Citizen Kane

The New York Times posted a nice 4 minute retrospective of the film that many consider to be the best American film of all time, Citizen Kane. This little appreciation highlights the dazzling technical achievements of the film and the acting prowess of its star and director Orson Welles. Is it the greatest American film of all time? Hard to say, Charles Foster Kane is a compelling character, I suppose, but the film makes it difficult to empathize with him until the last moment. This is a film that as the cliche says "repays repeated viewing" not only for its brilliant technical tricks, but for its meditation on what is ultimately knowable about even the most famous person. Rosebud! If we're paying attention, we'll know what Kane's last word means, but the inquiring newsreel reporter never learns. Like a historian he's followed all the sources, looked at his subject from multiple perspectives, and misses the whole point. Yet he gives us a great story.

At least at the end of Citizen Kane, we know the whole story. A little more than a decade later Kurosawa's Rashomon doesn't allow even the viewer to know what really happened.  Told from multiple perspectives this great film often confounds viewers who are used to a linear narrative structure, but like Kane it's true to the historian's quest for "truth." It just concludes that the quest is hopeless.

A. S. Byatt's wonderful novel Possession was brought to the screen in a much less wonderful movie than the two just mentioned. It manages to be one of my favorite films however once I got past the fact that the two stars Aaron Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow don't really click. It's a great story, told in flashback,  of two researchers digging into events of a century before, the best film about historical research ever. The two historians (English lit people actually) seem to succeed spectacularly until once again, we the viewers get to see the whole truth.

Not happy thoughts for someone getting back into writing history.