Why Steven Spielberg Thinks ‘Citizen Kane’ Is the Boldest Movie Ever Made
Orson Welles’ cult classics is everything to the world of cinema — and to Steven Spielberg as well.
It might be hard to find someone who isn’t familiar with at least one of Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster movies, which is also a reason to think he can easily be some aspiring filmmaker’s biggest inspiration right now.
However, it wasn’t an instant success for Spielberg either, so he definitely knows what it’s like to go through tens of rejections just to make some unknown director’s first movie be seen.
That’s probably why Spielberg doesn’t hide his admiration when it comes to Orson Welles and his 1941 hit drama movie which could have never seen a light – had it not been for the latter’s perseverance.
Steven Spielberg Says ‘Citizen Kane’ Is an “Icon of Courage”
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Everyone knows how much of an impact Welles’ Citizen Kane had on the global movie industry, but not everyone is aware of all the hardships the movie had to go through just to be released properly.
An unknown filmmaker at the time, Welles was brutally pushed back by many big studios’ execs just because he allegedly had no special knowledge about moviemaking; however, Citizen Kane still came through.
“It means everything to me, Citizen Kane is, if not the icon, an icon of courage. I’m talking about the courage of the filmmaker. The audacity. It’s about courage and audacity”, Spielberg revealed in an interview with AFI earlier, also adding that he sticks to Welles’ manner of doing it all his own way rather than seeking to copy someone else.
Orson Welles Was Sure ‘Citizen Kane’ Owes Success to His Ignorance
- On Rotten Tomatoes, Citizen Kane has scores of 99% and 90% from critics and audiences
- On IMDb, the movie is rated 8.3/10
Despite not boasting of a proper education or special skills, Welles had a vivid mind instead, carrying out multiple filming experiments just to see whether this would work or not.
At some point, however, those experiments led him to making several best movies of all time.
“I didn’t know what you couldn’t do. I didn’t deliberately set out to invent anything. It just seemed to me, why not? And there is a great gift that ignorance has to bring to anything. That was the gift I brought to Kane, ignorance”, Welles once said himself.
The director then got some support from Roger Ebert who called Citizen Kane “one of the miracles of cinema” that was created by a bunch of non-professionals at the time.
