Atleast critics say that …
1941 movie about life of media guy. Good movie. But why the best ever 
I thought Critics said GODFATHER was best ever.
Maye be !
But it was at 4th place where i read 
Is there more to film than Citizen Kane?
By Kaleem Omar
Fashions change and films come and go, but some films have acquired such an iconic status over the years that they continue to feature on virtually every list of the ten best films of all time. Orson Welles was only 26 when he made Citizen Kane. Yet the 1941 film keeps topping the ten best list in a poll conducted every ten years by the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound Magazine.
The next poll is not due until 2012. But in the 2002 poll, Citizen Kane, to no one’s surprise, topped the list yet again, making that the fourth time in a row and prompting some movie buffs like me to ask whether there isn’t more to film than Citizen Kane.
If Citizen Kane tops the 2012 poll, as it most likely will, I, for one, will be less than overjoyed. It’s not that I don’t think Citizen Kane is a great film; it’s just that I think several other films are better deserving of the top slot.
These days the buzz in some film circles is about the rise of Asian cinema. Growing numbers of Chinese, Iranian and Indian filmmakers are making some excellent films, in a radical departure from the usual propagandist tracts, Kung Fu potboilers and boy-loses-girl tearjerkers they used to make. Even Mongolian filmmakers have now got into the act, with such highly praised films as the recently released Mongolian Dog. Several Asian filmmakers have also made it big in Hollywood. A case in point is M. Night Shyamalan, the Indian-origin director of such Hollywood blockbusters as The Sixth Sense, Signs and The Village (his latest effort).
For the 2002 list, Sight & Sound polled around 250 of the world’s leading film critics and directors to discover their top films, from amongst more than 700 films nominated by them earlier.
The critics’ Top Ten Films were: 1, Citizen Kane (Welles) 1941; 2, Vertigo (Hitchcock) 1958; 3, La Regle du Jeu (Renoir) 1939; The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (Coppola) 1972, 1974; 5, Tokyo Story (Ozu) 1953; 6, 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick) 1968; 7, Sunrise (Murnau) 1927; 8, Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein) 1925; 9, 8-1/2 (Fellini) 1963; and 10, Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly, Donen) 1951.
The directors’ Top Ten Films were 1, Citizen Kane; 2, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II; 3, 8-1/2; 4, Lawrence of Arabia (Lean) 1962; 5, Dr Strangelove (Kubrick) 1963; 6, The Bicycle Thief (De Sica) 1949; 7, Raging Bull (Scorsese) 1980; 8, Vertigo; 9, Rashomon (Kurosawa) 1950; La Regle du Jeu; Seven Samurai (Kurosawa) 1954. (Since three films shared equal ninth place in the directors’ poll, there was no 10th placed film.)
Citizen Kane has topped the Sight & Sound critics’ poll every time the survey has been carried out since 1952, including 1962, 1972, 1982, 1992 and 2002 The directors’ poll was conducted for the first time in 1992. In the 1952 critics’ poll, however, Citizen Kane didn’t even make the list of Top Ten Films, let alone topping it.
The 1952 list was: 1, The Bicycle Thief; 2, City Lights (Chaplin); 3, The Gold Rush (Chaplin); 4, Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein); 5, Intolerance (Griffith); Louisiana Story (Flaherty); 7, Greed (Von Stroheim); Le Jour se leve (Carne); The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer); 10, Brief Encounter (Lean); Le Million (Clair); La Regle du Jeu (Renoir). (Since two films shared equal fifth place, there was no 6th placed film; since three films shared equal seventh place, there were no 8th and 9th placed films.)
The question is: If Citizen Kane didn’t even make it to the 1952 list, why has it been topping every Sight & Sound poll since then, starting with the 1962 poll? Did tastes and standards change so much in the ten years between 1952 and 1962 or what? Or could the reason be, as the late great American poet Ezra Pound once said in a somewhat different context: “I shall, no doubt, have a boom after my funeral, / Seeing as how long standing increases the value of all things / Regardless of quality”?
