But there is no rational reason why movies should be divided like that, so it is time for me to decide which of the two films is actually the best. I have not yet viewed the DVDs, but I have seen each film dozens of times, so many times in fact that favorite lines from each often leave my tongue during casual conversations (mangled and misquoted, of course).
From CITIZEN KANE:
"You provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war."
"Not one day has gone by that I haven't thought of that girl."
"If I hadn't been rich, I could have been a really great man."
From THE GODFATHER:
"Leave the gun - take the canoli."
"It's not personal, Sonny - it's only business."
"And if by chance a man like yourself should make some enemies, then they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you."
The most obvious difference between the two films is in their narrative styles. CITIZEN KANE tells the life story of one man, Charles Foster Kane, from several different point of views. CITIZEN KANE jumps through time, beginning with the man's death, touching various points of his life, and then back to his death again. Sometimes we see similar sequences of events remembered by two different people. CITIZEN KANE is a puzzle that we must piece together.
THE GODFATHER is a classic linear narrative. It begins with the wedding at the house of an organized crime boss and from there, takes us through a few years in the life of that man and his grown children. Chains of events early in the film set off new events in the middle of the film, which in turn lead to an inevitable and perfect ending.
Both films are visually stunning, each film being helmed by an imaginative director and a talented cinematogrpaher (Greg Toland for KANE, Gordon Willis for GODFATHER). Welles and Toland impress us by their use of deep focus and camera angles, Coppola and Willis by their use of color and pacing. For a crash course on how to photograph a movie, how to use camera angles to add subtext to a scene, and how to use sound in cutting from one event to another, CITIZEN KANE is the superior film. At least once a minute, there is something technically amazing going on.
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