Citizen Kane (1941)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1941
	Director: Orson Welles (The Stranger, Touch of Evil)
	Actors: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten and Dorothy Comingore
	Country: USA
	Genre: Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 28.10.2012, Blu-ray (70th anniversary edition), Home cinema
Synopsis: Charles Foster Kane (Welles) has just died. While journalists investigate on the meaning of his last word "Rosebud", we learn all about the life of this multi-millionnaire newspaper editor.
Review: Considered by many as the best movie of all times, it has been recently supplanted by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. It is the first time I was watching it, and it was worth waiting for this impeccable edition. I can see what people find in it, like they do in Casablanca, and I understand why they ar both classics. But my attraction to this movie stops there. I can agree that the movie is technically perfect and extremely interesting. The director plays with shadows and often places the speaking character partially (the face) of fully in the dark. Most impressive is the way the story continuously goes back and forth in time without the viewer ever being lost, and this without the use of tricks like writing the date. Interesting also is the main character that we learn to know as the movie goes. The quest for a meaning to his last word is edited in parallel to his quest for a meaning to his life and for love, until the last image of the film which is thought-provoking and I am sure contributes a lot to the reputation of the film. Unfortunately I already knew the twist, as I had seen it revealed in ... an episode of the Columbo TV-series entitled How to dial a murder (1978)! My theory is that the movie conveys a lot of values that are dear to the Americans, so that a European audience is less touched. By the way the movie was supposed to be entitled "The American", and the main character keeps on saying that he is American before anything else, and that he loves his country. I could make the same critic to the epic western The Searchers, which is also considered as one of the best movies ever... by an american audience with no doubt.
Rating: 7 /10