s dying hands and shatters on the floor. We see the nurse enter the room through the warped glass.
In just a few minutes, Orson Welles has changed cinema forever. The film is from 1941, and yet is as expressive and mesmerizing as any moving image I’ve seen in my lifetime. This is a film that holds power independent of its influence.
I don’t want to spend too much time describing its greatness. For one, Citizen Kane should be experienced and not read about. No writing can do it justice. Unlike other revered classics, there’s nothing you need outside of the film to experience its beauty. It’s simple and sensory. When seeing it for the first time at twelve years old, I no doubt lacked the intellectual capacity to engage with it fully. But even then, I felt the power of the images at full force. There is an intangible, magical quality to that old black-and-white film stock that transports the viewer into another dimension.
Instead, I want to reflect on the important qualities Citizen Kane has that so many modern films don’t. We instinctively assume that older texts and films are politically regressive, that their values are outdated. And yet, Citizen Kane’s central message is one that feels more urgent than ever. If we could ascribe to it a ‘thesis,’ it would undoubtedly be that material wealth cannot buy happiness. This simple, yet powerful message is almost nowhere to be found in modern media. But in the 1940s with Kane, It’s a Wonderful Life, and The Best Years of Our Lives, all huge commercial successes, this messaging was consistent. In Wonderful Life, the protagonist, George Bailey is sort of an inverse of Charles Foster Kane. The Guardian angel, Clarence, so famously declares that “no man is a failure who has friends,” and what a revelation that is! In our modern, consumer-focused society, we so often forget this.
In Citizen Kane, we learn the same lesson in the opposite way. Kane’s decay in his palace of possessions reminds us of the things that truly matter. Without spiritual and emotional fulfillment, we may be doomed to share his fate. It rings truer with every passing day. So yes, Citizen Kane helped create the modern cinema as we know it. But even had it been locked away in a vault and never seen until today, I would recognize it as the greatest movie ever made.