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Citizen Kane

1941 American drama film directed by Orson Welles

AI overview

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama directed by Orson Welles that tells the story of a powerful newspaper magnate's rise and fall. The film is widely considered a landmark work of cinema for its innovative storytelling techniques and visual style.

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Film · TMDB

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Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

Released: 1941-04-17119 minDir: Orson WellesMystery, Drama

Cast

Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane
Joseph Cotten as Jedediah Leland
Dorothy Comingore as Susan Alexander Kane
Ray Collins as Jim W. Gettys
George Coulouris as Walter Parks Thatcher
Agnes Moorehead as Mary Kane

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Key dates

Published: 1941

Article

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film directed and produced by, and starring Orson Welles and co-written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz. It was Welles's first feature film. The quasi-biographical film examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a composite character based on American media barons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick, as well as aspects of the screenwriters' own lives.

After the Broadway success of Welles's Mercury Theatre and the controversial 1938 radio broadcast "The War of the Worlds" on The Mercury Theatre on the Air, Welles was courted by Hollywood. He signed a contract with RKO Pictures in 1939. Although it was unusual for an untried director, he was given freedom to develop his own story, to use his own cast and crew, and to have final cut privilege. Following two abortive attempts to get a project off the ground, he wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane with Herman J. Mankiewicz. Principal photography took place in 1940, the same year that its innovative trailer was shown, and the film was released in 1941.