Is Citizen Kane really the greatest movie ever made? I don’t think it is but I’m not sure I could argue against those who claim that it is. It is a remarkable film in all respects and may be the only film I can think of that is critic-proof, meaning that those rating it can try to stand above it, beside it, below it and make their case but Citizen Kane has reached mythical status and nothing anyone says about it is going to knock it out of the top 1 or 2 best movies on the Sight and Sound poll, for example. Like Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai you can pick one aspect of the film – the camerawork, performance, direction, whatever – but any of these aspects are only 1 piece to a greater whole and yet the greatness of the whole transcends the greatness of the parts making any comment about one part of the film seem reductive. It’s a mystical alchemy of great visions, when all the parts just work. Its as if the filmmakers have found the right combination of 10,000 different ingredients, so wholly complex that it cannot be copied, and given us something so unique and grand and visionary that it will forever stand as a milestone where you can see very distinctly what movies were like before Citizen Kane and what they were after Citizen Kane. It shifted the form one way or another rendering most subsequent films de facto children of Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane was a great film for its time, is a great film for our time, and will be a great film for all time!