Still a Masterpiece? Debating the Legacy of Citizen Kane

RKO Pictures had a clause in their contract where they could pay Orson Welles 310,000 dollars to buy back the negative of Citizen Kane and literally burn it. Just to make it go away. That's... intense. Last week we talked about the enduring reputation of 'The Godfather', but this is different. Kane's reputation was under full-scale assault before anyone had even seen it. Exactly. And that pressure is part of why we're still talking about it. The question for us today, Admin, is simple: is Citizen Kane still the masterpiece everyone says it is, or is it just the most important film ever made? And I think that's a crucial distinction.

Because I'll give you important. I mean, my god, it's the textbook. But is it a film you'd put on tonight, for pleasure? One hundred percent. For me, the innovation isn't just historical trivia—it's what makes the movie SO watchable. The deep focus cinematography from Gregg Toland... it's not just a trick. Uh-huh. It's storytelling! You have Kane's mother signing him away in the foreground, his father looking greedy in the mid-ground, and little Charles playing in the snow outside the window. All in ONE shot. You, the viewer, decide where to look. It gives you agency. I hear you, but—that's what I mean by a textbook. It's a perfect demonstration of a technique.

But for a modern audience, the pacing can be a real slog. The whole "News on the March" sequence at the top is a brilliant parody of newsreels, I get it. But it's also ten minutes of exposition that feels like homework before the movie even starts. See, I think that's the best part! It tells you everything and nothing. It gives you the public version of the man, this grand, empty shell, and the rest of the movie is spent trying to find the ghost in that machine. It’s a mystery structure. But is the ghost even there? That's my problem. I admire Charles Foster Kane, I'm fascinated by the puzzle of him... but I don't feel anything for him.

The performances, from the whole Mercury Theatre troupe, are so... theatrical. It's operatic, sure, but it feels emotionally distant. Cold. Okay, but what if the coldness is the point? The film is about the ultimate emptiness of a man who has everything and feels nothing. He's an object. A collection of things. We're not supposed to feel empathy for him, we're supposed to feel a kind of horror at his hollowness. That’s a fair intellectual reading, except a film isn't a dissertation. It has to connect on a gut level. And for me, the thing that breaks it is the ending. It all comes down to "Rosebud." Ahhh, here we go. I mean, come on. After this sprawling, epic, complicated life...

the entire psychological key is his childhood sled? It feels like a cheap Freudian gimmick. It's too neat. Whoa, NO. That's the most misunderstood part of the whole film! Rosebud is a total misdirection. The reporter literally says at the end, "I don't think any one word can explain a man's life." The characters NEVER find out what Rosebud is. Okay... WE, the audience, are the only ones who see it. It’s a final, devastating piece of dramatic irony. It proves the reporter's point! It’s not the answer; it’s the symbol of the one thing he lost that he could never buy back. It’s not the key to the puzzle—it’s the knowledge that the puzzle is unsolvable.

Alright, I'll give you that one. That is a more compelling defense than just "it's his childhood." But still... the experience of watching it can feel like admiring a perfect, beautiful snow globe from a distance. I can see the genius in it. I just can't feel the warmth. And maybe that's okay. I mean, I'll concede that the acting style can be a hurdle for people used to modern screen naturalism. It's definitely A Choice. And I'll concede that basically every director from the last seventy years has stolen something from this movie. Its DNA is everywhere. You can't deny the influence. So maybe that's the real tension. We revere it for inventing a cinematic language.

But we might connect more with the films that came later, the ones that just... spoke that language fluently. Yeah. So the question isn't whether Citizen Kane is great. It's what we're really asking for when we call something a masterpiece. Is it the revolutionary blueprint, or is it the timeless, emotionally resonant story?