Citizen Kane

Orson Welles went from child prodigy to enfant terrible in a single film. After a series of sensational theater productions and radio plays, he was given carte blanche in 1941 for his debut film. He used this freedom as screenwriter, director, producer and lead actor all rolled into one to make his ambitious portrait of the megalomaniac millionaire and newspaper magnate Kane, telling of his meteoric rise and rapid fall. And then he encountered Hollywood’s high expectations, the parallels to the tycoon Randolph Hearst, and the merely moderate box office receipts. What remains is one of the most dazzling feature film debuts ever, groundbreaking in technical, narrative and visual terms.