Originally Posted by
pablo
That's a very narrow viewpoint on cinema as a whole. Some of the very best films of all time come from that period and that's a universal fact: Citizen Kane, Seven Samurai, 12 Angry Men, Casablanca, Double Idemnity, Rashomon, and I can go on and on.
There are no
universal facts concerning what is and what is not a great film - there is only subjective opinion.
Therefore in my subjective opinion, I thought
Casablanca was awful. The acting was appalling and it had some of the worst dialogue ever put to screen. The whole film in my view, just came across as overwhelmingly corny and crass.
As for
Citizen Kane, it's probably the most overrated film in the history of cinema. It's a classic example of a film labelled as great purely by reputation alone and is one of those movies people say they enjoy and think is great, purely because of that reputation.
In reality, when you boil down to it - the film is quite pretentious and very poorly structured. It has virtually no characterisation or cohesive structure and moves at such a ridiculously slow pace, it induces extreme boredom. This meant that I couldn't care less about the characters or what happened to them. Indeed, I was so bored with it, I just really couldn't give a rat's ass about 'rosebud' or Charles Foster Kane.
Granted, there were some technical achievements pioneered within the film, but if the story is boring, everything else becomes irrelevant.
Basically, films such as
Citizen Kane embody the exact same style vs substance debate that still rages to this very day, encapsulating it just as perfectly as every flashy film that chooses to let the cool new toys and tricks far outweigh any of the other considerations that make up a good movie - aka
Avatar or
Prometheus to name just two.