TGME Round 2: To Kill A Mockingbird Vs. Citizen Kane

[GregMcduck]

How Round 2 works: Each poll will be open for one week. If you didn't get around to it in Round 1, please take the time to the film or films before voting. Two new matches put up every Monday and Thursday.

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) vs. Citizen Kane (1942)



Tied with Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in Round 1

Based on Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Mockingbird tells the story of a single father (Gregory Peck), a lawyer who loses many friends in the pre-Civil Rights South when he defends a black man accused of rape. In the process, his children, Scout and Jem, see him put into action all the "stand up for the right thing" lessons he's taught them over the years.

Because the story is told from the perspective of Scout (Mary Badham), a young but precocious girl, the film has an innocence and freshness that counterbalance what was a shockingly radical story at the time. Right and wrong seem much clearer through children's eyes. The subplots are brilliant parables, universal stories of childhood that resonate in the greater story—including one that revolves around a seemingly-menacing character played by a very young Robert Duvall.

One of the most notable aspects of the film—aside from the writing, acting, directing, etc.—is that it was shot in black and white at a time when most movies were being filmed in color. Visually, the film is stunning, as it literally and metaphorically deals entirely in shades of grey.

Defeated Fargo in Round 1

Citizen Kane, now commonly acknowledged as one of the greatest films in the world and often cited as the best American movie of all time, nearly never saw the light of day. MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer offered RKO head George Shaefer money to destroy the negative of the drama that so upset newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. But in spite of a blacklist that limited Kane's initial theatrical run and prevented any mention of it in Hearst's empire of newspapers, it went on to win the New York Film Critics and National Board of Review Best Film awards and garner nine Academy Award nominations (winning one for Best Original Screenplay).

...

What was it about Citizen Kane that angered Hearst so? Well, in the days before media moguls like Rupert Murdoch became so smugly self-satisfied that they will willingly lend their voices in self-parody on The Simpsons, it just wasn't done to criticize the ruling elite. And there could be little doubt that the Charles Foster Kane (Welles) invented by Welles and co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz was based on Hearst: Like Hearst, Kane's fortune originally derived from his family's mining interests. Kane, too, began with one small, struggling newspaper devoted to championing the disenfranchised only to expand nationwide and to lose his taste for the underdog as his ultimately unsuccessful political ambitions took hold of his soul. As with Hearst, Kane abandoned his first wife for the charms of a younger woman and installed her in a grandiose castle of his own making. But the cold austerity of Kane's Xanadu didn't come close to approximating the vibrancy of Hearst's San Simeon, a magnet for the rich at play. And Kane's untalented soprano lover Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore) scarcely resembled Hearst's mistress, actress Marion Davies, a talented comedienne who remained steadfastly loyal to her fatherly paramour. According to many accounts, it was this slap at Davies that really sent Hearst into pit-bull attack mode over Citizen Kane.

But if all Citizen Kane had to offer was a thinly veiled account of the life of a barely remembered press baron, then it would scarcely sit atop so many best-of lists. But the film that the then 25-year-old wunderkind Welles — set on conquering Hollywood as he had earlier ruled Broadway and radio and with an unprecedented contract in hand giving him complete creative control — proffered was so much more than that potentially tired story. A master of ballyhoo (this was the man, after all, who scared the wits out of the American public with his 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast), Welles presented Kane's life as an elliptical puzzle for the viewer to solve.

Please take the time to watch any films you haven't seen before voting. You can use this thread to post your reviews, campaign for your preferred movie, or just discuss the movies in general.

[CM916]

Loving the results so far, the english teachers deserve a blowout loss.

[Doctor Who?]

I voted for my favorite film of all time,Kane.

[Tripe]

Citizen Kane

I love both films but I love the novel of To Kill a Mockingbird much much more than the adaptation.

[gojikranz]

its gonna take some popular modern film to upset kane i think.  for those who enjoy old films kane will probably win everytime.  now kane vs star wars would be a interesting matchup...

[CM916]

its gonna take some popular modern film to upset kane i think.  for those who enjoy old films kane will probably win everytime.  now kane vs star wars would be a interesting matchup...

With neither of those being a story countless children have been forced into reading over the generations, I might be inclined to agree.