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6. Citizen Kane (1941)
By IFC
on 06/25/2009
When you have arguably the greatest film of all time on your hands, it shouldn’t be hard to cut an appealing trailer, but Orson Welles doesn’t show a frame of the actual film, nor does he show himself playing the titular newspaperman Charles Foster Kane once -- in fact, Kane is nowhere to be seen. Instead, Welles used only his stentorian voice to introduce the players of the Mercury Theatre like Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead in a playful tour of the RKO Studios soundstage, before admitting about his own character: “I don’t know how to tell you about him. There’s so many things to say.” So he defers to a montage of “he said, she said” scenes from the film about his controversial protagonist, resulting in the best kind of tease, even with a little sex appeal, courtesy of some chorus girls Welles throws in for “ballyhoo.” As Joe Dante, director of "Gremlins" and creator of the invaluable site Trailers From Hell, who offered us his own favorite picks to take into consideration for this list, pointed out, "Just as he challenged the bromides of Hollywood filmmaking, Orson Welles created one of the most iconoclastic trailers ever, over which the RKO marketing department must have torn their hair out. It captures the brash tone of the entire rule-breaking enterprise perfectly." --Stephen Saito
I guess you guys haven't seen the trailer for The Hughes Bros.'s Dead Presidents, huh? What about Forest Gump? I think those are the 2 greatest of all time. Gump is better than the movie. And Dead Prez is the best ever.
Oh... what about the SW Ep 1 teaser? Maybe you should call this the best film trailers on YouTube! LOL. Dead Prez is probably too hard for you to locate.
I think The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and 300 should be included!
Clerks? No love for the Clerks trailer? Sigh.
Honorable mention for the Grindhouse fake trailers? "Don't" was brilliant.
Great list, by the way. Thanks for including 'Man Who Wasn't There'
Seriously? We have to click 50 times just to get the damn list? No thanks.
Like clicking 50 times is soooo hard, right? But you guys forgot about There Will Be Blood!!
50 PAGES?!!! Get back to work researching how to post an article. No Digg for you.
50 PAGES?!!! Get back to work researching how to post an article. No Digg for you.
GREAT article and flawless pick for #1. I actually did a lil piece on that trailer at our own movie blog, so I'm elated to see as your top pick. Yay trailers!