Whereas, personally, there’s no way that I could actually begin to rank the greatest films ever made (as long as Citizen Kane is at No. 1, I won’t argue), this place is a virtual goldmine for discovering what the "experts" consider the finest motion pictures ever made, from all corners of the globe, from the earliest days of cinema all the way up to last year.
This is a fabulous resource, whatever your opinion, to discover great movies to watch. And as I look over the list of the grand 1,000 (which is updated every year), I certainly tend to agree with virtually every choice that I recognize. Perhaps more importantly, however, it’s a great way to discover films that perhaps you’ve never even heard of that you should probably investigate.
Can anything like a true consensus exist when it comes to a kind of hierarchical ranking of any types of works of art? I certainly don’t know, but I find such efforts to be illuminating and fascinating. Moreover, this method of transforming the subjective world of evaluation into a more objective realm of (perhaps imaginary) reference, I think is an exciting and worthwhile endeavor that, while if it can never really claim to be truly authoritative, is at the very least a valuable point of reference for discussion.
Rankings aside, the simple attempt to gather together in one place what amounts to the world’s canon of great cinema has to be applauded as a worthwhile endeavor. For those of us who have assiduously watched movies all our lives in a valiant attempt to see virtually everything worth seeing, in every genre, from every time and place, this is absolutely a godsend.
I intend to use this extraordinary resource simply as a way to organize a method (or rather a group of methods) to write about cinema. I find myself vacillating between different approaches and methods, so when something so handily contrived simply presents itself to me, I’m more than happy to just reach out and use it as a tool to hang my own thoughts on. (Perhaps some would disagree with this method, but I would argue back that it simply doesn’t matter, and I’ll do what I feel like.)
My original intention when I started this blog was to write long essays on the top-rated films, analyzing them, more or less shot by shot. (Hence the publication of my interpretation of the first "act" or third of Citizen Kane.) I have since been rethinking this strategy, and while I do not rule out the idea of such longer analyses in the future, I think it would be initially more profitable and enjoyable to give "short" overviews and analyses of as many of these films as possible.
1. Citizen Kane
1941, USA D: Orson Welles
I have often said that Citizen Kane is, "by definition," the greatest film ever made, and probably the greatest film that can ever be made. Part of my reason for this extreme judgment lies in the cultural mythology of the film, of course. There is nothing quite like the phenomenon of Citizen Kane elsewhere in film history: a single movie that has simultaneously summed up the history of its medium while at the same time taking it on a quantum leap into the future, establishing a broad and lasting new standard. And not only is Kane so dramatically revolutionary in every sense of the word, but it is astonishingly so. I have never witnessed any other movie that even closely matched it in sheer bravura, nor have I ever seen a film that so effectively utilizes virtually every fundamental device of cinematic theory. On top of that, I find the emotional impact of the film, both in its form and content (which I contend cannot be separated) to be so powerfully overwhelming that it is, for me at least, one of the defining experiences of my lifetime. Lastly and simply, Citizen Kane is simply my favorite movie and the one I have watched the most times (easily over a hundred viewings), and it never ceases to amaze me. I know every line, every camera move, every music cue by heart, yet I could put it on right now and be utterly lost in wonder.
Orson Welles was an established "boy-genius" at 24 on Broadway and radio when he was offered his unprecedented contract by RKO Studios to make a film over which he had complete control. Along with screenwriter Herbert J. Mankiewicz, Welles conceived a labyrinthine method of telling the story of the rise and fall of a great American newspaper tycoon. The movie is possibly the most elaborate and ostentatious to ever come out of Hollywood, using wide-angle lenses to create extraordinary "depth of field" shots that hold even extraordinarily deep and complex compositions in equal focus, and there are countless special effects and camera "tricks". Welles constantly draws attention to the position and motion of the camera, forcing audiences to deal with stylistic details that simultaneously insist that this is a unique plastic form of media at play, while at the same time manipulating them into becoming snooping voyeurs, hot on the trail to find out every nook and cranny of the lead character’s life and psyche.
Citizen Kane uses a magnificent flashback technique to tell the story of Charles Foster Kane from the perspectives of several different people, all of whom had distinctly different relationships with the man. What ultimately emerges is what appears to be a consistent narrative that on closer inspection reveals itself to be a half-truth at best, leaving the essence of the real man to forever hide behind walls of his own making, marked by "No Trespassing" signs.
The movie embraces every conceivable technique of cinematic trickery to its absolute peak in an attempt to push and claw its way into the essence of its subject, only to demonstrate, again and again, the irony that reality is elusive and that the medium ultimately delivers only images of its own distortion. The film begins with a hyper-surreal style that pulls the viewer in, only to completely whisk it away by replacing it with the banal reality of newsreel footage. Once this is fully established as reality, it is just as suddenly halted and replaced by a new level of narrative that will prove just as faulty and deceptive. This movie is an endless bag of tricks and discoveries that has deep philosophical implications, both for its medium and for the very nature of communication, meaning and the objective nature of reality itself.
Orson Welles was an established "boy-genius" at 24 on Broadway and radio when he was offered his unprecedented contract by RKO Studios to make a film over which he had complete control. Along with screenwriter Herbert J. Mankiewicz, Welles conceived a labyrinthine method of telling the story of the rise and fall of a great American newspaper tycoon. The movie is possibly the most elaborate and ostentatious to ever come out of Hollywood, using wide-angle lenses to create extraordinary "depth of field" shots that hold even extraordinarily deep and complex compositions in equal focus, and there are countless special effects and camera "tricks". Welles constantly draws attention to the position and motion of the camera, forcing audiences to deal with stylistic details that simultaneously insist that this is a unique plastic form of media at play, while at the same time manipulating them into becoming snooping voyeurs, hot on the trail to find out every nook and cranny of the lead character’s life and psyche.
Citizen Kane uses a magnificent flashback technique to tell the story of Charles Foster Kane from the perspectives of several different people, all of whom had distinctly different relationships with the man. What ultimately emerges is what appears to be a consistent narrative that on closer inspection reveals itself to be a half-truth at best, leaving the essence of the real man to forever hide behind walls of his own making, marked by "No Trespassing" signs.
The movie embraces every conceivable technique of cinematic trickery to its absolute peak in an attempt to push and claw its way into the essence of its subject, only to demonstrate, again and again, the irony that reality is elusive and that the medium ultimately delivers only images of its own distortion. The film begins with a hyper-surreal style that pulls the viewer in, only to completely whisk it away by replacing it with the banal reality of newsreel footage. Once this is fully established as reality, it is just as suddenly halted and replaced by a new level of narrative that will prove just as faulty and deceptive. This movie is an endless bag of tricks and discoveries that has deep philosophical implications, both for its medium and for the very nature of communication, meaning and the objective nature of reality itself.
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