The Silver Screen Oasis

I like Kane, because of all The Simpsons references.

It's a good film, that stylistically is very impressive.

I like that the mystery and driving force of Kane's entire life is basically summarized in one innocuous scene(that of the sled), a choice that's both deceptively simple, and incredibly difficult to pull off.

I too think it's a shame that the character of Susan Alexander is so closely linked with Marion Davies, Marion deserves infinitely more respect and attention.

That all being said, I think The Magnificent Ambersons is a better film even in its abbreviated form. It packs more of an emotional punch(actually a completely devastating emotional punch), is tighter, and the direction contributes more to the story, whereas in Kane it feels sometimes like Welles was trying things out just because he could.

Oh, by the way - I forgot to ask you all in regard to the Love, Actually exchange -- which one was Colin Firth? Is he the one with the rather short-chinned, round face?

I did see most of the movie on TV, but I was really watching it to see Martine McCutcheon, who played the Prime Minister's love interest. She was a major player for a time on the British soap East Enders, which is broadcast here in NYC (although we are almost 3 years behind the episodes broadcast in Britain). She did My Fair Lady in London a few years ago (won an Olivier or something for it). That production was supposed to come to Broadway, but never made it.

Martine was wonderful as Hugh Grant's assistant. And wasn't Billy Bob Thornton smarmy as the US Pres? Colin Firth was the jilted lover who went to Italy (?) to write.

Colin Firth was at his best in Pride and Prejudice.

He's good too in the Bridget Jones films he plays Mark Darcy.

Martine McCutcheon is good as the tea lady. I watched Eastenders until a couple of years ago. The storylines took a downturn. It's shown here before the watershed and I felt that some of the storylines weren't for young eyes and ears. That said it is shown again later at night but I kept missing it

Hey, who's this Bryce guy? I don't remember seeing him on the guest list. Are you trying to pull a fast one?

According to a new poll (including film historians, critics, distributors, writers and programmers from around the world participated) from the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound, after 50 years Kane has been toppled as the "Greatest film of all time".

The new champ, wait for it, VERTIGO

No kidding.

Read it here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/v ... ime-357266

And in a separate poll, 358 film directors chose Ozu's Tokyo Story over Kane as the 'greatest film".

Here's the lists:

The Critics’ Top 10 Greatest Films of All Time

Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)

Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)

2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

The Searchers (Ford, 1956)

Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1927)

8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)



The Directors’ Top 10 Greatest Films of All Time

Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

=2 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

=2 Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)

Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1980)

Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)

=7 The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)

=7 Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1974)

Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)

I'll say one thing for "Kane." I always say it's no better than a dozen other films. But I can't seem to get enough of it. I've just been thinking of watching it again! Some of the films listed are not known to me. I watch mostly American. A couple, in my rating, don't even come close. But Orson Welles' format shattering classic? Deserving of the highest marks!

Entertainment Weekly had an article that included this:

"Kane topped the list for 50 years not just because it’s one of the most entertaining films ever made but because of what it represented in the annals of film history: the emergence of the concept, within Hollywood at least, that a writer-director can be a singular auteur (as much as Pauline Kael, not to mention earlier film artists like Charlie Chaplin, F.W. Murnau, and D.W. Griffith, would beg to differ); as one of the rare times that a writer-director has been given virtually a blank check from a Hollywood studio to put his vision on screen; for its pioneering use of wide-angle lenses to achieve deep-focus cinematography; for its circular, self-reflexive narrative that throws out all screenwriting-class notions of a three-act script. But Nick James, the editor of Sight & Sound, suggests that critics and filmmakers voted more for personal than objective, historical reasons this time.

“This result reflects changes in the culture of film criticism,” James tells the BBC. “The new cinephilia seems to be not so much about films that strive to be great art, such as Citizen Kane, and that use cinema’s entire arsenal of effects to make a grand statement, but more about works that have personal meaning to the critic. Vertigo is the ultimate critics’ film because it is a dreamlike film about people who are not sure who they are but who are busy reconstructing themselves and each other to fit a kind of cinema ideal of the ideal soul mate.”

Which may well explain how Kane came to be toppled from the top after 50 years.

In the year 2060, the list will include some movies we barely acknowledge today.

Cinephilia sounds like something perverted or a disease.

Nick James idea of why critics picked Vertigo is hilarious!

But I'd pick the critics' list over the directors' one.

A couple, in my rating, don't even come close.

I'm with you on that.

JackFavell wrote:Cinephilia sounds like something perverted or a disease.

It makes me feel like a need to put a bandaid on the DVD player and slather it in Neosporin!

Those are good points about the Kane/Vertigo shift, Lynn. Thanks for the info. I really was pondering that for the last few days.

Interesting, I read this whilst I was away, whilst I wouldn't put Citizen Kane at number 1 I'm not sure I'd put Vertigo at number 1 either, I like both movies and I guess if I had to pick I'd go for Vertigo.

I spent the morning with The Bride and The Princess and 50 or so other people at theater watching "Citizen Kane." There was even a woman there doing a Robert Osborne prior to the film.

Wonderful time watching it. An interesting thing I found in the screening room scene after the newsreel is that Joseph Cotten, and apparently Welles, is among the members watching the newsreel. It's too dark to pick out Welles but there is a story that most of the male cast was in that scene.

The Princess asked me for a two second synopsis. "All the money in the world can't buy you happiness."

This was supposed to be a date for The Bride and me back in 1981. Finally got to it.