citizen kane
""Citizen Kane" is like the "Jimi Hendrix" of movies. It's great, but has somehow been elected as "greatest of all time" when there are obviously greater movies. There seems to be a notion that we have to choose a definitive "greatest" in almost every category, and "Kane" seemed like a good candidate at one time, so hence there it is."
"Approaching Citizen Kane is like approaching the Mona Lisa or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Such are great works of art - they're often encased in amber. And with whatever the innovations they've created or expanded upon, coming at them at a later time is often like solving a mystery - you know there's a reason why they're so important, but you have to understand the context."
"To me, Citizen Kane is like one of the jigsaw puzzles that Susan Alexander is forever assembling in Xanadu. I know what the picture is going to be when it's put together, but it's fascinating to see the infinite number of ways that picture can be constructed. I'd seen Kane a number of times before watching this DVD and, in writing this review, I watched it three times in a row. Each time, I discovered something new."
"Citizen Kane is filled with wonderful hints that we shouldn't take the conventional reading of the story as gospel truth. It is simply a matter of the audience picking up on the hints(and it took me numerous viewings before I began to catch on). I've always said Citizen Kane is like Mahler symphony. You discover something new every time you experience it."
"Citizen Kane may be the *best made* movie to look at, but it doesn't draw you in as much as other movies like Casablanca, Vertigo, etc. Citizen Kane is like a Picasso, and Vertigo is like standing on a Hawaiian beach at sunset. "
""Citizen Kane" is like that glass globe that we can peer inside and see the illusion of life...and consider our own lives. And in the end we are left with its final image to contemplate, and one may consider that Kane was a master illusionist himself, pretending greatness where there was none, and utilizing the very same tools used by those other illusionists-magicians and very young film directors--to create those illusions."
"Citizen Kane is like The Rear Window in that they both use fades to transition from one scene to the next, but where the latter uses fades to black to pass time in the movie, Citizen Kane uses fades that melt one scene into the next"
"Citizen Kane is like an ice sculpture: beautiful but cold. It's part of what makes it such a fascinating character portrait, but it also prevents me from enjoying it on as many levels as I enjoy Casablanca."
"I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't met Lauren yet. She's usually writing essays about how Citizen Kane is like Mean Girls in that they both support a hegemony of superiority through gossip and rumors. But like, we're here for the makeover options!"
The reference is to the newspapers in the film who publish may false stories just to alienate people they don't like. It's a nice parallel to American culture then and American culture now.
"Citizen Kane is like a finely tuned clockwork of film-making, and you don't have to like it to appreciate that."
"I have to agree with Mellzah, I am not sure I make the connection to Citizen Kane. Wouldn't it be the exact opposite? I would say that Citizen Kane is like peeling back an onion layer by layer whereas Avatar is formulaic. Also, there's a certain simplicity about Citizen Kane while Avatar is tremendously visually...busy."
"But if Citizen Kane is like the highly intelligent but breathtaking woman that few take seriously precisely because of her outrageous beauty, the works of the Wise Master face a subtly different reception."
The writer of this piece, dylanexpert, contrasts the works of these directors.
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