"Citizen Kane" Surprisingly Good for a Film from the 1940's

 

    I have officially watched Citizen Kane. I'll admit, I've been holding off all month trying not to watch this movie. Not because I have anything against it in particular, but it was released in 1941. Like there's simply no other way to put it but after a certain threshold the likelihood of me enjoying a particular piece of media just drops dramatically. Like if you told me to listen to an album earlier than maybe 1960 I think it starts to get dicey and the odds of me enjoying it are just much lower than you'd like. In that sense I think I have a pretty clear line of demarcation when it comes to older films. Just technologically, pacing wise and especially sonically with the dialogue quality I tend to just simply not care about it at all. But this film managed to defy it all. Let's talk about it.

    Now, I'm going to get ahead of everything and say I don't think this movie is some all-time great in my eyes. It's a fine enough film for my modern standards, but I will say I was just genuinely blown away by how well it still manages to hold up for a film released in 1941. Like compare this film to Chinatown, another "classic film" that I simply could not care about in any capacity, yet was released over 30 years later. Like I had no complaints about the lack of colour, or the audio, or the set design, or story. If anything it was surprisingly still acceptable.

    So what is Citizen Kane about exactly? Basically control. In every single critical moment of his life the movie shows time and time again either he has no control, or someone takes control away from him finally. The entire movie is about someone who was given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A young boy basically out in the middle of nowhere magically becomes blessed with what is essentially an infinite amount of wealth and the opportunity to do anything with it. And what does he choose to do instead? Try to prove to those around him that he can control those around him.

    He seems to possess at least some self-awareness in the beginning. He admits he probably would have been a better person if he had less money, yet he still goes down his path. He builds up a newspaper empire simply because he thinks he has enough money and power to "control" what everyone. I mean his second wife literally tells him that he does everything for himself, and so the one time she left was the one time she controlled everything. His first wife and son literally die in a car crash, and his first wife divorces him in a scene where they say "it seems someone has already made the choice for you," he gets ripped away from his family without a choice.

    My only real critique of the story is that I thought they could have done more with his son, Junior. I just felt like for a man who had everything, but also nothing at the same time, who seemed deeply troubled by his childhood, as seen by his last words, that we never really see what he tried to project onto his son. I think there was some pretty easy meat on the bone if they had kept in alive, and say they his son becomes estranged or rejects his legacy and wealth after his father so desperately tried to mold his own son, like he does with everything else in his life.

    I will say though, pacing wise this movie was surprisingly good. Usually I feel like old movies simply don't offer me much story wise. They're much too slow, and visually and auditory-wise they sound quite poor so I'm not really getting much from that front either. This movie seemed to have a lot to say in it's relatively compact time-frame though. It follows a non-linear front and they spend the first 15 minutes or so outlining his story, before going in-depth into different periods of his life slowly but surely for the rest of it. This idea of lonely, rich men who seemingly can't get out of their own way is pretty relevant as well.

Final Score: 70/100

    I was fully prepared to give this film a 30 or a 40 to be honest. I was like genuinely very surprised to find out that this movie wasn't completely boring. I mean I have to keep on reminding myself that this film was literally released before World War II even ended. It's kind of hard for me to wrap  my head around that fact to be honest. Like every time I want to say something  about the film it just gets immediately tempered by the fact that this film is like 15 years away from being 100 years old. Look I doubt I'll start loving more black and white films, or that this film would ever make my top 100 films (I don't think I've even watched that many films or can remember that many). Even still, the greatness is undeniable, even to me, and I have to concede, Citizen Kane is a darn good film.