Friday, April 11, 2008

Classic Film Friday: Citizen Kane

So here we go… We have a classic film Friday to review and I thought why not make it one of the all time greats, Citizen Kane. Although if you’re not all that into classic movies it won’t seem that good. It’s a movie of how Charles Foster Kane, a media magnet, makes a name for himself, but in the end dies alone and miserable, newspaper men try to find out what his last word means “rosebud”.

The movie seemed a bit too long, and it didn’t hold my wife’s interest at all. I think it’s the way the story is told, you find the dead Kane, then you here all about him from various people, and in the end they are no closer to finding out what “rosebud” is than when they started.

The strangest thing about the movie is how Kane falls in love and subsequently marries Susan Alexander (Kane’s second marriage). His love for her and her singing (which nobody else liked) causes him to build an opera house. When she opens at the opera house she is greeted with scathing reviews, but he insists she must continue the show. I can see where some might think this is a man who pretty much had everything at his beck and call…. Turned from a man that is for the people to a man that simply wanted to control the people. And I’m sure that’s probably what happened. But it just doesn’t strike me that way.

I think the movie is OK, but there were a lack of stars, and the story doesn’t really go anywhere. The “rosebud” winds up being a sled that Kane had as a child, when we was poor. I think if you are in to classics then you HAVE to see this movie, if not so much, then I’d take it or leave it.

No comments: