1. Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)Is there a worse thing you can do to a movie than declare it the best movie ever made? Yeah, I suppose I can think of a few things (burning all existing copies, for instance, or crayoning all over the negatives), but really, once any sort of consensus builds up around a work of art that it's the best of its medium, it's doomed to an eternity of "Yeah, it was good and all, but the best ever?" Such is the case with ol' Citizen Kane, which has topped not only this list (and the original '98 list) but also the Sight and Sound & Sound critics polls for decades (until Vertigo took the prize in 2012—watch out, Hitchcock! Here come the inflated expectations!). The effect is paradoxically that people become so concerned with how Citizen Kane is or is not the best movie ever that the fact that it's a really flipping good movie sort of gets lost in the shuffle. Which is a shame, because it really is a flipping good movie, regardless of whether it's the greatest ever or not. There are many, many great things to single out in the movie (and gallons of ink has already been spilled doing so), but one thing I've always enjoyed about Citizen Kane is how deftly it privileges both its technical and human aspects. A whole lot has been said about what a technical masterpiece the film is, and you won't hear me disagreeing; it's incredible that cinematic techniques the film basically invented in '41 still feel cutting edge seventy-three years later. Just take a gander at that opening sequence and marvel at how fresh everything feels. But all technical mastery would be just whizz-bang showmanship if it weren't for the intensely tragic story of the eponymous Charles Foster Kane, in the same way that that story would feel ham-fisted and moralizing if it weren't for the beautiful technicalities of the film's craft. Put together, though, the narrative and cinematic complexity form a film of real philosophical, aesthetic, and humanist depth. That's something I think is pretty rare in cinema, so let's cherish it, regardless of its status in the film canon.
Here's something that I've always been a little bit surprised at: a whole lot of people like The Godfather. And by a whole lot of people, I don't just mean that a lot of movie buffs and critics like it (something that's true about many, if not all, of the films on the AFI list). What I'm talking about is that The Godfather is one of the highest grossing movies of all time in North America (#23, if you can believe this Wikipedia article). That's more ticket sales than The Avengers. More than any Pixar movie. More than any of the Lord of the Rings films. It even sold more tickets than most of the Star Wars movies! That's some serious cultural cachet, folks. None of that would surprise me if The Godfather were a movie as accessible and friendly as, say, Finding Nemo or Star Wars. But Finding Nemo The Godfather ain't. It's a distinctly prickly movie with a dense plot built on the subtext of coded conversations and camera angles, a movie with a slow, methodical pacing to even the most explosive events. That's not to say that I don't like The Godfather (I think it's fantastic), but slow, dark, subtle movies with lots of ambition and little exposition don't usually end up appealing to more people than the latest Marvel film. I know that the early '70s were a different time for the movie industry than, well, most other times; I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around that, though. I guess that's just me being cynical about the movie-going public, and I'm sorry if this whole rant is coming off as a little arrogant (as if I'm somehow better than people who see fewer movies than I do!). But still... it's surprising. And that's all I'll say about that, I suppose.
You know, it's harder than you might think to say something interesting about some of the most beloved, analyzed movies ever, which is why I've spent a good portion of the last two entries talking about the cultures surrounding the films rather than the contents of the films themselves. But I can't shirk that task forever, and after all, isn't talking about movies the whole point of this project? So, here's something I really admire about Casablanca: its economy. I'm sure it's been said before, but I find it remarkable how huge this film feels despite that its runtime doesn't even clock two hours and its action is mostly relegated to a single location. Part of that, I'm sure, is the historical context of the plot (and, for that matter, the movie's production in general), which plops the characters right down in the middle of World War II, and how do you make anything to do with Nazis feel anything less than epic? However, I think the bulk of the credit has to go to what is probably the film's greatest strength: the screenplay. I know there's nothing revolutionary in praising it, but seriously, Casablanca earns the heck out of that praise. The screenplay—which is one of the all-time great English-language screenplays (if not the all-time great) in the history of the medium—does such a wonderful job of imbuing every bit of dialogue with an immense sense of history that each moment of the movie's final act feels like it's predicated by years of narrative rather than just the preceding eighty-ish minutes. There's a reason why the lines from this movie stick in people's minds; "Play it, Sam" (I'll admit I almost added "again"), "Here's looking at you, kid," "We'll always have Paris," et al.—those bits of dialogue have the feel of a larger life lived behind them, the sort of shorthand that couples develop after being intimate, showing so much about Rick and Ilsa by saying so little. It's storytelling economy at its best. And living in 2014, when at least half of the movies that come out seem half an hour too long, I find that economy refreshing and exhilarating.
That's all for now. Be sure to let me know what you think. Obviously, I believe all three of these movies are stone-cold classics, but I'm sure some of you out there disagree. Or maybe you just want to add something to what I've said. Either way, I wanna hear about it! I've said it before, but one of the valuable things about lists like these is the discussion they encourage. So, discuss.
Three movies down, ninety-seven to go! Until next time.
Update: Read #4-6 in the series here.
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