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Post by twothousandonemark on Apr 13, 2020 15:15:43 GMT
My #3 all time. I love Citizen Kane, nearly everything about it crackles & pops with life & zest. The more I re-watch it, the more I love the Mercury Theatre bunch just taking their batons & sprinting all over the place. Orson Welles' performance alone keeps getting better for me.
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Post by marshamae on Apr 13, 2020 17:33:52 GMT
I love this movie . It is always on my top ten lists. I love the cinematography. I love the performances. I really love the Susan Alexander part. She both wanted to sing and did not want to sing at the same time. When we meet her she has her feet on the ground, she enjoys her modest ambitions and her life. Then Kane blows all that up, with his huge fortune, his big plans . By the end she is so mixed up by the pressure of his life on hers that even leaving him doesn’t help. She still can’t regain control of her life, even after he dies.
In a was that was jed’s Problem too. He struggled to stay balanced as Kane morphed from his playmate and school chum to his employer. Kane’s lies became Jed’s problem and he literally struggled with them to his death.
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Post by hitchcockthelegend on Apr 14, 2020 2:49:59 GMT
I have not long "finally" purchased the Blu-ray, so let me spin that after Xmas and get back on thread about it - a thread I might add that is superb. I love this board, it's full of grown up film loving people. ahem ... It's still unwrapped as well!, well I have no excuse with all the home time at the moment...
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Post by BATouttaheck on Apr 14, 2020 3:29:03 GMT
ahem ... It's still unwrapped as well!, well I have no excuse with all the home time at the moment... "Whenever" is good .. no rush ... and please keep safe and healthy !
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Post by Prime etc. on Apr 14, 2020 6:39:15 GMT
"Gettys! I'm going to send you to Sing Sing! Sing Sing, Gettys! Sing Sing!"
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Post by telegonus on Apr 19, 2020 7:20:16 GMT
Themes that were explored in Citizen Kane include the loss of innocence, the hardships of being wealthy, and the ruthlessness of politics. And I don't know this to be certain, but perhaps it was the first, if not one of the first movies, to explore the power of the media and how it can be very manipulative. Newspaper dramas (and comedies as well) were quite popular all through the '30s, and two early ones, both from 1931, specifically explored the manipulative power of media: The Finger Points, in which a naive reporter from a small town on his first big-city job (Richard Barthelmess) is recruited by racketeer Clark Gable to kill bad stories about his operations and replace them with favorable coverage; Five Star Final, with Edward G. Robinson as an editor who dredges up an old murder case, making tabloid fodder of the now-respectable woman who once served prison time for it. In the form of screwball comedy, 1936's Libeled Lady has editor Spencer Tracy hiring reporter William Powell to frame a society heiress (Myrna Loy) in a scandal in order to neutralize the lawsuit she's filed against the paper. There are dozens of others of the period, many of which offer their own takes on the power to which you refer. Two early talkie horrors, Doctor X and Mystery Of The Wax Museum, feature newspaper reporters. Lee Tracy played one in Doctor X, while in Wax Museum it was Glenda Farrell. Lionel Atwill was prominently featured in both films. He was the title character in Doctor X (I won't spoil this one for newbies by giving away whether he was mad or the villain in it). Reporters would often figure in American horrors back in the day, and this trend continued into science fiction, with the voluble "Scotty" in the 1951 The Thing From Another World, a sort of stand-in for the Common Man. None of this factors into the matter of Citizen Kane, though these examples do show how prominently news reporters figured in movies of the old Hollywood.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Apr 19, 2020 15:03:22 GMT
