Citizen Kane (1941)
Directed by Orson Welles
Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.
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What critics compared Citizen Kane to
We're variously reminded of Greed, Citizen Kane, Days of Heaven, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and even Werner Herzog's oil-fire documentary, Lessons of Darkness — all better movies on similar themes.
Then again, Day-Lewis' oversized turn is right in line with Paul Thomas Anderson's oversized ambitions in creating a modern-day masterpiece, a movie so audacious that it flagrantly apes Citizen Kane during its final half-hour and recalls The Treasure of the Sierra Madre at regular intervals.
He references other films--CHINATOWN and CITIZEN KANE most notably--yet this too is a way of showing the timelessness of the examined themes.
Altman’s contributions to modern filmmaking, especially of the American independent type, are so vast and so liberating that it would be almost as limiting for a serious young American director to try to avoid them as it would have been for a silent filmmaker to work without reference to D. W. Griffith or a studio director of the ’40s and ’50s to avoid referencing Citizen Kane.
It evokes passing comparisons to everything from "Giant" to "Citizen Kane" but it's impossible to pigeonhole.
Plainview's only goal in life is to become enormously wealthy, and he does so, reminding me of " Citizen Kane " and Mr. Bernstein's observation, "It's easy to make a lot of money, if that's all you want to do is make a lot of money."
Hoffman's portrayal of a man with iconic aspirations, in love with the sound of his own voice as he drops pearls of wisdom, recalls Ernest Hemingway, or Orson Welles in "Citizen Kane."
While Dodd is clearly modeled on L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, The Master is not particularly interesting as a veiled depiction of that much-disputed quasi-religious movement (much as Citizen Kane does not derive its primary powers from its parallels with media baron William Randolph Hearst).
Like “Citizen Kane,” “The Master” invites frame-by-frame analysis.
There are certainly passages of the sort of “Citizen Kane” ambition you expect from Anderson here, not least in the memorable leading performances by Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix and the magnificent wide-screen cinematography of Mihai Malaimare Jr., a new collaborator for Anderson.
Interested in neither satire nor Citizen Kane-esque excoriation of a public figure, the picture seeks instead to present belief systems and seekers of truth as ridiculous before the sharpness of knowledge gained through experience.
On paper, there's a lot that could by said by this scenario - on paper, the film is saying it - it could explore the psychic dislocation of the American male in the years after World War II; it could study the sociology behind the self-help movements that began around that time, partially in response to that same dislocation; it could be a critical but not condemnatory look at the founding of the disproportionately influential cult of Scientology that sort of forms the inspiration for The Cause (The Master is "about" Scientology to roughly the same extent that Citizen Kane is "about" William Randolph Hearst); it could examine the appeal of pseudoscientific philosophy in the middle of what was meant to be the most rational century of human history.
But there are plenty of other tributes – the iconic opening was inspired by a Scrooge McDuck comic (seriously), the final shot loudly echoes the closing scene of Citizen Kane, and the most beloved single moment (in which an exhausted Indy simply pulls out his gun and shoots an extravagant swordsman) could’ve sat snugly in a Hope and Crosby Road picture.
It is the apotheosis of its genre, the Citizen Kane of pulp action–adventure, definitively summing up all that came before and setting the indelible standard for all that comes after.
Note Spielberg's homage in the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark as the Ark is loaded into a warehouse—a parallel to the final scenes of Welles' masterpiece.
Up’s visual scope is its own constant marvel, giving us generous helpings of imaginative wonder sprinkled with familiar bits of the pop-culture past (the opening newsreel is reminiscent of Citizen Kane, and Paradise Falls’ odd formation is taken almost directly from the 1925 silent version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World).
Look beyond the breathtakingly beautiful 3D animation and you’ll find everything from clever homages to “Citizen Kane” and “The Wizard of Oz” to characters so richly rendered they seep into your soul.
Written and directed by Pete Docter (who co-wrote WALL•E) and Bob Peterson (with some writing assistance from Tom McCarthy of The Station Agent), Up also boasts a tour-de-force opening, evoking Citizen Kane, King Kong, and The Wizard of Oz in its first five minutes alone.
Up begins in a movie theatre with newsreel footage (shades of Citizen Kane) of the fictional explorer Charles Muntz (Plummer), whose heralded career is sullied when his findings are questioned and he heads back to South America, never to be heard from again.
A series of colorful vignettes on love, fidelity, and adventure, Up is emotionally and aesthetically hieratic, conflating from its very first, Citizen Kane -referencing sequence—in which a young Carl Fredrickson (voiced by Edward Asner), eyes agog, watches a black-and-white newsreel celebrating the rise and fall of famed explorer and personal hero Charles Muntz—the act of watching movies with the ecstasies and banalities of living.
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Other references include " Citizen Kane " (the Hulk tears apart a laboratory) and " The Right Stuff " (a jet airplane flies so high the stars are visible).
Still, there is a vocal contingent that believes that Joseph L. Mankiewicz, despite all of his achievements, stands in the shadow of his older brother, Herman J. Mankiewicz, the screenwriter who collaborated with Orson Welles on Citizen Kane.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz and his brother Herman (co-author of "Citizen Kane") were responsible for many of the finest scripts ever produced.
Mankiewicz (1909-1993) came from a family of writers; his brother Herman wrote " Citizen Kane ."
According to some cinematic lore, Mankiewicz was competing with his brother Herman who wrote Citizen Kane, another narrative about grand dreams and great failures, and All About Eve was a response to this.
Many critics have noted that the only aspect of All About Eve that prevents it from being mentioned in the same breath as Citizen Kane and Sunset Boulevard is the pedestrian nature of its visuals.
Inspired at times by movie classics, modern and otherwise – Dark City and Minority Report , but also Metropolis , Citizen Kane and the best 007 adventures – it earns its place in the same conversation, a tribute to Nolan’s ingenuity.
Like Nolan, the dreamweavers work from their movie memories (the center of Fischer Jr.’s labyrinth is the intersection of Citizen Kane and 2001) and narrative formula.
Hot Fuzz, Wright and Pegg's loving send-up of action comedies, suggests that its makers got more out of Bad Boys II and Point Break —two of its tongue-in-cheek touchstones—than most filmmakers get out of Citizen Kane and The Grand Illusion.
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In "Ed Wood," the aspiring filmmaker considers himself an undiscovered Orson Welles, bemoaning the fact that Welles made "Citizen Kane" at 26 while he has hit 30 and achieved nothing of note.
I think Ed Wood would make a great double feature with Citizen Kane, the sad, fascinating lives of two men vying for greatness and almost achieving it.
This man actually called Plan 9 “my Citizen Kane,” idolized Orson Welles to no end, and put 100% of his blood and guts into the cinematic world.
"Breathless" is, along with Orson Welles 's " Citizen Kane ," the movie that has most influenced other movie- makers.
No debut film since " Citizen Kane " in 1942 has been as influential.
No debut film since Citizen Kane has been as influential."
The subject of rapturous praise, often hailed as the greatest debut film since "Citizen Kane," it continues to lure us back, tempting us to disentangle the movie from the myth.