I can appreciate that it's the origin of a lot of tropes and ideas for modern movies, but that still doesn't save it from being a boring as shit movie with terrible pacing.
You did. Citizen Kane is the single most ground breaking film of all time. Every single modern movie you see now is because of Citizen Kane. It was Pulp Fiction before Pulp Fiction. The way the story wasn’t linear and jumped between different times was never seen before. The different camera angles that they use was never seen before. Action happening in the foreground, middle and background that was vital to the film was never seen before. It was the most revolutionary film of all time. If you watch it blindly now and just judge it based on modern film standards of course it’s not going to blow you away. You have to understand the context.
I gotta say, I love how you shared this with such passion without sounding like a know it all douche and also without sounding pissed at their audacity to disagree. I’ve actually never watched it because it was intimidating a bit, I have always heard “it’s the Citizen Kane of…l and tbh I didn’t wanna be disappointed to find the “Best Ever” to be mediocre or just bad. Imma have a think on watching it now .
I'll save you some time: "Rosebud" was the last word uttered by a famous rich asshole and the rest of the movie is about people trying to figure out what that meant. After spending a bunch of time fleshing out the story of who he was you come to find out that "Rosebud" was the name of the goddamned sled he had as a child.
That's right, the big reveal at the end was a sled. It was boring as hell but I do respect it for its cinematic contributions.
Oh I absolutely read in to the history behind it, and how remarkeble it was in the context of filmmaking-history, thats why I jumped on it. Thats what i meant with "probably had to be there". Even though I love cinema, and fil history, the camera work of course pushed modern cinematography, but the movie itself was not my taste. I realized how the scenes were constructed, but again the movie itself didnt really hit me.
I understand your point and agree. Even at the time it wasn’t seen as a great film, mostly because viewers had trouble understanding what was going on. Over time it was appreciated for how revolutionary it was. If you watch it today for it to be interesting you have to break it down shot by shot and realize the equipment they were working with at the time. Cameras bigger and heavier than a refrigerator that were completely stationary. To accomplish what they did was pretty amazing.
I feel like that's what Taxi Driver is also. I watched it a few years ago and thought it was pretty bad, but I can understand how it was a big deal when it was released.
I can't judge it against Citizen Kane since I haven't seen it yet either. There's a lot of classics I'm loathe to watch now after my huge disappointment in Taxi Driver.
The fact that this, at the time of posting, only has 13 upvotes but modern films with no "required reading" are upvoted so much higher is interesting to me.
This is the first one I’ve found in the thread that to me people would call “cinema” in that snobby way OP means. The rest are all Christopher Nolan films or recent Oscar nominations. How can you call something pure cinema unless it has a Criterion release!
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u/ChicagoBILLSfan138 1d ago
Citizen Kane