Citizen Kane Quotes

The book is almost always better than the movie. You could have no better case in point than FROM HELL, Alan Moore's best graphic novel to date, brilliantly illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It's hard to describe just how much better the book is. It's like, "If the movie was an episode of Battlestar Galactica with a guest appearance by the Smurfs and everyone spoke Dutch, the graphic novel is Citizen Kane with added sex scenes and music by your favourite ten bands and everyone in the world you ever hated dies at the end." That's how much better it is.

You're beautful. Yes you are, you're very very beautiful. Extremely beautiful.

Some details in life may look insignificant but appear to be vital leitmotifs in a person's life. They may have the value of "Rosebuds" of Citizen Kane or "Madeleine cookies" of Marcel Proust or "Strawberry fields" of the Beatles. People regularly walk down the memory lane of their early youth. The paper boats of their childhood are recurrently floating on the waves of their mind and bring back the mood and the spirit of the early days. They enable us to retreat from the trivial, daily worries and can generate delightful bliss and true joy in a sometimes frantic and chaotic life. ("Paper boats forever" )

Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go 15 rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time. Go on, try it. “The Magic Flute” v. Middlemarch? Middlemarch in six. “The Last Supper” v. Crime and Punishment? Fyodor on points. See? I mean, I don’t know how scientific this is, but it feels like the novels are walking it. You might get the occasional exception -– “Blonde on Blonde” might mash up The Old Curiosity Shop, say, and I wouldn’t give much for Pale Fire’s chance against Citizen Kane. And every now and again you'd get a shock, because that happens in sport, so Back to the Future III might land a lucky punch on Rabbit, Run; but I'm still backing literature 29 times out of 30.

I don't think any word can explain a man's life.

A toast, Jedediah, to love on my terms. Those are the only terms anybody ever knows - his own.

You think you know it, but you always find out new stuff.

Graham is late for school because I had him stay up late to watch Citizen Kane.

Director Steven Spielberg bought the only remaining Rosebud sled from Citizen Kane (1941) for $55,000 at auction at Sotheby’s. He called the sled ‘a symbolic emblem of quality in the film business’.

Janna knew - Rikki knew — and I knew, too — that becoming Dr Cameron West wouldn't make me feel a damn bit better about myself than I did about being Citizen West. Citizen West, Citizen Kane, Sugar Ray Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Robinson miso, miso soup, black bean soup, black sticky soup, black sticky me. Yeah. Inside I was still a fetid and festering corpse covered in sticky blackness, still mired in putrid shame and scorching self-hatred. I could write an 86-page essay comparing the features of Borderline Personality Disorder with those of Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I barely knew what day it was, or even what month, never knew where the car was parked when Dusty would come out of the grocery store, couldn't look in the mirror for fear of what—or whom—I'd see. ~ Dr Cameron West describes living with DID whilst studying to be a psychologist.

Not long before, I had stayed up late with my mother and watched Citizen Kane, and I was very taken with the idea that a person might notice in passing some bewitching stranger and remember her for the rest of his life. Someday I too might be like the old man in the movie, leaning back in my chair with a far-off look in my eyes, and saying: "You know, that was sixty years ago, and I never saw that girl with the red hair again, but you know what? Not a month has gone by in all that time when I haven't thought of her.

Citizen Kane is widely considered the best film ever made.

Citizen Kane still tops most lists as the best film ever made.

Citizen Kane is to cinema what James Joyce’s Ulysses is to literature.

Without the witty, potent dialogue and the puzzling shape of the story, the movie would have been merely an American version of the kind of brooding, shadow-filled, Ufa-style expressionist stuff that Joe had grown up watching in Prague. Without the brooding shadows and cold adventurings of the camera, without the theatrical lighting and queasy angles, it would have been merely a clever movie about a rich bastard. It was much, much more, than any movie really needed to be. In this one crucial regard--its inextricable braiding of image and narrative--Citizen Kane was like a comic book.

