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Sartre on Citizen Kane:
"Kane might have been interesting for the Americans, [but] it is completely passé for us, because the whole film is based on a misconception of what cinema is all about. The film is in the past tense, whereas we all know that cinema has got to be in the present tense. ‘I am the man who is kissing, I am the girl who is being kissed, I am the Indian who is being pursued, I am the man pursuing the Indian.’ And film in the past tense is the antithesis of cinema. Therefore Citizen Kane is not cinema."
What did he mean by this? And don't give me that guano about Sartre never having remembered writing this. That's damage control if I ever saw it.
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More importanty, what did Borges mean by THIS?
>The second plot is far superior. It links the Koheleth to the memory of another nihilist, Franz Kafka. A kind of metaphysical detective story, its subject (both psychological and allegorical) is the investigation of a man’s inner self, through the works he has wrought, the words he has spoken, the many lives he has ruined.
>We all know that a party, a palace, a great undertaking, a lunch for writers and journalists, an atmosphere of cordial and spontaneous camaraderie, are essentially horrendous. Citizen Kane is the first film to show such things with an awareness of this truth.
>I venture to guess, nonetheless, that Citizen Kane will endure as a certain Griffith or Pudovkin films have “endured”—films whose historical value is undeniable but which no one cares to see again. It is too gigantic, pedantic, tedious. It is not intelligent, though it is the work of genius—in the most nocturnal and Germanic sense of that bad word.
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>>9976205
Sounds like he just has a stupid and narrow conception of what a medium is or could/should be.
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Makes sense coming from a guy that can't even look straight.
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>>9976205
If you don't get it, it's because you do not understand what makes his conception of the cinema closer to what is true art than the film he is critiquing. You probably know how to appreciate great film or art, but not create it. Not a bad thing, it's not like everyone's a creative in an artistic sense. But in short, he's critiquing as an artist, and saying America has a lesser appreciation of what makes great art. And based on the state of America, I can agree with this sentiment.
>t. American
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>>9976205
What he's saying of Citizen Kane's narrative is not accurate. It is entirely told in the present tense, it is the story about the investigation of the life of a recently deceased, rich recluse. The investigation is entirely present-tense.
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>>9976323
The film starts with Kane's death.
Wharton's Ethan Frome, Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, Melville's Moby-Dick... and to be fair a lot of 18th C. continental literature all have the same modus operandi.
You can simply disagree with Sartre without engaging in these pseudo-intellectual deflections.
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Well, his meaning is obvious:
Because it is impossible for regular people to tell stories using cinematic tools, it is a "mistake" for filmmakers to suggest that a character can tell a story and give it the realness inherent in a cinematic presentation. In a word, flashbacks don't really work as cinematic tools.
He's not entirely wrong as it applies to cinema that strives for realism. But Citizen Kane was never that type of movie: it was always about how the stories surrounding a person can create a fantastical image of them, and thus the flashbacks are not just useful storytelling tools but reflections of the theme at large.
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>>9976205
>muh present to the moment
Sounds like gimmicky criticism to me.
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Was it autism?
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