'Kane' still cinema king

The Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane retains its No. 1 ranking as the American Film Institute's best movie of all time.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 22, 2007

LOS ANGELES -- The years have been kind to Citizen Kane, including the past decade.

The 1941 Orson Welles classic - the story of a wealthy young idealist transformed by scandal and vice into a regretful old recluse - has again been rated the best movie ever by the American Film Institute.

In the CBS special AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies - 10th Anniversary Edition, which aired Wednesday, Citizen Kane retained the No. 1 billing it earned in the institute's first top 100 ranking, in 1998.

The list had notable changes elsewhere. Martin Scorsese's 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull bounded up from No. 24 to No. 4, and Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 thriller Vertigo hurtled from No. 61 to No. 9. Charlie Chaplin's 1931 silent gem City Lights jumped from No. 76 to No. 11, and the 1956 John Ford-John Wayne Western The Searchers took the biggest leap, from No. 96 to No. 12.

"The ones that made the huge jumps are really, really fascinating," said Jean Picker Firstenberg, chief executive at AFI, which has done top 10 lists every year since 1998 showcasing comedies, thrillers, love stories and other highlights of American cinema.

"I'd like to think this entire series has had a real influence on what people think about a film like City Lights, The Searchers, Vertigo, gotten them talking about these films and going back to watch them again, and if they've never seen them, to go watch them for the first time."

The top 100 were chosen from ballots sent to 1,500 filmmakers, actors, writers, critics and others in Hollywood from a list of 400 nominated movies, 43 of which came from the decade since the first list was compiled.

In interviews for Wednesday's special, filmmakers and others in Hollywood told AFI they loved the behind-the-scenes story of Citizen Kane as much as the film itself, said Bob Gazzale, who produced the show. It was the first movie by Welles, who bucked studio and storytelling conventions to craft a landmark film about the rise and fall of a William Randolph Hearst-like newspaper publisher.

The film was ahead of its time, a dark tale whose brooding design, murky lighting, overlapping dialogue and ripped-from-true-life Hearst connection created an unnerving sense of realism.

"No one disputes it's a great American film," Gazzale said, "but what you hear from the great artists of our day is the love they have for this ideal of a young maverick making a movie like this, that a 25-year-old Orson Welles changed the fabric of cinema, and that that ideal still holds today of this jewel everybody reaches for."

Top 10 on 1998 list

1. Citizen Kane
2. Casablanca
3. The Godfather
4. Gone With the Wind
5. Lawrence of Arabia
6. The Wizard of Oz
7. The Graduate
8. On the Waterfront
9. Schindler's List
10. Singin' in the Rain

Top 10 this year

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Godfather
3. Casablanca
4. Raging Bull
5. Singin' in the Rain
6. Gone With the Wind
7. Lawrence of Arabia
8. Schindler's List
9. Vertigo
10. The Wizard of Oz

For the complete list, go to www.afi.com.

FAST FACTS: The new AFI top 100 movies

• Of the 43 newly eligible films released from 1996 to 2006, four made the list: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Saving Private Ryan, Titanic and The Sixth Sense.
• Of movies that didn't make the 1998 list, 19 made this one: The General, Intolerance, Nashville, Sullivan's Travels, Cabaret, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Shawshank Redemption, In the Heat of the Night, All the President's Men, Spartacus, Sunrise, A Night at the Opera, 12 Angry Men, Swing Time, Sophie's Choice, The Last Picture Show, Do the Right Thing, Blade Runner and Toy Story.
• From the first list, 23 films dropped out: Dr. Zhivago, The Birth of a Nation, From Here to Eternity, Amadeus, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Third Man, Fantasia, Rebel Without a Cause, Stagecoach, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Manchurian Candidate, An American in Paris, Wuthering Heights, Dances With Wolves, Giant, Fargo, Mutiny on the Bounty, Frankenstein, Patton, The Jazz Singer, My Fair Lady, A Place in the Sun and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
• The earliest film represented is 1916's Intolerance, the newest 2001's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
• Only three films hold their 1998 rank: Citizen Kane, No. 1; The Godfather Part II, No. 32 and The Best Years of Our Lives at No. 37.

[Last modified June 22, 2007, 01:45:19]