Maurice Greene, the American sprinter who ruled supreme at the start of the century, has a large tattoo on his right forearm. Unfortunately for Mo, this piece of body art becomes ever more ridiculous. It reads ‘GOAT’: Greatest of All Time. Even before Usain Bolt it was quite ridiculous; pace Jesse Owens, pace Bob Hayes. In truth, there are few fields in which a GOAT can be sensibly agreed, however appealing the concept is in abstract.

In cinema, Citizen Kane is the GOAT, inked into that position by half a century of critical polls. Certainly it was hugely innovative, and has proved hugely influential, if these are the marks of greatness. For the uninitiated: it’s the story of press baron Charles Foster Kane, told through the eyes of a reporter seeking to understand Kane’s dying word, ‘Rosebud’.

Sprinting again: you’re unlikely to have heard of Bob Hayes but you’ve surely heard of Jesse Owens. That’s because Hayes ran really fast and Owens defeated Hitler. Owens has a narrative. So does Citizen Kane. It’s Orson Welles, just 25, realising an artistic vision before his difficult reputation saw him denied such latitude again. It’s the attempts of William Randolph Hearst, on whom Kane was based, to have the film destroyed, or at least discredited. Heck, it’s the whisper that the elusive ‘Rosebud’ was Hearst’s pet name for his mistress Marion Davies’ clitoris.

Forget that. Is Kane, as an actual piece of cinema, the greatest? It’s greatly cinematic – even obnoxiously so. Dan Mecca has called it “the best 2-hour lesson in filmmaking money can buy,” with “Welles employing nearly every kind of visual technique... from fade-outs to noir-lighting to time lapse to deep focus.” This was meant as praise. It’s why Kane is so revered by filmmakers and cinéastes but also why it left the public cold in 1941. The public doesn’t want technical brilliance; it wants emotion.

Indeed, Citizen Kane is not so much the best directed film ever as the most directed. Welles’ fingerprints, strewn through the reels, make it impossible to forget you are watching a film. Direction should augment the story but Welles gives the impression that the story is a mere springboard for his technical gymnastics. The pity is that it’s a good story.

Director Peter Bogdanovich has written of Kane: “there’s an extraordinary feeling...of everything being possible.” It’s only a feeling though, a feeling sparked by Welles’ refusal to accept the limitations of cinema. He tried to emulate the Great American Novel in two hours, to say something about everything. He fails to say anything about anything, save Charles Foster Kane. And Charles Foster Kane is utterly unknowable, perhaps deliberately, certainly infuriatingly. You could say the same of Daniel Plainview, protagonist of There Will Be Blood, another film which projects grandiose importance, and another which deserves the cryptic epithet Pauline Kael ascribed Kane: “shallow masterpiece.”

Welles’ over-ambition is divisive: to some such vision is a prerequisite of greatness; to others, a prelude to failure. And Kane is flawed. There are no likeable characters, too much is revealed at the start, and its finale becomes less clever each time you consider it. More modest classics like Sunset Boulevard or To Be or Not To Be may not proclaim their greatness but they are virtually flawless.

So then. Citizen Kane. Good? Unquestionably so. Great? Self-consciously so. The Best? Unquestionably not. You have to see it though; it’s the GOAT.

 

Citizen Kane is showing at the Arts Picturehouse from November 27-30th.