FT Top 100 Films 100: CITIZEN KANE
See. That’s how different this list is. Perhaps the nominee thought we were doing the list in a different order. Perhaps, as first picker they had not realised exactly how different this list could be. Maybe they were dazzled by the canon. Whatever. The Sight & Sound number one comes in at 100.
And you know. Its not a bad film. If nothing else it is nice to see Orson Welles before he went to fat. It is nice to see him before the can’t do attitude of the Hollywood machine spat him out. And in the end Citizen Kane is probably the best film about a sledge ever written. (Yes, yes Cool Runnings is good, but that is a Bobsleigh.)
The suggestion that Citizen Kane invented moden cinema is a much harder pill to swallow. Yes it is zingy, and carries its newsreel trappings beyond the pastiche intro. But it can still feel stagey in places, and from the tracking shots to the deep focus shots you can find an antecedent. The myth is probably bigger than the movie, which is apt for a film about a man whose myth is bigger than he is. Though admittedly not as big as he will get when he sinks into pie eating depression after the Magnificent Ambersons gets butchered. 100 seems about right for a film which at the end of the day is about a man who gave his sledge a name. Think ‘pon it – did your bike have a name?