Citizen Kane

In a mansion called Xanadu, part of a vast palatial estate in Florida, the elderly Charles Foster Kane is on his deathbed. Holding a snow globe, he utters his last word, "Rosebud", and dies. A newsreel obituary tells the life story of Kane, an enormously wealthy newspaper publisher and industry magnate. Kane's death becomes sensational news around the world, and the newsreel's producer tasks reporter Jerry Thompson with discovering the meaning of "Rosebud". Thompson sets out to interview Kane's friends and associates. He tries to approach Kane's second wife, Susan Alexander Kane, now an alcoholic nightclub owner, but she refuses to talk to him. Thompson goes to the private archive of the late banker Walter Parks Thatcher. Through Thatcher's written memoirs, Thompson learns about Kane's rise from a Colorado boarding house and the decline of his fortune. In 1871, gold was discovered through a mining deed belonging to Kane's mother, Mary Kane. She hired Thatcher to establish a trust that would provide for Kane's education and assume guardianship of him, protecting him from his brutal father. While the parents and Thatcher discussed arrangements inside the boarding house, the young Kane played happily with a sled in the snow outside. When his parents introduced him to Thatcher and told him he would live with him, the boy struck Thatcher with his sled and attempted to run away. By the time Kane gained control of his trust at the age of 25, the mine's productivity and Thatcher's prudent investing had made Kane one of the richest men in the world. Kane took control of the New York Inquirer newspaper and embarked on a career of yellow journalism, publishing scandalous articles that attacked Thatcher's (and his own) business interests. Kane sold his newspaper empire to Thatcher after the 1929 stock market crash left him short of cash. Thompson interviews Kane's personal business manager, Mr. Bernstein. Bernstein recalls that Kane hired the best journalists available to build the Inquirers circulation. Kane rose to power by successfully manipulating public opinion regarding the Spanish–American War and marrying Emily Norton, the niece of the President of the United States. Thompson interviews Kane's estranged best friend, Jedediah Leland, in a retirement home. Leland says that Kane's marriage to Emily disintegrated over the years, despite their having a son, and he began an affair with amateur singer Susan Alexander while running for Governor of New York as a "fighting liberal". His political opponent, corrupt boss Jim W. Gettys, discovered the affair and forced Susan to write to Emily about it; and the public scandal ended Kane's political career. Kane married Susan and forced her into a humiliating career as an opera singer (for which she had neither talent nor ambition). Kane then built a large opera house in Chicago for Susan to perform in. After Leland began to write a negative review of Susan's disastrous opera debut, Kane fired him but finished the negative review and printed it. Susan protested that she never wanted the opera career anyway, but Kane forced her to continue the season. Susan consents to an interview with Thompson and describes the aftermath of her opera career. She attempted suicide, and Kane finally allowed her to abandon singing. After many unhappy years living at Xanadu with Kane, the two had an argument that culminated in Kane slapping Susan. Susan decided to leave Kane. Kane's butler Raymond recounts that, after Susan moved out of Xanadu, Kane began violently destroying the contents of her former bedroom. When Kane discovered a snow globe, he calmed down and tearfully said "Rosebud". Thompson concludes that he cannot solve the mystery and that the meaning of Kane's last word will remain unknown. At Xanadu, Kane's belongings are cataloged or discarded by the mansion's staff as Thompson leaves. They find a sled, the one on which eight-year-old Kane was playing on the day he was taken from his home in Colorado, and throw it into a furnace with other items. Unknown to the staff, the sled's trade name, printed on top, becomes visible through the flames: "Rosebud". The sled's smoke rises from the chimney as the view pulls back to a sign on Xanadu's outer fence which also began the film: "No Trespassing". ==Cast==

The beginning of the film's ending credits states that "Most of the principal actors in Citizen Kane are new to motion pictures. The Mercury Theatre is proud to introduce them." The cast is then listed in the following order, with Orson Welles' credit for playing Charles Foster Kane appearing last: Additionally, Charles Bennett appears as the entertainer at the head of the chorus line in the Inquirer party sequence, and cinematographer Gregg Toland makes a cameo appearance as an interviewer depicted in part of the News on the March newsreel. Actor Alan Ladd, still unknown at that time, makes a small appearance as a reporter smoking a pipe at the end of the film. ==Production==

