I believe All the King's Men is a better and more interesting movie than Citizen Kane. It presents the corruption of power much more effectively and the characters are more memorable! Mercedes and Broderick are magnificent. I realize that this will probably be a minority view but that's to be expected when you downgrade an icon!
shareI concur. All the King's Men is a more interesting and watchable film than Citizen Kane. It's one of the greats.
shareCitizen Kane is a great movie, but I don't know if I could call ATKM'49 better
We were going to have children, but that would have severely drained my power crystals
One aims for art. One aims just to be a great movie. They're thematically similar and both are enjoyable.
shareI can't see any similarity between the films, with regard to acting, cinematogrophy, screenplay, politics, class, etc., except they are based upon real-life men.
shareThe similarity is in the basic theme- both movies deal with a self-made man who becomes both corrupt and isolated as he becomes very powerful. "Power corrupts-and absolute power corrupts absolutely".
shareBoth of them excelled at bowling and collecting paperweights.
Nothing exists more beautifully than nothing.
Well, Kane was corrupt because he missed out on his childhood and was raised by a bank. I still haven't figured out if Starks was from the beginning a bad guy (I don't think so) or if the fame got to him.
I think both are very different, but thats my opinion. Both great though.
Well, Kane was corrupt because he missed out on his childhood and was raised by a bank. I still haven't figured out if Starks was from the beginning a bad guy (I don't think so) or if the fame got to him.
I feel people overthink this point. It seems pretty obvious when he changed...
shareKane was a wealthy and powerful, yet flawed man who sought goodness and failed. Stark was a good, yet flawed man who sought wealth and power and failed.
I'm not a film expert, but I feel most of Welles' films were too "stagey" to be true classics.
Watching ATKM now on Turner Classics. A powerful film. However, I also liked the Sean Penn version, an unpopular opinion I know.
Citizen Kane was not "Stagey" as you say. It is true that it does not have many impressive visuals, and has some classical-seeming dialogue, but the real differences between stage and film were all use d to advance the plot. It would be not nearly as good as a play.
shareToady-1,
I beg to differ on the visuals. Citizen Kane was touted for its camera work when it came out. Remember, when judging an older film, one needs to consider what preceded it foremost [and try to ignore what films followed]. Citizen Kane affected the way movie makers put together films because some of the camera techniques used were considered progressive and noteworthy./// Many people today (especially young people [who tend to be egocentric]) judge past films in the present (for a rough example of what I am talking about, look at how the present castigates Thomas Jefferson and Chief Justice Taney). Only after fairly assessing a film in its time can we weigh it against the present (what that film can offer to the here and now).
-- JKHolman
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Both are overrated, but ATKM's script and Crawford's performance elevate it higher than Kane.
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Death is but a door, time is but a window...I will be back.
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>>The Sean Penn version had sooo much potential. I feel that the director completely destroyed it and he let Sean Penn go completely untamed which, to me, very much contributed to the ruining. Sean Penn should have taken some lessons from Broderick Crawford.<<
James Carville ~ you remember, the lizard headed Dem. equivalent to Carl Rove ~ had a large, scaly hand in this production. It shows. The obsession with authentic, Louisiana accents totally destroys the intelligibility of many of the performances; most notably with regards to Penn and Jude Law. Best stick to TV, James.
TEN FOUR!!!
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For me, this film, made several years after Kane, feels like a watered down version. The photography and structure are far less interesting, and the character development happens crudely, in a brief montage, rather than being revealed to us gradually. The narration, where it exists, strikes me as corny and much of the dialogue is matter-of-fact and artless. The film seems to be aping Kane's grandiose gestures, but has not lasted nearly as well.
Despite a promising start, the film really tails off.
Just my view, of course. And it's amusing to see a young Paul Ford. "Bilko!"
i completely concur with the points made about this film by stellastreet. This movie is so far from Citizen Kane that i never even thought of Citizen Kane while watching it. I mostly thought "this movie is nowhere near as good as i thought it would be". I stuck around til the end because i forced myself. Very disappointing.
The one thing that was great was Mercedes McCambridge. She absoulutely deserved her oscar and i wish she'd had a bigger career afterward.
'Kane' the movie was better than 'ATKM' movie, but the 'ATKM' book is excellent.
shareI like ALL THE KING'S MEN more than CITIZEN KANE. KANE runs rings around ATKM technically, and meant much more to the progress of the technique of the motion picture. I am certain it is the film aspiring directors and cinematographers study.
But Willie Stark is a far more interesting character than Kane, and this movie's themes of the corruptions of power and politics resonate a great deal more with me than do the themes in Kane.
*ATKM had much more impact on me on my first watching than KANE did as I had not read the novel nor knew anything about Huey Long, so the ending came as a real jolt and shock. The ending of KANE was by contrast a letdown.
Rewatching it now, I notice how totally cynical the movie is, how corrupt everyone is, except perhaps the physician, and yet how realistic about politics it seems to be to me after a lifetime of being exposed to sleazy politicians.
A more suitable companion piece to this would be A Face in the Crowd.
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.