This, again, is not to take anything away from Citizen Kane. An absorbing account of an American newspaper tycoon’s rise to power (a character modeled on William Randolph Hearst, of the Hearst Newspapers chain), Orson Welles’ debut film still feels as fresh as tomorrow’s headlines. Dazzlingly inventive and technically breathtaking, Citizen Kane reinvented the way stories could be told in the cinema and set a standard that generations of filmmakers have since aspired to.
For my money, however, Casablanca (1942) is a greater film than Welles’ film. Directed by Michael Curtiz, and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Paul Henried, Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet, the film is set in war-time Casablanca and tells the story of a doomed love affair between Bogart, who plays Rick, a cynical, world-weary nightclub owner, and the heartbreakingly beautiful Ingrid Bergman, who, unknown to Rick, turns out to be married to the leader of an anti-Nazi movement played by Henreid.
To paraphrase the words of the song “As Time Goes By” that sets the mood of the film, a kiss may be just a kiss and a sigh just a sigh, but there is only one Casablanca. Some misguided souls tried to remake this classic in 1980 as Casablanco (!), but it wasn’t a patch on the earlier film. As far as I’m concerned, the original feast of romance and World War II intrigue is still the best film ever made. It may not feature in the Sight & Sound critics’ and directors’ polls, but it has regularly topped cinemagoers’ polls, the ultimate yardstick for judging the quality of a film.
Superb performances by the whole cast and the fluid direction of Michael Curtiz combine to make Casablanca not just an all-time classic but perhaps the greatest all-time classic of all. Claude Rains plays the cynical French police chief of Casablanca, who, at the end of the film, delivers the immortal line: “Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.” If that isn’t just about the greatest movie line of all time, I don’t know what is.
In a tribute to Casablanca, American director Bryan Singer gave the phrase “usual suspects” fresh currency by using it as the title for his 1995 blockbuster The Usual Suspects. Written by Christopher McQuarrie, The Usual Suspects is a tale about five villains in New York who are rounded up by the police in an unconventional manner that worries them. After they are released, they get together for a spot of revenge, but someone else is controlling events.
Some admirers of The Usual Suspects argue that the film has got to be one of the greatest in recent history. There’s no denying that the film’s ending is superb and the acting of the highest calibre. Indeed, the film stands out as one of the most memorable, clever and watchable of the 1990s’ decade. I read somewhere that one diehard American fan of The Usual Suspects has seen it over fifty times.
I don’t find that in the least bit surprising, however, because there are some films that I, too, have watched over fifty times, including Casablanca and Howard Hawk’s superb 1959 western Rio Bravo, starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, John Russell, Claude Akins, Bob Steele and the drop-dead gorgeous Angie Dickinson. Sheriff Wayne tries to prevent a killer with connections from escaping from the town jail, with only a drunk Dino, leggie Angie, gimpy Brennan and lockjawed Ricky to help him.
Rio Bravo, a quintessential Hawks western that gradually draws the viewer into the story, was patronised by critics at the time of its release, but is now regarded as an American classic. Like Italian director Franco Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet, each frame of Rio Bravo is lit like a luminous painting that transcends its own medium. It should be studied by all aspiring filmmakers as an example of how to compose their shots. My own list of the ten best films of all time would definitely include Rio Bravo.But to revert to Sight & Sound magazine’s 2002 poll of the ten best films of all time, intriguingly, the magazine’s editor, Nick James, doesn’t have Citizen Kane in his own Top Ten list. Perhaps that’s because of the inevitability of the whole thing. As they say in sports, the league table doesn’t lie and Kane has been at the top of the Sight & Sound polls for over four decades now. To say it isn’t the best, then, is a bit like saying that Australia isn’t the best cricketing nation. I’ll still go with Casablanca, however.