Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film by Orson Welles, its producer, co-screenwriter, director and star. The picture was Welles's first feature film.

Plot
When a reporter is assigned to decipher newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane's (Orson Welles) 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 (Joseph Cotten), and his mistress, Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore), 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."

Why It's Terrific!

 * 1) Jaw-dropping cinematography from Gregg Toland which continues to hold up to this day. In addition to that, Welles' background on the stage helped him achieve the brisk editing style seen in the film; lighting and free-form sets glide almost imperceptibly between scenes.
 * 2) The film's reputation may have dimmed over time due to various recent films using the film's techniques and the people it mocked no longer being familiar to audiences, although that doesn't change the fact that the film still has a reasonable amount of entertainment value.
 * 3) Welles' film would use a convoluted flashback structure to examine different aspects of the wealthy and influential American whose life was plagued by unhappiness and who died with his dreams unfulfilled. At the time, this was an audacious take on the American success story. And the fact the Welles created the titular role for himself said something about his ambivalence about his own desires.
 * 4) * The film's structure owes something to 1933's The Power and the Glory about a thwarted unhappy industrialist, but Welles borrowed liberally from other sources (i.e.: Time magazine and March of Time newsreels), adopting their snappy, jaundiced, superficial take on celebrity. He also went through lots of Hollywood scandals, changing details enough to protect him from legal retribution. It should be noted that the titular Charles Kane is loosely based on William Randolph Hearst.
 * 5) Welles was entranced with filmmaking tricks, and Citizen Kane is a compendium of models, miniatures, mattes, optical printing, animation, sets from King Kong and The Hunchback of Notre Dame and nearly every other possible device. One reviewer noted that there were no straight cuts in the whole film.
 * 6) The "Rosebud" moment towards the beginning of the film and again at the end is a very emotional moment.
 * 7) It's even more emotional during the end, since the audience knows how Charles Kane ended up this way.
 * 8) It shows us how a person's ego can get the best of them for better or worse.
 * 9) All the actors give incredible performances. Especially Orson Welles as the central anti-hero protagonist.
 * 10) Charles Foster Kane turns out to be a likable character. Even though he's a jerk for the majority of the film, the viewer can still feel bad for him, since he could never could attain the happiness he desperately tried to attain and died alone and miserable.

The ONLY Bad Quality

 * 1) The cockatoo scene in the third act towards the end feels rather forced. Not only will it scare certain viewers off-guard, it serves no role in the plot whatsoever. It is therefore the only bad thing about this movie.

Reception
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 99% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 117 reviews by approved critics (with the one rotten review being from the Chicago Tribune on May 7, 1941), with an average rating of 9.7/10. The website's critics consensus states: "Orson Welles's epic tale of a publishing tycoon's rise and fall is entertaining, poignant, and inventive in its storytelling, earning its reputation as a landmark achievement in film." On another aggregator site, Metacritic, Citizen Kane has an extremely rare weighted average score of 100 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "universal acclaim", being the highest-rated on the website. It is widely considered one of, if not, the greatest film(s) ever created.

Trivia

 * Orson Welles was only 24 when he signed a contract with RKO Radio Pictures to produce, write, direct and act in one film per year.
 * Orson Welles cast many collaborators from his days at The Mercury Theatre, including Agnes Moorhead, Ray Collins and Joseph Cotten.
 * Orson Welles invented and perfected the “deep focus shot” with cinematographer Gregg Toland. The distinctive shot gives clarity to both foreground and background elements, thereby providing the illusion of depth.
 * Similar to Paddington 2, the film lost a "certified fresh" approval rating of 100% on Rotten tomatoes in 2021 just because the site added a negative review of the film written 80 years ago.
 * Orson Welles and Gregg Toland cut holes in the floors of their sets and had ceilings built so that they could use low camera setups more realistically.
 * During the scene in which Kane yells at Boss Jim Getty, Welles fell 10 feet and injured his ankle. For the next two weeks, he directed from a wheelchair – and shot around himself in scenes requiring his character Charles Foster Kane.
 * Legendary Hollywood composer Bernard Herrmann’s debut film score was for this film.
 * Hearst editors were ordered to keep publicity, advertisements and reviews of all RKO films out of their newspapers. Citizen Kane was based on publisher William Randolph Hearst, and the newspaper titan was not thrilled with the portrayal.
 * The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards and Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz won for Best Screenplay.
 * The original nitrate negatives of the film were lost in a fire in the 1970s.
 * Filmmaker Steven Spielberg bought one of the three prized balsa wood “Rosebud” sleds made for the film at an auction in 1982.