September 5, 2026

CITIZEN KANE WAS RELEASED 85 YEARS AGO TODAY:

Back in June at the American Thinker, Charlton Allen wrote: Citizen Kane at 85: A Revolutionary Masterpiece Still Hiding in Plain Sight.

The picture was so different, so audacious, so avant-garde in 1941 that calling it “groundbreaking” understates the case. And because so much of filmmaking since has descended from it—or from films that themselves descended from it—it is easy now to miss the treasure hiding in plain sight. What once looked revolutionary has, by sheer force of influence, become part of the cinematic lexicon.

That is not Kane’s burden alone: it happens to every masterpiece that overturns the furniture, which the protagonist does quite literally near the end of the film.

Other filmmakers take what it did and make pieces of it their own. Then another generation borrows from them. Eventually the once-startling thing no longer looks startling at all.

It just looks like how movies are made. We still recognize the language. We do not always remember who taught us to speak it.

To appreciate just how transformative Citizen Kane was, it helps to compare it not to the films that came after it, but to the great classics that came just before.

Think of The Wizard of Oz. Think of Gone with the Wind. Think of The Philadelphia Story. These are not minor pictures, nor am I interested in diminishing them. They are classics for a reason. But place Citizen Kane beside them, and the difference becomes unmistakable.

Through that—wait for it—lens, you can see it almost immediately: in the use of light and shadow, in the use of sound and echo, in the startling deployment of deep focus, in the low and high angles and cavernous interiors, and in the determination to use the entire frame rather than treating the camera as a mere recording device.

Citizen Kane does not feel like a polished studio picture pushed to a slightly higher level. It feels like somebody came in and changed the language of cinema.

To slightly modify what I wrote back then, “Does Citizen Kane live up to the hype? Of course not—not eighty-five years later, at least. But that is precisely the point.” Actually, if there was any way to look at the film through the eyes of somebody who was going to the movies in 1941, rather than as someone who has seen innumerable movies made in the decades since which have stolen its tricks, it really does. (I watched it in June on the big screen in Arlington, TX.) Welles and his creative team, especially screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, cinematographer Gregg Toland, and editor Robert Wise, created a variety of techniques to radically change how movies were told.

In the 1930s, Hollywood movies were built around the microphone, not the camera. After The Jazz Singer in 1929, movies had to be talkies, and that meant everything was subservient to recording dialogue. The actors had to speak loudly, and not overlap each other’s lines, and a rather static cutting style evolved that was built around long shots, medium shots, and closeups. Kane replaced this with deep focus photography, longer takes, a moving camera, and carefully planned overlapping dialogue, all of which can be seen in the tweet atop this post. Kane also made extensive use of the optical printer to glide seamlessly from establishing shots often created with miniatures of exteriors and matte paintings into scenes with actors.

Rather than telling its story linearly, Kane relied on a series of flashbacks, each written and performed based on the tone and mindset of the person telling the story of that segment of Charles Kane’s life, which would be ripped off by no less than Stanley Kubrick in The Killing, and Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction.  The optical printer was used to create the huge climbing shot in the opera house from Susan Alexander’s florid performance to the stagehand high above who hold his nose in response. That shot would be emulated by Tim Burton in his Batman movies.  The vast warehouse at the end of the film containing Kane’s lifetime of possessions would later contain the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  

Citizen Kane is a film that Hollywood has endlessly ripped off. If there’s ever any chance of going into the theater and seeing it with fresh eyes, you will be astounded at the movie. But in any case, if there’s any chance of seeing it on a big screen near you, definitely go.

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

JUDITH MILLER: The Day That Terrorism Became a Global Spectator Sport.

Dec. 7, as most members of the so-called “greatest generation” know, is the day that Franklin Roosevelt declared would “live in infamy” when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, belatedly drawing America into World War II. Similarly, most Americans, even those too young to have seen the Twin Towers collapse or smelled the stench of burning metal and flesh, know that Islamic terrorists changed history on Sept. 11 by killing over 3,000 people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Within Israel and for Jews everywhere, Oct. 7 will long be remembered as the day that Hamas and other Palestinian enthusiasts slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and took 251 people hostage in coordinated incursions from Gaza.