Remember the start of 2001: A Space Odyssey? Bunch of monkeys collecting bones. What‘s that got to do with space? They don‘t even have lasers! Cut that shit. And what about Citizen Kane? If they‘d wanted to gross some dollar, they should‘ve called it Dude, Where‘s My Sled?

During his time at VGIK, Tarkovsky and his fellow students studied all aspects of filmmaking, watching the classics of Soviet cinema and taking part in workshops in which they would demonstrate their technical ability. This even included acting; Tarkovsky’s fellow student and friend, Alexander Gordon, remembers him giving a superb performance as the aging Prince Bolkonsky when Romm got the students to perform scenes from War and Peace during their third year at VGIK. Tarkovsky saw many classics from outside the Soviet Union, including Citizen Kane, the films of John Ford and William Wyler, and the works of the fathers of the French New Wave, Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo. Tarkovsky developed a personal pantheon that included Bergman, Bunuel, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa, Fellini and Antonioni. The only Soviet director who made it into his pantheon was Dovzhenko, although he was good friends with the Georgian director Sergei Parajanov, whom he regarded as ‘a genius in everything’. He also spoke highly of Iosseliani, and, on occasion, of Boris Barnet. But above them all was the towering figure of Robert Bresson, whom Tarkovsky regarded as the ultimate film artist.

Marlon showed me generosity, too, but I don't think he saved it all for me, because he shared it with the audience. It's what made his performance so memorable and so endearing. We all fantasize about having someone like Don Vito we can turn to. So many people are abused in this life, but if you've got a Godfather, you've got someone you can go to, and they will take care of it. That's why people responded to him in the film. It was more than just the bravado and the boldness; it was the humanity underneath it. That's why he had to play Vito larger than life- his physical size, the shoe polish in his hair, the cotton in his cheeks. His Godfather had to be an icon, and Brando made him as iconic as Citizen Kane or Superman, Julius Caesar or George Washington. p124

It was time for me to go that Thursday night. We’d just watched Citizen Kane--a throwback to my Cinema 190 class at USC--and it was late. And though a soft, cozy bed in one of the guest rooms sounded much more appealing than driving all the way home, I’d never really wanted to get into the habit of sleeping over at Marlboro Man’s house. It was the Pretend-I’m-a-Proper-Country-Club-Girl in me, mixed with a healthy dose of fear that Marlboro Man’s mother or grandmother would drop by early in the morning to bring Marlboro Man some warm muffins or some such thing and see my car parked in the driveway. Or even worse, come inside the house, and then I’d have to wrestle with whether or not to volunteer that “I slept in a guest room! I slept in a guest room!”, which only would have made me look more guilty. Who needs that? I’d told myself, and vowed never to put myself in that predicament.

Hello,” he said. “Who is this? . . . Who? You’re breaking up a bit there, pal. I can barely hear you . . . You’re the president of what? . . . Of the Citizen Kane fan club? Well, how about that? . . . You want to what? Sorry, the connection is still bad. You’re breaking up . . . You wish I’d just drop by already? Is that what you said? Well, thank you! That’s awfully nice of you. I will certainly do so as soon as my schedule permits. Unfortunately, I’m kinda busy at the moment, hoss . . . Ah, I can hear you much better now! . . . Eh, you’re not the president of the Citizen Kane fan club? You’re the president of the Citizen Kane is the Worst Movie of All Time fan club? . . . And you don’t wish I’d just drop by already, you wish I’d just die already? . . . Well, fuck you too, mang! I hope you and your whole fucking family get cancer and AIDS and leprosy and anthrax and catch on fire and die! Call this number again, asshole, and I’ll come whoop your ass myself!

