Citizen Kane

Nominated for nine Academy Awards in nine categories, one Best Original Screenplay award, and AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list. It was also the first feature film directed by Orson Welles. He also was the main character. Citizen Kane...voted by some critics as the best film of all time. I say not quite. Citizen Kane showed great acting, interesting but strange plot and great symbolism. I give it a 4 out of 5 stars.

Citizen Kane is an American Drama film about a young man who got into the publishing business with good intentions and slowly developed into, what some would say, a monster. The deterioration first starts as he gets power hungry and controls his newspaper to work things his way. Partly into the movie, he also cheats on his first wife, Mary Kane (Agnes Moorehead). The girl he cheats with seems to very nice and innocent. Susan Alexander marries him and she mentions how she wanted to be an Opra singer. With good intentions, Kane wanted to make her happy but tried to do it buy buying her happiness. Slowly it became an obsession in which he would manipulate the papers and force her into something she didn't desire. This begins to destroy yet another relationship and pushes more people away. It gets to the point where he has no life and he stays with susan in their giant castle. Eventually she leaves at which point he loses it and his last word is "rosebud".

All of this is pieced together through flashbacks from the present in which a reporter by the name of Jerry Thompson, William Alland, tries to find the missing pieces to the puzzle of Kanes life. The idea of the flashback was one reason i believe that people thought it was so good. It was something new and very interesting. The film truly felt like a puzzle you had to piece together.

Looking back to the acting, i would say the acting in this film was very good. Orson Welles starred as Charles Foster Kane in this American Drama in which a man with a career in the publishing world goes from idealistic views to being power hungry. He truly put all he had in it. This could be seen because he showed ruthless power and a sort of evil. Towards the end of the movie, his desperation with the second wife (Susan Alexander Kane) leaving him was very good. It really made you creeped out by his need for her like he would die without her. It was also incredibly sad to think that his life had slowly deteriorated like it did.

Another great performance was held by Dorothy Comingore who played as Susan Alexander Kane. Throughout the movie she showed the slow change from a nice young woman into a bitter alcoholic. A very sad transition it was but shown extremely well. She showed a lot of passion and hate towards the end of the film.

Another reason for it being so successful i believe was because of the symbolism and filming techniques. Welles used some harsh sounds and strange things that seemed out of place, but they actually set the tone for some scenes making it a better effect. The word "rosebud" also really made you think and even when you found the answer to what it meant, you thought more about Kane's life. The little moments he wanted and didnt have really puts things into perspective and the story seemed more sad than anything else.

Overall, it is a good film. It tied together nicely with the great acting, symbolism and plot. Not a movie I would watch regularly but still very interesting. Four out of Five is what i give it. The acting and the meaning behind it really stuck out the most. It was sad and really made me think.

Favorite Quotes:

"You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man." ~Charles Foster Kane

"I'm Charles Foster Kane! I'm no cheap, crooked politician" ~Charles Foster Kane