By The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to one of the alleged “greatest movies of all time”…Orson Welles’ 1941 “masterpiece” Citizen Kane.
“It’s a sled? A child’s sled? Are you kidding me? I sat through two hours of that tedious drivel and it’s a goddamn sled?”
Those were pretty much my sentiments after watching Citizen Kane, the film credited with starting a new chapter in American cinema. Orson Welles’ 1941 “masterpiece” is one of those films that everyone is supposed to like, but very few actually do…and it’s easy to see why. It doesn’t surprise me that pseudo-intellectual critics claim it to be the best film ever made. What are they going to say? Caddyshack? This is a prime example of how a film’s reputation can snowball over the years until it is remembered much more fondly than it deserves to be.
Publishing magnate Charles Foster Kane (played by Orson Welles himself) reflects on his life from his death bed, and utters that singularly iconic word, “Rosebud”, leading to a search to find out who or what this “Rosebud” actually is, and of what significance it is to this successful yet lonely old man. I’m not entirely sure what would have satisfied me at the end, but in my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have picked a sled. Some would call it clever, but it’s just a let down. It’s like Kevin Spacey revealing at the end of The Usual Suspects that Keyser Soze was in fact a Hills Hoist!
The thoroughly unsatisfying ending not withstanding, Citizen Kane is just plain dull. It has none of the suspense of The Stranger, none of the wit of The Third Man, and none of the action of, I dunno, Macbeth. My main bone of contention with this rubbish, however, is that it claims the crown as being one of the first major films to have a non-linear narrative; in other words, it goes back and forth on its timeline and tells the story all out of whack. While this was groundbreaking at the time – and when it works, it can be brilliant (see Annie Hall and The Godfather Part II) – it is now an entirely overused tool, and often to a film’s detriment.
Citizen Kane’s pompous supporters will treat you with condescending scorn if you criticise it, but the truth of the matter is that this film belongs on the bonfire…with Rosebud the sled. A sled. I still can’t believe it was a sled!
The Butcher will return…stay tuned!
