Strange Bedfellows: Unconventional Recommendations for Classic Film Lovers

This series will compare films, obscure and acclaimed alike, that, at first glance, may seem to have nothing to do with one another. If you love a movie and want to find others with similar themes, narrative structure, aesthetics, and more, this is the place to look.

Why not start with what many critics consider one of the best films of the 20th century?

Drawing on the lives of such magnates as William Randolph Hearst, Citizen Kane (1941) recounts the story of Charles Foster Kane, who comes into a great fortune at a young age. The film's famous first line, "Rosebud," is Kane's dying word. Hoping to find the significance of "rosebud" and, through this, a clearer image of who Kane was as a man, a reporter sets out to interview those who were closest to Kane. In their vignettes, Kane's assistant, closest friend, and second wife give a portrait of Kane's personal and public lives.

Orson Welles, at the ripe old age of 26, starred in, directed, and, along with Herman Mankiewicz, wrote the screenplay for the film, which was, in its time, a commercial failure.

One element of Citizen Kane that is often overlooked is the fact that it is told from varying perspectives. This may not be striking at first, as these perspectives tend to reinforce, rather than contradict one another. Adding to this fact is that Citizen Kane deals with several facets of one man, rather than differing versions of an event.

If the framing of a film narrative interests you, quite a few films these days tell stories from different vantage points, to different effects. However, one of the best, and earliest films to do this is Akira Kurosawa's deservedly famous Rashomon (1950).

In Rashomon, three different versions of a rape and murder are retold through the eyes of its only witnesses: the bandit accused of committing the crime, the wife of the samurai who was killed, and, in a brilliant move, the dead samurai himself. The contradictions in each story cast doubt on the idea of an ultimate, subjective truth. The theme that the objective truth is ultimately unknowable is one of the main driving forces behind both Citizen Kane and Rashomon, and a great reason to watch them together.

Citizen Kane is equally notable in the beauty and innovation of its cinematography. Many critics credit the film with the development of deep-focus cinematography, which is exactly what it sounds like. Using a deeper focus allows action to occur on multiple planes, which works to the great advantage of Citizen Kane. While Kane may have added to the perfection of this technique, earlier films also experimented with it. Films by Jean Renoir demonstrate this aesthetic particularly well. Suggested viewings are Grand Illusion (1937), a movie that takes its cast through a succession of POW camps during WWI, and The Rules of the Game (1939), which deals with bourgeois French life on the eve of WWII.Both are highly acclaimed and pivotal in the development of the French school of Poetic Realism.

As innovative as it was, Kane was not made in a vacuum. If you find yourself interested in the influences that gave birth to Kane, look at such schools as early German Expressionism. Although the visual and auditory distortions typical to films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Weiner, 1920) or Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) are extremely toned down in Kane, you can still find their traces in, for example, Kane's opening sequence, which uses extreme close-ups and distorted lenses to capture the title character's dying moment. As in Expressionistic films, the architecture of Kane is of particular interest: it may not have the jutting, inexplicable angles of Caligari, but the oversized sets and wide-angle shots give Kane a similarly unique sense of space.

If you appreciate the high-contrast lighting and careful mis-en-scene of Kane, you may want to make a foray into the genre of film noir, which also taps in, albeit in an exaggerated manner, to the fast-talking exchanges seen in Kane's screenplay. Also influenced by Expressionism, this classic genre is characterized by extremes of lighting and camera angles. Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten, both Kane stars, show up again in one of my favorites, The Third Man, (Carol Reed, 1949). When the details of the death of his friend, Harry Lime (Welles) don't add up, Holly Martins (Cotten) goes on a search for the truth in Vienna-- a truth that ends up not being very pretty. As there are hundreds of film noir movies to explore, it might be useful to take a look at this site. My recommendations include The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), The Big Sleep, (Howard Hawks, 1946) and, one of my all-time favorites, Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946). If you are already a fan of the genre, this website has some great articles that explore films in more detail than can be done in this hub.

At least as interesting as the story of Charles Foster Kane is the controversy surrounding the film's production. When Hearst caught wind of the negative portrayal of Kane, whose life story displays many parallels with Hearst's own, he went to great lengths to deter its release. RKO 281: The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1999), details the conflict between two equally stubborn men, and explains in full how what is now considered one of the greatest movies was, in 1941, one of the great failures for RKO studios.