CITIZEN KANE

 "CITIZEN KANE"  1941) 

MY THOUGHTS: This movie has been called "the best movie of all time" by many people and has sat in the number one spot on many a movie list. It was Orson Welles's debut as a film director. It is a chronicle of the life of Charles Foster Kane, a fictional character based off of William Randolph Hearst, a famous newspaper publisher. Hearst went to great lengths to halt the production of the film, and later to prevent it from being released. Citizen Kane became one of the biggest flops of all time, especially considering the staggering praise and accolades it received. But Citizen Kane deserves its reputation for many reasons. Orson Welles introduced a sophistication in terms of narrative (the way the story was told and its sequence), acting, lighting, and cinematography. The use of deep-focus photography (keeping both foreground and background in focus) and abstracted camera angles, the non-chronological narrative structure and overlapping dialogue, were just some of the myriad formal innovations that Welles brought together for his groundbreaking debut. Although the film is distinctly mid-20th century, the themes at its core are very much timeless, perhaps even more so considering the state of pop-culture today.

SYNOPSIS: "When a reporter is assigned to decipher newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane's dying words, his investigation gradually reveals the fascinating portrait of a complex man who rose from obscurity to staggering heights. Though Kane's friend and colleague Jedediah Leland, and his mistress, Susan Alexander, shed fragments of light on Kane's life, the reporter fears he may never penetrate the mystery of the elusive man's final word, "Rosebud.""

STARRING: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Everett Sloane, William Alland, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick, George Coulouris, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford and Paul Stewart.

SCREENPLAY: Orson Welles, Herman J. Mankiewicz, John Houseman, Mollie Kent and Roger Q. Denny.

DIRECTOR: Orson Welles

AWARDS:

It was nominated for nine (9) Academy Awards and won one for:

"Best Original Screenplay" - Herman J. Mankiewicz
and Orson Welles

It was widely believed the film would win most of its Academy Award nominations, but it received only the award for "Best Original Screenplay." Variety reported that block voting by screen extras deprived Citizen Kane of "Best Picture" and "Best Actor", and similar prejudices were likely to have been responsible for the film receiving no technical awards.

It was nominated for eighteen (18) additional awards, by various entities, and won eight ( 8 ) of them.