Another Movie Down...

One of the "things" on my 43 Things list is to watch every one of the 100 movies on the AFI's 100 Greatest American Movies of All Times list. I've now seen 23 of them, and only have 77 more to go. The lastest one that I can mark off is Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. This movie fell into the category of "Seen it, but don't remember it", so it was on my "to watch" list. I first saw it about 10 years ago, and I started watching it again last night. Now, it was after midnight and I was sleepy already, but I was having a really hard time following the movie. So, today I decided to wikipedia Citizen Kane and read about it before watching it again... I guess wikipedia is kinda like a modern-day Cliff's Notes; huh? (Do school kids these days even know what those are?) I wasn't worried about spoiling the ending because I do remember what "rosebud" is (actually, I think I already knew what it was before I even watched it the first time because of pop culture trivia). Then, this morning when Annabelle took her nap, I sat down and watched the movie again.

Not being a professional film critic, I still don't know that I'd put this movie at #1 on a list of the greatest movies of all time, but it definitely was MUCH easier to follow and much more interesting having read about the plot, cultural significance and history behind the characters, and the filmmaking innovations that this movie presented. Watching a movie from 1941 in the 21st century, it's hard to discover the "WOW" innovations in a movie on your own. But having read about the "new" style of filmmaking and the techniques used then (before cgi was even dreamt of), it was pretty cool to watch for those things. I have seen both Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind way too many times to count, so I was able to compare the cinematography to those movies, although both of those movies were also on the cutting edge for their time, so there really wasn't much contrast there... but at least I had a measuring stick.

The last movie that I saw on my list before this one was Sunset Boulevard (aka Sunset Blvd. depending on where you're reading about it). While the movie itself was enjoyable for a movie that's over a half-century old, I figured there had to be more to it so I decided to wikipedia it too. Having wikipediaed (is that a word now?) it now, I think the movie will stick with me a little more. It has only been a few months since I watched it, and I had already forgotten most of what it was about.

I guess when I watch these super-old movies in the future, I'll have to decide whether it's worth it to ruin the ending up front and read about it first or if I should just watch it and see what I get out of it on my own. I guess I'll decide that on a movie-by-movie basis, but for anything older than me, I'll probably go the wikipedia-first route.