[Though] I expected The Trial to be bad, I went to it truly hoping for the best. And, in fact, though I expected it to be bad, bad as a mannerist painting can be bad, bad, for instance, as Welles's Othello is bad, I had not been expecting the worst; I had not expected that it might be boring. Orson Welles boring! And boring to stupefaction. (p. 162)

It is possible, perhaps, to dismiss Citizen Kane as little more than a bag of tricks, good tricks but tricks nonetheless; yet, although much of that film's excitement does derive from the sheer exuberance and audacity—real audacity—of its exploration of the medium's techniques, to regard the work as only this is, I think, considerably to underestimate it. But one may concede the case of Citizen Kane, and still there is The Magnificent Ambersons, a less perfect work, perhaps; also...