Last week I did something I’ve been meaning to do for at least a couple of decades: I watched the movie Citizen Kane.

often identified as the greatest movie ever made, almost to the point of mantra by critics and movie lovers alike, I always found it hard to imagine that any film, let alone one this old, would be worthy of the praise heaped on it over the years. Remember Napoleon dynamite? Everyone was raving about that film a few years back, quoting it and giggling, and when I broke down and rented it from the store, I have to say I was pretty underwhelmed – not only did it turn out that I already knew everything about it that was funny, I’d already heard countless friends and acquaintances do quite competent imitations of each good bit of dialogue, and besides the funny bits, there wasn’t much else to the movie.

Even unseen, I knew already that there must be far more to this famous Kane movie than the other I’ve mentioned above. What they shared though was a lot of hype and a bit of inside knowledge: I already knew what the elusive “rosebud” was. In fact, I’d already read the entire, detailed plot synopsis on filmsite.org. with all this background, I’d always feared that Kane would turn out to be nice but a disappointment in its native form.

I’m hardly here going to recount a single thing about the plot of Kane. Instead, I want to talk about my first viewing experience.

The film begins, after what seems a bit of poorly-lit melodrama with a snowglobe, then a long introduction in the form of a movie newsreel, complete with silent and talky portions, and full of the screeching brass orchestrations that characterized newsreels of the time. I looked over to the person I’d convinced to watch it with me, and I almost wanted to apologize, and I was troubled that perhaps the whole film was just going to go on and on in that format. It’s hard enough to get someone to watch an ancient black and white film; it’s next to impossible the next time ‘round if it’s a lemon.

We suffered the introduction, and when it was over some minutes later it seemed there was no mystery left; the reel quite tidily summed up the life of Charles Foster Kane in some detail. At this point, my sense of regret was poignant. Perhaps, in the early stage of talking films, I wondered, this was all it really took to shine.

It was about five minutes after the reel ended that any preconceptions I’d held about the movie fell and shattered on the floor. As did my jaw.

My god, what a wonderful, beautiful film.

The cinematography in Citizen Kane is breathtaking, As a photographer, it left me stunned senseless in every single scene. The wide use of deep focus and incredibly long scenes from a single camera brought me into the movie unlike any other I’ve ever seen; rather than the director choosing through depth of field and camera cuts, it was up to me to decide what to look at, and up to the actors to make me want to look at them.

And yes, acting. My generation knows Orson Welles as the venerated fat guy from the “we will serve no wine before its time” paul mason wine commercials of 30 years ago, and as that war of the worlds radio guy who scared our grandparents I don’t know how many generations ago. And some of that has to due with the fact that welles was old when I was born, and a little more with how Citizen Kane, his first film, was by far his most renowned. Welles himself, and I can’t find the quote right now, has mused about reaching the peak of his career with his first effort, a film that was released when he was just 25 years old. But acting? I have to admit that while I have been for most of my life familiar with his commercial voice-over work, I’d never seen him as a thespian.

Welles chose most of his cast from his fellows at the mercury radio show he lead, like he, they were mostly voice actors. And that makes it utterly uncanny how well they translate to the more revealing medium of film. And translate they do, in the movie Welles himself creates a character so powerful that few actors then or since could ever perform alongside with any credulity. But they do. There is subtly, there is movement, there is within this film a quality of synergy and performance that has seldom been equaled. Let’s not for a moment pretend that Kane rides on cinematography alone.

Throughout, the film builds, every scene as wonderful as it is cuts into a next one that is even more spectacular, and the transitions between, new and invented by welles, you’ll recognize in almost every important - and many less-than important - film that came after; Kane is a textbook on how movies should be made.

I am not, nor was I ever, particularly interested in the subject matter nor the period of which Kane was made. And at the time of its release, since it was of its time that alone would give it popular appeal regardless of its quality. But what’s interesting today is the allegory, what makes it timeless is how we, all these decades later, can still recognize the characters, what makes it the best film ever made is the acting, direction and cinematography in perfect trifecta. What makes me write this after many days is that I ache to watch it again, in fact, watching it the first time I had to just let go and experience it as a whole and be utterly overcome, knowing within the first 20 minutes that this was a film I will watch again and again.

Best film ever made? Well, I don’t know, and there’s no way I could ever watch every film ever made, even were I tempted to do so. best film i've ever seen? oh goodness, yes. For me, the only film I’ve ever seen which approached it for pure visual beauty was Polanski’s Chinatown (also a hearty recommendation). For device, pulp fiction. For acting, well, I’ve never seen anything quite like Kane.

For all these years, knowing what “rosebud” was made me wonder if the film was about anything else. It’s about everything else, rosebud is just punctuation, or even just a McGuffin, though after the movie ends and you’ve collected yourself off the floor, as punctuation it’s incredibly apt.

No photo. And kane came up tonight as there’s an awful lot of change afoot in my life of which right now it would not be proper to speak there’s still some figuring out to do and an appointment in the morning, but let’s just sleep tonight knowing in a week or two that change is on the way; that’s what I’m keeping in mind right now in the middle of the storm. In the meantime, do the kane thing. I’ve built it up huge but rest assured I have not come even close to doing it justice. you'll see.