This was my first time seeing Citizen Kane, and to be honest I probably never would have seen it if it wasn't for this class, despite knowing it's considered the "best movie of all time". I think I have a prejudice against old movies, and automatically think that since they're so old they will have nothing to offer to today's society, or were poorly made because of lack of technology, or just really weren't innovative or developed in any way. Also, a lot of the time I feel like acting back in the day was completely one dimensional-- every single male played the exact same part the exact same way (all the action in the movie happens to him, he has a deep manly voice and dresses nicely and smokes a cigar) and the same goes for females in that time (the 'damsel in distress' type, always beautiful with a sing-songy voice).
Despite all of this, I was able to watch Citizen Kane in class and pay much more attention and get more out of it than I ever would watching it on my own. What really caught my interest had a lot to do with the things we talked about in class-- camera and filming choices and their motivations; I realized that these filmmakers made a lot more artistic and visual choices than most filmmakers do these days. They weren't just capturing scenes but capturing them in a way that gave layers of meaning.
One visual trick I noticed that we didn't cover in class is probably a more obvious one-- filming through fences. This was a shot that both opened and closed the movie. The entire point of a fence is to separate people and block others out-- these shots emphasized the viewers detachment from Kane, and really everyone in the film's detachment from him too. Like the Cardullo article said, because we are looking at Kane's life once it has already ended it, we can only see him through the biased, warped memories of acquaintances-- we never truly get to know him. Closing the movie with the same scene that opened it shows that we are no closer to truly understanding Kane at the end than we were in those first few seconds. There is another scene in the movie where Kane is filmed through fence spokes as well-- a shot where we view Kane old and alone before his death at Xanadu, and are told by narration that in his last years of life Kane was never photographed nor visited-- seeing him through a fence just highlights his total isolation at this time.
Overall I think experiencing Citizen Kane somewhat broadened my opinions of old movies. A movie isn't just about constant entertainment, but also about digging into the visual and dramatic choices to understand more than what is just presented openly. This isn't to say I'm going to run out and rent more older movies, but perhaps I didn't give some of them credit they deserve.
