Sportfreunde wrote:I'd say Citizen Kane has aged poorly. Greatest film of all time yet a tonne of people me included find it a bit of a snooze fest and nothing too profound about it. The reason that it's ranked so high we all know has to do more with how great and significant the cinematography was at the time not the actual storyline or script. It's well directed and well acted but far far far more entertaining classics.
Hitchcock movies in general have aged well especially Dial M For Murder which just has a deliciously evil plot and villain not to mention Grace Kelly but the one Hitchcock movie I found to be a drag was Vertigo. It looks gorgeous in HD and colour of course and uses some nice story telling techniques but once you take those out, it's a slow paced drab film. I knew that ending was coming as well, just plain boring compared to other Hitchcock films.
I would switch these two around.
For me, Citizen Kane has aged exceptionally well. It's fast-paced and engaging, with great dialogue. There is no filler or slow sequences filled with few events. Not the greatest film ever, but a masterpiece to this day. Hell, it could almost be a modern-day movie, black and white photography aside. Compare it, by contrast, to something like Casablanca, which is hard to envision in any decade past the 50s.
Meanwhile, I find Hitchock films to be dull "snooze fests", as you put them. Sitting through The Birds or even Psycho is an incredible chore nowadays.
Sportfreunde wrote:I know that The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and Once Upon A Time In The West are two of the big westerns but Once Upon A TIme In The West feels like it drags on with a bunch of close-up shots, western music, and slow pacing minus a jump here and there even though it's the nicer looking of the two visually.
Sergio Leone films are notoriously slow-paced, and this was as much of a concern for 60's audiences as it is for modern ones.