Kane Tops S&S Poll Again

[mteal]

CBanks,
Excellent point about Citizen Kane being clinically studied like Shakespeare instead of being enjoyed. I watch Kane about once every two or three years or so, and I'm always amazed, not only by how brilliant it is (that's pretty much a given), but also by how funny and entertaining it is. But many people don't pick up on this aspect of the film, perhaps because by this time the loftiness of it's cultural standing approaches that of the works of Shakespeare. As Michael Anderegg points out in "Orson Welles, Shakespeare and Popular Culture", Welles spent a good portion of his career trying to bridge the gap between Shakespeare as academia and Shakespeare as popular entertainment. Charles Foster Kane strikes me as a very Shakespearean protagonist.

One last note on 2001: it reminds me of Kane in some ways, not just because of the end where the astronaut lives out the rest of his days a virtual prisoner amidst elegant surroundings, but also because both films center around an object as a source of mystery. I like to compare what Welles did with Kane to what the monolith did for the apes. Welles raised the film world's intelligence level by showing all that could be done with a camera the same the monolith showed the apes what could be done with that bone. Maybe that's another reason why Kane is still considered the greatest film.

[LA]

Cole: Thanks for posting that Top 26 list. I'm glad to see that S. Ray, Vigo and Dreyer haven't fallen too far. Nice also to see that The Searchers hasn't completely plummeted ethier. But The Third Man tied with Modern Times and [I] The Magnificent Ambersons ? I like The Third Man , but I wouldn't rate it on a par with those two. Of course, it's all debateable, that's what makes these things fun. Someone somewhere probably can't believe that The Third Man isn't in the Top Ten, or that Modern Times is so compartively high.

CBanks & mteal: It suprises me to think that anyone could watch Kane without enjoying it. The wonderful nuances that the film has seem to me to be great fun, and expressive of Welles' great enthusiasm for his new medium (I get the feeling this has often been said before, but then I suppose everything has when it comes to Kane ). There seem, judging from Nicky James' comments, to be a lot more people who are unable to see the entertaining, exciting side of a cut or a dissolve than I thought. Or have I got completely the wrong idea about cinema here? It worries me to think that in years to come only "the initiated" might watch Kane , and then only to analyse it. I tend to think the film's greatness resides greatly in it's amazing density, the fact that you can look at it from all kinds of angles and it still works, and that cinematically it's un-unravellable (is that a word? ). If the only people who watch it are people who've already seen it, then it won't be getting the wide audience it deserves, the people who have the great experience of being hurtled through such an amazing, suprising film for the first time. Hopefully though, the film will get past these intimidating comments to people, unless great films are going to become like certain great books, famous, imposing landmarks everyone's heard of but many are nervous of reading. I hope not.

[Cole]

For those interested, an even longer listing of the Sight and Sound Critics’ poll is provided at The Guardian’s web site. The link is below. Only problem again is that the number of votes each movie received is not indicated, and no effort was made to show that a lot of the films on the list received an equal number of votes. They also arbitrarily cut off the list at 50, with Lawrence of Arabia listed 50th for receiving 5 votes (equal to the number of votes received by Intolerance and Greed listed right above it), and there are other movies that also received 5 votes from critics which aren’t listed (e.g. Ordet received 5 votes and it isn’t mentioned).

But I probably shouldn’t read much into this list anyway. My parents are big movie fans and they’d be shocked to see what’s not on the list, and their opinion would probably be shared by a lot of other avid movie buffs. I can hear it now. “Where’s Casablanca, and where’s On the Waterfront and Yankee Doodle Dandy, and how can that be considered a reliable list when it doesn’t have the greatest movie of all time – Gone with the Wind?” Of course they also fall into that fairly large group of movie lovers who don’t see anything great about Citizen Kane.

Interesting to me was seeing Blade Runner on the list of 50 films.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4479416,00.html

[mteal]

I like that article on the site by Philip French, when he mentions the list as "blundering by critics who are out of touch with the paying public". Since when are critics supposed to take their cues from the paying public? Most of the paying public nowadays are ignoramuses who probably couldn't make it through the first 10 minutes of Citizen Kane. Or most of the other films on the BFI list, for that matter.

[Welles Fan]

Posted by mteal:
Most of the paying public nowadays are ignoramuses who probably couldn't make it through the first 10 minutes of Citizen Kane. Or most of the other films on the BFI list, for that matter.

I hate to make sweeping dismissals like that, but unfortunately, you are, IMO correct in that assessment. I can enjoy some of today's movies for what they are, but at least I have a yardstick like Kane (or other great films) by which to measure true quality.

I, too lament the fact that Kane's topping the list obscures his independant films. It doesn't help tha a movie like Chimes is not available on DVD except on the one you have to order from Spain.

My wife's niece was visiting from Portland last week, and she wanted to check out some of my DVDs to hear what the surround sound is like. My favorite demo disc is Ridley Scott's Gladiator-the opening battle scene with its intense dts soundtrack. While we're watching this, I'm thinking "this battle reminds me an awful lot of the Shrewsbury battle from Chimes". So I put on the Spanish DVD of it and ran the film from great shot where Worcester rides past the giant crossbow thingmie through Falstaff's claim that he killed Hotspur. Things I noticed-both my wife and the niece were laughing at some of Falstaff's lines, and both found the battle eerily similar to Gladiator. The niece (about 27-28 yrs old) was asking "now when was this film made?". Apparently she had never heard of it, and Welles was only known to her as the director of Kane. Obviously, Chimes belongs on some sort of "greatest film you've never seen" list. Sadly, it will probably remain an obsure film, with its champions dismissed as Welles fanboys who like anything he directed regardless of quality.

[mteal]

Nice avatar, WellesFan. I remember years ago in college-
They had just shown Citizen Kane as part of a film class and I overheard someone in the lobby:
"That's supposed to be the greatest film ever made?! Oh, it was allright, but it wasn't nearly as good as The Godfather".

Not that The Godfather isn't a great film too, but it's much easier to grasp on first viewing then Kane. Kane almost needs to seen more then once before the full scope and range of it's genius becomes graspable. The paying audience these days is conditioned (by TV?) to expect instant gratification, what Welles called the "immediate gut kick". In the 1967 Playboy interview (included in the new interviews book), he also lamented how today's filmmakers often seem to revel in the lack of true content. Flash is everything now.

As for people stealing from Chimes At Midnight, have you seen Braveheart? Like Gladiator, it's certainly not a bad movie, but it's battle scenes also have what look almost like direct quotation from Chimes. But, let's face it, Welles stole from other filmmakers too. I'm sure they all do. Chimes absolutely deserves much more recognition then it gets in America, but it probably won't get it as long as Beatrice owns the American rights. I wonder if the OW estate hasn't done more to keep Welles' independent films obscure then Kane has.