What everyone thinks: Citizen Kane is a technical masterwork. The phrase " is the Citizen Kane of " is one of the highest praises a film can get; The Dark Knight is the Citizen Kane of superhero movies; Transformers 2 is the Citizen Kane of eye-gouging-inducing cinema. That's because Citizen Kane was a revolutionary watermark for the entirety of cinema; Orson Welles' expansive movie tore up the cinematic rulebook that had, up until that point, been based off that of theatre. With the use of deep focus (shots where nothing was blury) and low angled shots (self-explanatory) the cinematic playing field was changed. Unfortunately that's all the film seems to be remembered for. Plenty of totally enjoyable movies - Jaws, The Shining, Pulp Fiction - have been dissected to understand their filmmaking influence without losing their sheer enjoyability, so why should it happen to Kane? The real reason it's good: It's an emotional, well-crafted story. Yeah, all that stuff is great and means that Kane as a film hasn't dated badly at all, but what really makes it work as a film-going experience is the story. Propelled by an enticing central mystery (what do Charles Foster Kane's last words, "Rosebud", mean) and told in non-linear flashbacks, it's a peek behind the curtain and an immensely powerful man that has an emotionally wrought twist ending that changes how the whole thing is viewed. That is why Citizen Kane is so good. The problem is that Kane spent fifty years with the title Greatest Film Of All Time, as voted for by critics in the BFI's decennial poll. And when we're dealing with something as stuffy as that (the only recent film to come close to placing in the latest Top 100 was The Tree Of Life) a film can't just be a good watch, so all the praise landed on the deep focus. Now Vertigo has displaced it, maybe now people can appreciate the film on its more emotional levels. Which films do you find audiences tend to like for the wrong reasons? Let us know in the comment selection below.
