Why 'Citizen Kane' is still the greatest film ever made!



My perspectives on Orson Welles' 'Citizen Kane'

He took a fledgling newspaper and transformed it into the most powerful newspaper in the world; Xanadu, his luxury palace, was half the size of Rhode Island and housed more priceless works of art than any museum in the world; he bought his own opera house and from nothing--like his paper, The New York Inquirer-- took Susan Alexander, his mistress, and willed her from nothing into an opera star; when he needed writers for his paper, he went across the street to his rival's paper, pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket, and bought his rival's entire staff. Charles Foster Kane had everything and lacked nothing, nothing except 1 thing: Rosebud!

Based on the life of newspaper titan William Randolph Hearst, Citizen Kane was a film ahead of its time, so good that it literally destroyed Director Orson Welles's career. Considered the greatest film ever made, Citizen Kane--released in '41--received 9 Academy Award nominations and won only 1 for the script, which Orson co-wrote with Herman J. Mankiewicz. But there is no denying the sheer greatness of this film, told in a series of flashbacks similar to Kurosawa's Rashomon.

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