Why Citizen Kane is the Best Movie Ever Made

The debate over Casablanca and Citizen Kane has been a classic argument between film critics and historians alike, and this is because both of these pieces are timeless pictures that have managed to captivate audiences well after their era. On a broad spectrum analysis this is an apples and oranges debate as the two films both have great cinematographic value but for different reasons. However, the real question at hand is which film is the greatest? Which film transformed the future of American film making? It is these questions that I as many others have, will attempt to answer in the following essay as I explain why I believe Citizen Kane is the greatest film ever made.

Citizen Kane was produced, co-written, directed, and lead acted by Orson Welles in 1941 at the young age of twenty-five. The story is based on real life publisher and tycoon William Randolph Hearst, though Welles was hesitant to admit it. None the less this didn’t stop Hearst from stopping all mentioning of Citizen Kane in his papers, and attempting to stop RKO from releasing it. Luckily this didn’t occur, though the film did have difficulty showing the film at major theatres.

The film opens with the camera panning across Kane’s deserted estate in Florida called Xanadu. The imagery has a dark, camera focuses on the old man’s mouth as he utters that mysterious word "Rosebud." He then drops the globe, which rolls onto the floor and shatters. You can see the nurse in the reflection of the broken glass as she covers him with a sheet. This entire scene is a major plot point in the film, the meaning of the snow globe and his dying words tie into the rest of the story in a very intricate, underlining manner. I also think it displays the inventive use of lighting ...

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...atly throughout the film; Kane, for example, ages from 25 to 78. Makeup artist Maurice Seiderman invented many techniques to age the characters in the film. Welles had a complete body cast made and used it to create custom-fitting body pads and facial appliances that show Kane aging gradually over 27 different stages of his life. The level of detail is astonishing: Welles wore special milky bloodshot contact lenses to make his eyes look old, and 72 different facial appliances, including hairlines, cheeks, jowls, bags under his eyes, and 16 different chins. Some pieces even had artificial pores that matched those in Welles' own skin.

Many other innovations of technique came from this film, such a technique known as the “wipe” where on image is wiped off the screen by another, as well as other innovations which resulted from Greg Toland’s experimental camera angles.