Do you think Citzen Kane is an overrated movie?

I still have so much fun watching it, even though I had to watch it for class, that I don't feel like it's overrated.
But I like The Trial even more than Citizen Kane!

Nope, I don't think so. It pioneered so many things that it makes sense that it's taught every time. And I personally still enjoy it simply on a story level too

There’s a long-standing tension between “the canon” and the new wave of filmmakers redefining cinema today. The conversation often falls into binaries: old vs. new, commercial vs. indie, overrated vs. misunderstood. But in my view, the real divide isn’t between eras or styles, it’s between good cinema and bad cinema. And Citizen Kane, like it or not, falls into the former.

We can’t ignore that Orson Welles was a controversial figure, yes ,
but also a remarkably visionary one. Sometimes, genius only becomes visible in hindsight. And while today’s lenses might not align with Welles’ worldview, it’s crucial that we don’t judge the past solely through the filter of our present values. Cinema, like any art form, lives in a continuum. You can’t fully appreciate where we are unless you understand where we’ve been.

That said, I agree with you on one important point :film education should include more than just the same old list of “important films.” There’s an entire universe of underrated, global, genre-defying works that also shaped the language of cinema. When I went to film school, there was no one dominant taste. Some classmates swore by romantic comedies, others by Marvel, A24, horror, or experimental documentaries. And that’s the beauty of cinema , there is a flavor for everyone .

For me, a filmmaker who radically changed how I saw film was Fellini. But I understand that for someone else, it might be Greta Gerwig, Guillermo del Toro, or Ari Aster. Every generation has its voices. What matters is that we treat them all not as dogma, but as conversation.

So yes, maybe Citizen Kane is over-taught, but that doesn’t make it irrelevant. It just means we need to broaden the spotlight, not dim it.

This is one of those movies that is taught because of how much it changed filmmaking. The fractured narrative, and the myriad of camera techniques they invented for this film were revolutionary at the time. Now, it all seems cliche because it's been ripped off and innovated on so much.

Citizen Kane will always be an important film in the context of cinema history, and it should certainly be required viewing for anyone wanting to make films, but there are probably fresher examples to teach as well.

I think it is a great movie but when you're hailed as the greatest movie ever for nearly 100 years, its only natural for it to now be a little overrated. But its still a really great picture.

I guess it depends on what kind of rating you're talking about. Citizen Kane somehow keeps showing up in lists of the best films ever made, and as the years go by it's harder and harder to justify its place in those lists. But it is incredibly influential, so in that sense, it should always be top of the list in terms of importance.

It was great for its time