Top 250 Challenge: 180

Citizen Kane (1941)
Number 21 on IMDb's Top 250

Multimillionaire newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane dies alone in his extravagant mansion, Xanadu, speaking a single word: "Rosebud". In an attempt to figure out the meaning of this word, a reporter tracks down the people who worked and lived with Kane; they tell their stories in a series of flashbacks that reveal much about Kane's life but not enough to unlock the riddle of his dying breath. Hilarity ensues.

borrowed from John FordTrivia: The camera looks up at Charles Foster Kane and his best friend Jedediah Leland and down at weaker characters like Susan Alexander Kane. This was a technique that Orson Welles who had used it two years previously on Stagecoach (1939). Welles privately watched Stagecoach about 40 times while making this film. For the new footage in the opening newsreel to look suitably grainy, editor Robert Wise came up with the idea of physically dragging the footage across a stone floor and running across a cheesecloth filled with sand. These efforts went unappreciated in some quarters: one cinema distributor contacted RKO to complain about the film stock being of inferior quality and demanded a replacement print. One line by Kane, "Don't believe everything you hear on the radio," might be construed as a sly wink from Orson Wells to those who panicked upon hearing his radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds." When asked by friends how Kane's last words would be known when he died alone, Orson Welles reportedly stared for a long time before saying, "Don't you ever tell anyone of this."

This was, by far, the highest rated movie on my yet to see list. I was concerned about watching it because of all the aclaim that the movie has had. You know, stupid things, like what would it say about me if I don't like it? The last Orson Welles movie I watched, I didn't like (See Touch Of Evil). Okay, so back to the film. It was okay. It was novel in that the whole movie is told in flashback by several people whose stories overlap. The cinamatography was beautiful with a lot of reflections used, but the story was just okay, nothing special. So now the highest rated movie I haven't watched is The Manchurian Candidate at 69, which is being personally delivered to me all the way from Italy by my dear sister (she loves me).