“It Is Too Gigantic, Pedantic, Tedious”

Jorge Luis Borges penned a perplexing review of Citizen Kane in 1941, and Orson Welles had a perfect riposte for it: “Borges is half-blind,” the director pointed out. “Never forget that.” Here’s the ending of the critique, which can be read in full at the Interrelevant:

“I venture to guess, nonetheless, that Citizen Kane will endure as a certain Griffith or Pudovkin films have ‘endured’—films whose historical value is undeniable but which no one cares to see again. It is too gigantic, pedantic, tedious. It is not intelligent, though it is the work of genius—in the most nocturnal and Germanic sense of that bad word.”

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“Now he can live his dreams with less distraction”:

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