You really need to take a film history class to understand what sets "Citizen Kane" apart from other films. Orson Welles reconfigured the entire way that movies in America were shot and constructed. For an American audience, "Citizen Kane" was an entirely new experience, apart from the storyline itself. It is said that Welles used every prop that RKO had in its inventory in that film ... and he worked some very subliminal imagery into it as well ... like when footage of pterodactyls from "King Kong" were used in the background as birds of prey in the wealthy luau scene.
I'm also always very sensitive to any attack on "Citizen Kane" because of its politics. If there was philosophically ever an original 99%er it was Orson Welles. With "Citizen Kane" he went after the wealthiest and most influential Media Baron in the United States ... William Randolph Hearst, the man credited with starting the Spanish American War, with his saber rattling yellow journalism. Not even Rupert Murdoch had the influence of William Randolph Hearst, and when Welles crossed him it was a huge deal. Hearst wanted Welles destroyed, and his followup film ... "The Magnificent Ambersons" ... was yet another merciless attack on the 1%. In the case of Ambersons, the film was sabotaged by the studio, with the help of Robert Wise, while Welles was in Brazil filming a documentary for the US Government.
"Citizen Kane" is a brave and brilliant film.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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