When asked if he had a special feeling for books, critic-turned-filmmaker Francois Truffaut answered, "No. I love them and films equally, but how I love them!" As an example, Truffaut gave the example that his feeling of love for "Citizen Kane" (USA, 1941) "is expressed in that scene in 'The 400 Blows' where Antoine lights a candle before the picture of Balzac.' My book lights candles for m any of the great authors of this world: Chinua Achebe (Nigeria), Angela Carter (UK), Saratchandra Chattopadhyay (India), Janet Frame (New Zealand), Yu Hua (China), Stieg Larsson (Sweden), Clarice Lispector (Brazil), Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), Naguib Mifouz (Egypt), Murasaki Shikibu (Japan), and Alice Walker (USA) - to name but a few. Furthermore, graphic novels, manga, musicals, television, webisodes and even amusement park rides like 'Pirates of the Caribbean' can inspire work in adaptation. Let's be open to learning from them all. ("Great Adaptations: Screenwriting and Global Storytelling," 2)

She had an old friend from the vaudeville days named Buck Mack who lived with her. Buck had been part of a vaudeville team called Miller & Mack and had been an extra in Citizen Kane. In modern terms, he was a personal assistant: he ran the house, kept everything running smoothly, and watched over her. At first, Buck regarded me as an interloper, but it wasn't long before he saw that Barbara and I genuinely loved each other, and he and I became good friends. Because of the age difference, neither of us wanted to have our relationship in the papers, and with the help of Helen Ferguson, her publicist and one of her best friends, we kept it quiet. There were only a few people who knew about us. Nancy Sinatra Sr. was one of them, because she and Barbara were close friends. I didn't tell anybody at Fox about our affair, although Harry Brand might have known, if only because Harry knew everything. Likewise, I always assumed that Darryl Zanuck knew, although he never said a word about it to me. That might have been because Darryl and Barbara had something of a history, a bad one: Barbara told me that Darryl had chased her around his office years earlier, and I got the distinct impression that she hadn't appreciated the exercise.

More than anything, Trump was a demagogue—a thoroughly American type, familiar to us from novels like All the King’s Men and movies like Citizen Kane. “Trump is a creature native to our own style of government and therefore much more difficult to protect ourselves against,” the Yale political theorist Bryan Garsten wrote. “He is a demagogue, a popular leader who feeds on the hatred of elites that grows naturally in democratic soil.” A demagogue can become a tyrant, but the people put him there—the people who want to be fed fantasies and lies, the people who set themselves apart from and above their compatriots. So the question isn’t who Trump was, but who we are.

Although Grandpa hits on the blonde next door, he does it with such charm and perkiness that Brennan gets away with playing what is essentially a dirty old man part. It is worth watching the movie to see him dance with his blonde pickup, clicking his heels, and then sitting her down at a table and showing her his $32,000 bank account—actually just a little notebook, although he claims to have the money (which turns out to be Confederate currency) hidden under his bed. When his date rejects his advances, he says, “The night is young. Why don’t you be like the night?” When she pleads to be taken home and is willing do anything he wants in return, he says, “Then what’s the use of going home?” But of course his role dictates that he resign himself to playing the grouchy guy who drives her home. Brennan’s lines came from one of Hollywood’s greatest screenwriters, Herman Mankiewicz, who wrote Citizen Kane.

For instance, I love the movie Casablanca. Who doesn’t? No matter how many egghead critics declare Citizen Kane to be the greatest American movie, we all know it’s Casablanca in fact.

The house we were renting that spring belonged to Sara Mankiewicz, Herman Mankiewicz’s widow, who was traveling for six months, and although she had packed away the china she did not want used along with Herman Mankiewicz’s Academy Award for Citizen Kane (you’ll have friends over, she had said, they’ll get drunk, they’ll want to play with it) she had left out her Minton dinner plates, the same pattern as the Minton tiles that line the arcade south of Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, for me to use.

The most famous snow globe was featured in the movie Citizen Kane

For a time, the press lord William Randolph Hearst did everything in his vast powers to keep the film “Citizen Kane” from finding an audience. He intimidated theater owners, refused to let ads run in his newspapers, and even pressured studio sycophants to destroy the negative. At first, the titan of San Simeon had his way: the film faded from view after a splashy initial release. But over the years, “Citizen Kane” came to be recognized for the masterpiece it is, and now regularly tops lists as the greatest film ever made.

