(okay, The Stranger felt a little cold and arty and traditionally film-studies-interesting-but-unengaging, but I've only seen it once, years ago, so it's due for another go)

The Stranger or The Trial, JZ? That sounds more like how The Trial comes across (i.e. cold and arty, although I do love it), wheras The Stranger was probably Welles's most traditional B-Movie-with-a-message. Almost none of the baroque touches that make Shanghai, Arkadian or TOE so out there. Notably, it's also one of the few films he made (maybe the only) from a script he didn't write or re-write.

Possibly The Trial -- I saw it many, many years ago, right on the heels of the original studio release of ToE, when the BF-at-the-time said, "Hey, you liked that one? Try this one!" and it was all cold and disappointing and I put it out of my mind until this conversation started, when I went to IMDB thinking it was The Trial but couldn't find it listed anywhere, decided I must have been insane, and thought The Stranger sounded like the likeliest candidate for what I vaguely remembered.

And now, going back to IMDB, I see that it is indeed The Trial, only IMDB calls it Le Proces and lists Trial as only the third alternate title. Bastiges.

And now, going back to IMDB, I see that it is indeed The Trial, only IMDB calls it Le Proces and lists Trial as only the third alternate title. Bastiges.

Odd. Well, he did make it in France for a French producer, so maybe IMDB goes by initial release title. Welles was definitely going for a cold, arty "sci-fi by way of Alphaville" vibe with that one, but I love Tony Perkins as Joseph K.

The Stranger had Welles as an ex-Nazi hiding out as a CT school teacher, with Loretta Young as his fiance and Edward G. Robinson as a Nazi-hunter on his trail. Very conventional, with a few Wellesian touches.

Both The Stranger and The Trial are my least favorites of the Welles movies I've seen. And that includes his Othello.

What's great about it is that not only does The Player make fun of long tracking shots, it also makes fun of the people like us who discuss them.

Exactly. That whole movie is nothing but one long joke on all of us, combined with Robert Altman calling up all his buddies and asking them to do cameos.

Welles is hard to approach without the dull sense of impending canon, and that does indeed sour people and put them off and doom his chances of cracking the AFI top 100; but in my experience of the handful of people who have actually gritted their teeth and seen it, the visceral WOW is in fact a totally typical reaction and not at all the exception.

That CK didn't live up to they hype for me has little to do with any dull sense of impending canon (I'm lacking canon-fear, I suspect, which is logical given that the first serious decade of movie watching for me was all about the classics thanks to AMC when it was good, a stack of VHS tapes, and no car). It was a clever, lovely, well-done movie that just failed to grab me on anything other than a "well, nice craftsmanship" level any of the times I saw it.

I don't know of anyone who actively avoided seeing it because of how hyped it is (though they probably exist); on the contrary, almost everyone I know who has seen it, has seen it because they've heard it's an incredible movie.

I found Citizen Kane mostly boring the first time I saw it; although I dimly appreciated the formal elements I was not even moved by the visuals at age 16. Then a number of years later I was harangued by a classmate who described the movie as Welles's thesis about the bizarrely American myth of the self-made man (we had been discussing Carnegie), and the next time I sat down to watch it, I dug it.

I still don't love it; I don't think I ever will. But now, I understand why it leaves such a giant footprint in film history, and why it's a worthwhile movie even when you're not talking about film history.

What surprised me the first time I saw Citizen Kane was how funny it was. It's not a ponderous movie, in my experience, at all, but hugely entertaining and exhilarating. If I prefer Touch of Evil, it's because I have an unhealthy love of baroque sleaze. I don't know if I'd claim it was the better movie, though.

I still don't love it; I don't think I ever will. But now, I understand why it leaves such a giant footprint in film history, and why it's a worthwhile movie even when you're not talking about film history.

It's a worthwhile movie, and my movie viewing is the richer for all the times I've seen it. I don't think I'd love Velvet Goldmine half so much if I didn't realize how consciously it's mapping the style and themes of CK (with a side order of Casablanca) to the glam rock era.

Sorry if I've been cranky or on my high horse about my lack of emotional connection to it. My back just gets up when I perceive the trend of the conversation to be moving towards an attitude of "if you don't like it, you must not get it!" or "don't fear the classics! they won't bite!" Because I do get it, and I don't fear the classics (though the nice ones bite), and discussion around b.org occasionally smacks more of lecturing at than sharing with, causing my knee to jerk and my eyes to narrow.

Ple, sorry, didn't mean to get your back up; I was responding to Nutty specifically raising the issue of ToE not being generally popular and having a Big Classic reputation that makes a lot of people keep it at arm's length.

eta: And also musing on the fact that I have that exact reaction myself to much of Welles; Nutty's comment was one that pinged me because it's precisely how I myself approach him, and it's a hump I have to push myself over every time I go to one of his movies (except ToE). I didn't mean to universalize my own experience, and I'm sorry.