Cinema
Citizen Kane
Orson Welles · 1941
Synopsis
Charles Foster Kane, a press magnate, dies alone at Xanadu, his vast unfinished estate in Florida, letting a snow globe fall and murmuring a last word, “Rosebud”. The newsreel News on the March retraces his life, but its producer judges that it does not say who this man was, and instructs the reporter Jerry Thompson to find the meaning of that word. Thompson reads the unpublished memoirs of the banker Thatcher, then questions Bernstein, Leland, Susan Alexander and the butler Raymond.
Context
When the film was released, its author was twenty-five. Louis B. Mayer, on behalf of studio heads friendly with William Randolph Hearst, whose life had in part inspired the character, offered RKO about $800,000 to destroy the negative and the prints; the studio's president refused, but the major theatre circuits boycotted the film, and Hearst's newspapers banned any mention of it and any advertising for it. The film lost money and received a single Oscar, for original screenplay, from nine nominations.
Who it is for
A film of almost two hours, constructed as an inquiry among those who knew its hero.
Prizes and reception
Added to the National Film Registry in 1989, and first in the Sight and Sound critics' poll from 1962 to 2002.
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