“But [Pauline] Kael had stumbled upon something that could be very disconcerting to the best film critic in the world, just as it appalled the man [Orson Welles] who was increasingly the idol of young directors: that the movies were not and never would be good enough, deep enough, to hold his interest. He had gone deep—no one yet had gone deeper. But it was not enough, not compared with literature, music, painting or just watching life go by. The movies, in other words,  are the art of a culture prepared to settle for the shallow. The artistic status of the filmmaker was not actually substantiated by the work. Citizen Kane was the first move to reveal that—and Welles, for a long time, was the lone man who noticed it.”

--David Thomson, “Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles,” pg. 398

Discuss.

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