Watching a Classic

My day was rather uneventful, but it gave me the opportunity to catch up on a couple of my Netflix selections.

I watched "Citizen Kane" for the first time today and was very impressed. If you were to watch it without thinking of it in it's historical perspective, you might just miss the technical significance of the film. The story is interesting and engaging, but the storytelling is probably what puts this film on the top of critics "greatest film of all time" lists.

Watching this film, you might think, "How is this really that different from anything else that I have already seen?" But you have to remember that this film was made in 1941. Not unlike George Lucas with "Star Wars" more than thirty years later, Orson Welles and his crew had to create new techniques of filming and special effects in order to achieve the vision in Welles' head. Some of the shots were so masterfully choreographed, it often made me wonder how long production of this film took.

On top of that, the out-of-sequence story is something that we are all very familiar with today, but it was fairly uncharted territory in the early days of film. Many of the same devices used in movies today can be seen in this classic work. It is no wonder that many people regard Orson Welles as a genius with "Citizen Kane" as his crowning achievement.