Citizen Kane is barely even blah … until you realize that it was shot in 1941, and start comparing it to everything else shot in 1941. Citizen Kane looks like a Current Year piece, and that’s why it was so revolutionary — everything else in 1941 looks like they just pointed a camera at a Broadway stage and left it running. Pretty much every movie “trope” — the whole visual “language” of modern cinema (I believe the term d’art is topos) — was created by Citizen Kane. When it comes to modern moviemaking, nobody makes “an Orson Welles” movie anymore, because they’re ALL Orson Welles movies; after Citizen Kane, that’s just how movies are done.
Severian, “Period Piece”, Founding Questions, 2026-08-04.
