#3 Citizen Kane (Welles) at the Golden State Theatre
When the first Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time critics' poll was published in 1952, Bicycle Thieves earned the top position. Ten years later, it was relegated to sixth place (tied with Battleship Potemkin ) and Citizen Kane (1941) took the number-one spot. The film stayed there for fifty years, an immovable monolith of “greatness,” until Vertigo nudged it aside in 2012. My dad and I went to a free screening as part of the 90th anniversary celebration of the Golden State Theatre in downtown Monterey. The historic Moorish revival movie palace—with its opulent decor, velvet seats, and frescoed ceiling—was the perfect setting to watch a film that opens in the protagonist’s own palatial estate, Xanadu. It felt a little like stepping through the screen. More happens in the first ten minutes of Citizen Kane than in most full-length features: a death, a mystery, a newsreel obituary, and a montage that sketches the entire arc of a man’s life. The story pieces together the ...