Firstly , I think Citizen Kane (1941 , directed by orson Welles) is one of the greatest films of all time because the story is about an ordinary man , Charles Foster Kane , who has lived an extraordinary life and it is a story of his life and and it is quit candid and realistic and it is the realism of this film that drew me to it because , despite the fact that Kane was wealthier than I could ever imagine , !  could actually feel empathy for his man and his wealth and behaviour did not isolate me from him and that allows me to begin to understand him because Kane’s desire for love and admiration is a very human desire that we all have and Kane’s desires touch so many people because we all have them and it creates a universal experience between the audience and the characters.

Secondly , the film was a scathing indictment of the newspaper magnates who controlled the American media in 1941 and, although  the film was scathing , the film is subtle in it’s critiques and it is not a heavy – handed morality tale , it just points out the faults in America’s media at the time by examining the life of Charles Foster Kane and the film depicted how powerful the newspaper magnates really were , and from the point of view of a modern audience  , the power that they held was shocking , especially when you remember the fact that  Citizen Kane was released less than a century ago and the audience can look at the current media landscape and realise that , although a lot of things have changed for the better , there is still  a long way to go in terms of a few people having control over the media but things are steadily improving.

Thirdly , the film effectively shows how wealth can isolate people and this aspect of the story makes the film seem more like a cautionary tale against the allure  of wealth , although , money itself is not the problem in this film , the problem is with how people with money acts and how easy it is for money to turn someone into a terrible person , in the film we see Kane make this transition from a respectable newspaper owner , to someone who is concerned with power and little else and parallels can be drawn to real – life figures and this is true in both 1941 and 2018 and this helps to make the film , a timeless classic.

To conclude , I think that Citizen Kane is one of the best films of all time because it helps us to empathise with a person who we wouldn’t usually invest our time and energy into getting to know and as we learn about his life , we begin to see him less as a repulsive human being and more as a flawed person who only wants love and he unfortunately never gets the love that he was seeking.