What about Sept. 5? That date rings few memory bells, even for Americans who were able to watch television or follow the news in the fall of 1972. Some may dimly recall that on that day eight Palestinian terrorists from the militant Black September group infiltrated the Summer Olympics in Munich, killing two members of Israel’s national athletic team and taking nine others hostage. On Sept. 5, terrorism itself became a spectator sport.

That terrible event has now been rescued from obscurity by Tim Fehlbaum, the Swiss director and cowriter (with Moritz Binder and Alex David) whose film about ABC’s coverage of the attack more than deserves its sole Oscar nomination for best original screenplay. Fehlbaum’s September 5 is a claustrophobic newsroom thriller. The film compresses the 22-hour-long ordeal into a taut, gripping 94 minutes. It not only chronicles an early terrorist milestone, but also explores with skill and subtlety the strengths and failures of broadcast journalism, the still evolving ethics of TV news, and the beginning of a new, harsher era of mass media.

As the film tells us, Sept. 5 was the first time that an act of terrorism was broadcast live around the world. Some 900 million people watched it unfold on TV, a quarter billion more people than those who saw Neil Armstrong walk on the moon three years earlier.

From me, last year: September 5: Chilling Recreation of the First Live TV Broadcast of Terrorism.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

JUST ABOUT THE MOST UN-AMERICA THING ANYBODY EVER SAID:

Posted at 12:55 pm by Stephen Green

WHEN PEOPLE TELL YOU WHO THEY ARE, BELIEVE THEM:

Earlier: The Assassination Fan Base.

Posted at 12:44 pm by Ed Driscoll

NORMAN JEWISON DIDN’T INTEND FOR ROLLERBALL TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE FOR 21st CENTURY SPORTS:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE LONG COUNTER-MARCH:

Read the whole thing, but this last point stands out: “Play the fifty-year game. The march took from 1968 to roughly 2015 to complete. Anyone expecting a decisive victory in one electoral cycle will quit in disappointment, which is itself part of why the other side won. Choose things that compound: skills, institutions, children, reputations.”

I’d also add that conservatives largely checked out (or were forced out) of the arts — and that was every bit as damaging as any political or economic losses.

Posted at 12:22 pm by Stephen Green

ALANIS MORRISETTE, CALL YOUR OFFICE:

Posted at 12:14 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ACTRESS LOSES THE PLOT: John Nolte: Jane Fonda’s Rant Against Extending Human Lifespans Is a Bizarre Jumble of Slogans.

Jane Fonda is 88 years old, and her recent rant against the “global elite” looking to extend the human lifespan was so disjointed and bizarre, maybe it’s time for a wellness check. Sure, she’s always been wrong about everything, but she’s also been pretty articulate.

Let’s look at her answer to a question about “longevity” on Thursday while she was honored at something called the DVF Awards.
Fonda was asked, “Within the global elites, longevity seems to be all the rage. What are your thoughts on that?”

Here’s her full answer with my editorial interruptions…

* * * * * * * *

The big problem is — and this has never happened in the history of humankind — if this was happening at any other time, you could say: “We’re going to win in the end.” But because of the climate crisis, we don’t have that much time. You know, there’s a point where if it gets too hot, then there’s no going back.

Okay, Grandma.

It’s like she memorized five talking points: oligarchs, billionaires, robots, trad wives, and global warming, only to get them all jammed up in her head. Then she just vomited them out in a shower of incoherence.

Most baffling is her opposition to longevity. Jane Fonda is a role model for longevity, no? She’s kept herself in marvelous shape, and now she’s 88 and still going strong.

What we have here is more proof that there is no intellect or logic on the left anymore, just the thoughtless, knee-jerk spewing of emotions.

“But because of the climate crisis, we don’t have that much time.” And that clock is ticking — in January of 2020, she babbled to Stephen Colbert that “the scientists were saying we have 10 years before it’s going to go so far over the cliff that there’s no turning back. The environment and climate will unravel, and there’s nothing we can do.” Wow, if only there wasn’t a massive campaign against nuclear power in the late ’70s and ’80s. Who was its spokeswoman?

Incidentally, later that year she called Covid “God’s gift to the left.”  Maybe she really does have a grudge against longevity.

Posted at 10:14 am by Ed Driscoll

WHY PEOPLE DON’T TRUST THIS STUFF:

Posted at 9:26 am by Glenn Reynolds