Quote: "I'm sure if I were Lucy and Ricky sitting in a theater with Fred and Ethel... I would think it the best as well... but like I say... that was then, this is now and nowadays, Citizen Kane just doesn't cut it.
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That's the interesting thing about Citizen Kane, and what you just said re-inforces the belief that it was easily 20 to 30 years ahead of it's time. "I Love Lucy" aired in the 1950's, and the film has that same film quality, doesn't it? Like movies in the 1950's, or maybe even a black and white movie shot in the late 1960's or early 1970's, right? Well, Citizen Kane was shot in 1941. The reason it recieves such high praise across the board is because RKO problem-child Orson Welles (RKO is a movie studio from that time, before anyone asks) went millions of dollars over budget... in THEIR period's money... making sure every single frame was shot in absolute perfection. When they couldn't acquire the shot they needed, Welles ordered gaffers to literally dig a 5-foot hole in the studio's floor! You won't get production quality like that these days. If they can't get the shot, they just create it on a computer
I don't think it's really a matter of comparing to today's standards. Citizen Kane is the movie that literally
created today's standards, and everyone has been trying to compete with it for 60+ years.
I dunno, lol I'm too gung-ho about it, I know. But when I tried cinematography for a semester, Citizen Kane was the first movie we were instructed to watch, and we were told to watch it twice: once on the very first day, and again on the last day, and both times we had to write papers on why we thought it was important. Looking at those two papers, it really shows how much you learned that year, but more importantly, it forced you to appreciate that Citizen Kane is undoubtedly the greatest motion picture ever. Not because it was no less than 20 years before it's time. Not because it had one of the most intricately displayed plots in history. And not because it was actually based on a real person (Newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, who really did live in a castle in California, but I can't say what rosebud was in fear of the AUP!).
No, the reason why Citizen Kane is the greatest motion picture of all time is because today, movies are often made "by the book." That book? It was written by Orson Welles, and he wrote it by filming Citizen Kane. It literally IS the book, and that's why it wins my vote for greatest motion picture of all time
"In an interstellar burst, I'm back to save the universe"
