There are a number of factors in Citizen Kane (1941, dir. Orson Welles) that cause many critics to consider it the greatest film of all time. It has come at the top of the AFI’s Top 100 Movie’s list in both 1998 and 2007. During the production of Citizen Kane, a number of new cinematic ideas were developed and used, for example Gregg Toland’s deep focus lens, which allowed everything in the scene to be in focus all at once. His innovative use of the lens allowed the film to have different impacts on the audience’s perspective of things, for example in this scene:

Here, Kane looks to be the same size as the window, but as he walks towards it he is dwarfed by its immense size. When Welles was designing scenes like these, he wasn’t aware that having everything in focus all at the same time wasn’t really possible yet. As he’d previously worked in theater, he asked Toland to find a way to do this, which led to his invention of the deep focus lens. This is just one use of the lens, and there are many different ways in which the camera was also used innovatively throughout the film.

Another aspect of Citizen Kane that helps it to be considered the greatest film is the use of makeup. It is used in a very clever way through the film, as the actors were playing the same characters but at different stages in their lives. The makeup artist, Maurice Seiderman, uses makeup subtly to show the characters aging, for example in the breakfast table scene with Kane and his first wife Emily.

At the beginning of this scene, both characters look young as it is early in their marriage. As the scene progresses, they start to look older, but the change isn’t really noticeable until the end:

This is a very clever use of makeup, as it quickly condenses years of their marriage into a couple of minutes. At the time that the movie was made, makeup was often unconvincing and unrealistic, but Seiderman managed to make it look natural on all of the characters. He came up with his own makeup and techniques that were more comfortable for the actors to wear, and looked like real life. Sometimes, the actors had to spend five or six hours in the makeup chair, but the end product made up for it. In some ways, Seiderman’s use of makeup influenced other films that followed.

The plot behind Citizen Kane also is a factor that makes it a very popular film. At the time, it was based on the newspaper publisher and politician William Randolph Hearst, which was very controversial. The consequences that the movie faced at the time greatly affected its reception, but now it has grown in popularity. One reason for this could be because of its relevance in today’s society, with the rise of Donald Trump. The character of Charles Foster Kane is very similar to him, and to many other people in positions of power. This could be why Citizen Kane is widely considered the greatest film of all time.