I wasn't an Irishman, but I knew how it felt to have someone standing over you, controlling your life and wanting to call it something else. From the people at Christian Fellowship to First Academy to my parents to Confucius to thousands of years of ass-backwards Chinese thinking, I knew how it felt. Everything my parents did to me and their parents did to them was justified under the banner of Tradition, Family, and Culture. And when it wasn't them it was someone impressing Christianity on me and when it wasn't Christianity it was whiteness. Those other kids had more vocabs than me and more knowledge of the American canon. At that age, I didn't know what Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, or even A Christmas Story was. There were so many gaps in my American cultural understanding because we just didn't get it at home. It always hurt me writing or debating because I didn't share their references, but that summer I was determined that it wouldn't stop me. I wouldn't try to talk about things they knew anymore. I would use the references that made sense to me and make them catch up. Before I ever read a marketing book in college, I understood what "pull marketing" was. Unlike the other kids, I wasn't memorizing words or events. I was speaking from experience. For the first time, I wasn't arguing just to argue. I wasn't wildin' out' couse Iw as bored. I finally found another mind I fucked with and it was just my luck he was dead-ass Irishman. (123-124)

Deathbed speeches in novels. The soprano bares her soul and collapses on the divan. Citizen Kane and his Rosebud. That’s what we want, I guess. Some message, some meaning expressed in the last moments. What better time for it all to make sense than at the end? But it doesn’t make sense.” He opened his eyes. “The last moments are the same as any other moments. There is no special wisdom.

and between Russia and Pakistan, there is the potential for war among four of the most populous nations on earth. South America veers between extreme right and extreme left, but neither extreme seems to be able to improve the living conditions of their peoples. Two of the original signatories of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, France and Italy, are on the verge of withdrawing from that pact. “In 1949, President Harry S. Truman announced that the United States stood ready with all its might and resources to defend the forces of freedom wherever they might be endangered. Today, some would say that this act of magnanimity has resulted in failure, that America was, and is, too weak to assume the full burden of world leadership. In the face of repeated international crises, any American citizen might well ask why he should care about events so far from home, and why he should feel any responsibility for the defense

What’s more, the movie that most modern film critics now agreed was the greatest movie of all time was a 2016 documentary titled Citizen Kane is the Worst Movie of All Time directed by Michael Bay and starring Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Kanye West, and Kim Kardashian.

Citizen Kane was really about accumulation, and at the end of the accumulation, you see what happens, and it's not necessarily all positive. In real life, I believe that wealth does in fact isolate you from other people. It's a protective mechanism. You have your guard up much more so than you would if you didn't have wealth.

CITIZEN KANE • Premise Tell the life story of a rich newspaper baron. • Designing Principle Use a number of storytellers to show that a man’s life can never be known.

A Reclusive Invitation by Stewart Stafford In a mansion crouched at the forest's edge, Gargoyles perched on a Jericho hedge, Lived Samuel Keane, with millions at least, Welcomed the locals to his Christmas feast. Self-imposed exile of wealth's solitary scene, On that evening, time for connection pristine, An alabaster white suit in a chessboard hall; Legions of armour and battle scars to recall. "Come, gather round, let camaraderie ignite! On Christmas Eve, a dream-come-true night!" Perkins, the grey butler, in reluctant festive red, Gestured them toward Keane's banquet spread. Their gracious host took his place at the end, A throne chair helped into place with a bend, Beaming, he clapped and food was brought in, To gasps and applause at the goblets of gin. A succulent feast at a baronial ball; Roasted goose, boar, a tall glass highball, Stories grew taller, just like each drink, Songs and jests sent them over the brink. Enjoyment and melody's atmosphere bright, Fleeting warmth shared in lush candlelight. Dawn looms, Les Misérables adore company: "Why does hangover guilt crave chablis?" A Father Christmas event once a year, Guests departed, a loud triple cheer, A fading smile of a host so grand, Adrift, nothing elaborate planned. The fireworks faded, the last ember died, Keane shut his mansion with secrets inside. A portcullis closed slowly on a seasonal high, A gothic arch door shut 'neath morning star sky. © 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.