Citizen Kane (1941)

<p>For decades critics said Orson Welles’s <em>Citizen Kane</em> was the greatest film ever made. Unfortunately, that intimidating label sometimes keeps people from sitting down and watching the thing. It needn’t be so. <em>Kane</em> is eminently watchable and entertaining. It also definitely isn’t the greatest film of all time, but it’s one of the most technically impressive, especially considering it was directed, produced, co-written and starred in by a 25-year-old who’d never made a movie before.</p> <p>The titular Charles Foster Kane is a character very recognizable to Americans, the larger-than-life business mogul-turned-celebrity who dabbles in politics. Many details of Kane’s private life are known to the general public, but the film tells us that there’s more to a person than what’s said in the newspapers – perhaps especially when that person was himself a newspaperman who took pride in controlling public perception.</p> <p><em>Kane</em>’s complicated, puzzle-like story structure suggests that fully boring down into the mystery of a man’s life may be impossible, but also makes us feel that the effort to get beneath the façade is worthwhile.</p> <p><em>Citizen Kane</em> was included on the Vatican’s 1995 list of important films under the category of Art.</p>