Newspaper dramas (and comedies as well) were quite popular all through the '30s, and two early ones, both from 1931, specifically explored the manipulative power of media: The Finger Points, in which a naive reporter from a small town on his first big-city job (Richard Barthelmess) is recruited by racketeer Clark Gable to kill bad stories about his operations and replace them with favorable coverage; Five Star Final, with Edward G. Robinson as an editor who dredges up an old murder case, making tabloid fodder of the now-respectable woman who once served prison time for it. In the form of screwball comedy, 1936's Libeled Lady has editor Spencer Tracy hiring reporter William Powell to frame a society heiress (Myrna Loy) in a scandal in order to neutralize the lawsuit she's filed against the paper. There are dozens of others of the period, many of which offer their own takes on the power to which you refer. Two early talkie horrors, Doctor X and Mystery Of The Wax Museum, feature newspaper reporters. Lee Tracy played one in Doctor X, while in Wax Museum it was Glenda Farrell. Lionel Atwill was prominently featured in both films. He was the title character in Doctor X (I won't spoil this one for newbies by giving away whether he was mad or the villain in it). Reporters would often figure in American horrors back in the day, and this trend continued into science fiction, with the voluble "Scotty" in the 1951 The Thing From Another World, a sort of stand-in for the Common Man. None of this factors into the matter of Citizen Kane, though these examples do show how prominently news reporters figured in movies of the old Hollywood. The tireless, fast-talking reporter (of either gender), the harried and explosive editor, the frenzied paces of news and press rooms, newsies hawking the latest editions from sidewalks and banner headlines spiraling or zooming toward camera were unquestionably among the most popular and now fondly remembered cinematic symbols of the Depression years. And as either central plot drivers or secondary elements, they were utilized numerous times by every studio, although Warners seemed to run ahead of the pack. Your mention of Lee Tracy brings to mind another of his dynamic go-getters with line deliveries resembling an adenoidal machine gun: Bombshell's Space Hanlon, in this case manipula tor of the press as a studio publicity chief, stoking the starmaker machinery (as Joni Mitchell wrote) behind the silver screen. The citation of TTFAW's Scotty is a nice example of post-Depression evolution of the archetype, as he finds himself muzzled and at the mercy of the military while witnessing - and participating in - the story of a lifetime. Douglas Spencer plays him with drollery that's at once exasperated yet genial, leaving him light years from Hecht and MacArthur's compulsive Hildy Johnson (originated by Lee Tracy on B'way) or unscrupulous Walter Burns.
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Post by hi224 on Apr 19, 2020 18:12:55 GMT
OMG, I don't even know what to say. This will haunt me for days, for so many reasons, some of which I can't even begin to understand. Oh, man. . .
Except for last snarky comment, he seems earnest here. It’s kinda heartbreaking. Whats your favorite shot as well.
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Apr 19, 2020 20:18:46 GMT
Gregg Toland's camera was the star of CK. So many iconic shots. The campaign speech, Welles behind the huge "KANE" poster. The shot of Suzan Alexander's apartment morphing into the front page of the newspaper. The fireplace and the jigsaw puzzles. The tiny bedroom of Kane toward the end. The opening and closing shots, smoke and silhouettes. Before I seen CK, the Rosebud angle had been ruined by Charles Schulz and Peanuts. and again later
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Post by hi224 on Apr 19, 2020 20:21:19 GMT
I love Citizen Kane for more reasons than I care to list at this moment. Broadly speaking, it rocks; while some scenes play better than others the film's story holds together as a whole; and the art direction, photography and editing (Wise and Robson) are swell. There's almost nothing that I don't like about this film. Yes, it's ambitious, though I'm not sure that director and co-author Orson Welles was aiming to make the greatest movie of all time. He aimed high, was blessed with gifted collaborators (Herman Mankiewicz, Bernard Hermann, the RKO art department, a brilliant cast). It's not like Welles did it all alone. He had help, and one can see that on the screen. Maybe this movie, controversial to this day, is too highly praised. I think it would play better as a cult classic, which is almost is but for the cult being to large to be called a cult. It's more of a critic's favorite; and a lot of critics do favor it. Something about the movie's PR, even today, makes it an easy target (too jumpy, hard to follow, the black and white makes it difficult to watch, confusing storyline, such as it has one, et al.) What can I say about all this? This is not a movie for all tastes. Orson Welles was what we would now call an elitist. Big deal. I still think Citizen Kane's great; and it's also great fun. One final observation: director Welles was a man of vast ambition and talent, and while he had an enormous ego he was not solemn about his work. There is humor in Citizen Kane and in many of his later films as well. you going to watch Mank when it releases?.
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Post by telegonus on Apr 19, 2020 20:52:36 GMT
Not sure about Mank.
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