citizen kane
My wife is slated to teach a film course at the high school level in the Fall, but had never seen one of the films she must teach, so this afternoon, we both sat down to watch ...  Citizen Kane. I've always appreciated the film for the pillar in film history that it represents, its impressive shots, artfulness, and its narrative structure, but on a very base level of enjoyment, I've never really liked this "greatest film of all time." I'd much prefer to spend my time watching Jaws. As a literature-groomed person, Citizen Kane reads more like a book than a film with me, and that's not just a response to its length.

 
I like Jerry's probing presence as a man mostly in the shadows, playing with and trying to put together the jigsaw puzzle that is Kane's life. I like the hard focus from here to infinity. The scale is impressive. I even like large sections of the story-line and the dialogue. But then there are all the odd bits of stock footage at the beginning of the film. Strange appearances like the clearly fake octopus in the newsreel section and the cockatoo who shrieks in the cross-fade at the beginning of the scene when Susan leaves Kane and he destroys her room. These odd bits usually wouldn't be enough to turn me off of a film, yet I don't tend to enjoy Citizen Kane as a whole, despite helping to teach it in a college classroom in the past, and usually being quick to argue that it is one of the best movies of all time. Personal taste differs from appreciation of art, afterall.

Because of my stance on the movie, I was surprised that Kristin, my wife, liked the movie so much watching it on DVD this afternoon. I've tried to make her watch other, lesser films in the past that I consider very artful important films, and she's often become bored and uninterested with the films early on, as her tastes lean towards movies like The Goonies, or anything starring Kurt Russell. But, she liked Citizen Kane, despite a few complaints about it being too long. Several of the shots impressed her. She liked it when Susan is crouched on the floor and Kane's shadow engulfs her as he towers over her telling her exactly what she'll do with her music career. By the end, when we, the audience, discover the mystery that eluded Jerry despite all his probing questions, when the identity of Rosebud is revealed, she turned to me and commented: "I like movies that if they have a question, they answer it.... I can't believe you don't like it. I think it is a really good movie." I guess it really is.