What is the greatest film of all time? While we’ll never have a single consensus pick, over the decades, the default answer has become Citizen Kane. The film has a reputation that’s as oversized as that of its main character, its iconic status overshadowing just how solid this classic truly is. Orson Welles directed the film when he was 26 years old, and with his youth came innovation. As the movie follows Charles Foster Kane (based on newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and played by Welles), we come to see how this hardworking American businessman died such a lonely old man, with his mysterious last word haunting the entire narrative. Along the way, Welles uses everything in his cinematic tool kit, from placing the camera below the floor to get the shots he wants, to elongating a table to symbolize a crumbling marriage, to providing one of the earliest uses of a jump scare to keep audiences engaged. It’s one of those films you watch and instantly understand why its legacy still holds today. You can see it for yourself at Regal locations, where it will be celebrating its 85th anniversary.
July 5 & 8 at local Regal theaters