Development " caught the attention of RKO studio chief George J. Schaefer. Hollywood had shown interest in Welles as early as 1936. He turned down three scripts sent to him by Warner Bros. In 1937, he declined offers from David O. Selznick, who asked him to head his film company's story department, and William Wyler, who wanted him for a supporting role in Wuthering Heights. "Although the possibility of making huge amounts of money in Hollywood greatly attracted him," wrote biographer Frank Brady, "he was still totally, hopelessly, insanely in love with the theater, and it is there that he had every intention of remaining to make his mark." Following the 1938 "The War of the Worlds" broadcast of his CBS radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air, Welles was lured to Hollywood with a remarkable contract. RKO Pictures studio head George J. Schaefer wanted to work with Welles after the notorious broadcast, believing that Welles had a gift for attracting mass attention. Welles was in financial trouble after failure of his plays Five Kings and The Green Goddess. At first he simply wanted to spend three months in Hollywood and earn enough money to pay his debts and fund his next theatrical season. Welles conceived the project with screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who was writing radio plays for Welles's CBS Radio series, The Campbell Playhouse. Taking these drafts, Welles drastically condensed and rearranged them, then added scenes of his own. The industry accused Welles of underplaying Mankiewicz's contribution to the script, but Welles countered the attacks by saying, "At the end, naturally, I was the one making the picture, after all—who had to make the decisions. I used what I wanted of Mank's and, rightly or wrongly, kept what I liked of my own." Before he signed the contract Mankiewicz was advised by his agents that all credit for his work belonged to Welles and the Mercury Theatre, the "author and creator". Mankiewicz also threatened to go to the Screen Writers Guild and claim full credit for writing the entire script by himself. Questions over the authorship of the Citizen Kane screenplay were revived in 1971 by influential film critic Pauline Kael, whose controversial 50,000-word essay "Raising Kane" was commissioned as an introduction to the shooting script in The Citizen Kane Book, In it she called Citizen Kane the "culmination" of that "sustained feat of careless magic we call 'thirties comedy.'" The book-length essay first appeared in February 1971, in two consecutive issues of The New Yorker magazine. In the ensuing controversy, Welles was defended by colleagues, critics, biographers and scholars, but his reputation was damaged by its charges. Questions of authorship continued to come into sharper focus with Carringer's 1978 thoroughly researched essay, "The Scripts of Citizen Kane". Casting was an independent repertory theatre company founded by Orson Welles and John Houseman in 1937. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs, films, promptbooks and phonographic recordings. Citizen Kane was a rare film in that its principal roles were played by actors new to motion pictures. Ten were billed as Mercury Actors, members of the skilled repertory company assembled by Welles for the stage and radio performances of the Mercury Theatre, an independent theater company he founded with Houseman in 1937. "He loved to use the Mercury players," wrote biographer Charles Higham, "and consequently he launched several of them on movie careers." The film represents the feature film debuts of William Alland, Ray Collins, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Erskine Sanford, Everett Sloane, Paul Stewart and Welles himself. as Susan Alexander Kane. A discovery of Charlie Chaplin, Comingore was recommended to Welles by Chaplin, who then met Comingore at a party in Los Angeles and immediately cast her. Welles had met stage actress Ruth Warrick while visiting New York on a break from Hollywood and remembered her as a good fit for Emily Norton Kane, "He trained us for films at the same time that he was training himself," recalled Agnes Moorehead. "Orson believed in good acting, and he realized that rehearsals were needed to get the most from his actors. That was something new in Hollywood: nobody seemed interested in bringing in a group to rehearse before scenes were shot. But Orson knew it was necessary, and we rehearsed every sequence before it was shot." When The March of Time narrator Westbrook Van Voorhis asked for $25,000 to narrate the News on the March sequence, Alland demonstrated his ability to imitate Van Voorhis, and Welles cast him. and Jean Renoir. "As it turned out, the first day I ever walked onto a set was my first day as a director," Welles said. "I'd learned whatever I knew in the projection room—from Ford. After dinner every night for about a month, I'd run Stagecoach, often with some different technician or department head from the studio, and ask questions. 'How was this done?' 'Why was this done?' It was like going to school." On June 29, 1940—a Saturday morning when few inquisitive studio executives would be around—Welles began filming Citizen Kane. 's Oheka Castle that portrays the fictional Xanadu During production, the film was referred to as RKO 281. Most of the filming took place in what is now Stage 19 on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood. There was some location filming at Balboa Park in San Diego and the San Diego Zoo. Photographs of German-Jewish investment banker Otto Hermann Kahn's real-life estate Oheka Castle were used to portray the fictional Xanadu. In the end of July, RKO approved the film and Welles was allowed to officially begin shooting, despite having already been filming "tests" for several weeks. Welles leaked stories to newspaper reporters that the "tests" had been so good that there was no need to re-shoot them. The first "official" scene to be shot was the breakfast montage sequence between Kane and his first wife Emily. To strategically save money and appease the RKO executives who opposed him, Welles rehearsed scenes extensively before actually shooting and filmed very few takes of each shot set-up. When "Rosebud" was burned, Welles precisely choreographed every aspect of the scene while he had composer Bernard Herrmann's cue playing on the set. Unlike Schaefer, many members of RKO's board of governors did not like Welles or the control that his contract gave him. Throughout production Welles had problems with these executives not respecting his contract's stipulation of non-interference and several spies arrived on set to report what they saw to the executives. When the executives would sometimes arrive on set unannounced the entire cast and crew would suddenly start playing softball until they left. Before official shooting began the executives intercepted all copies of the script and delayed their delivery to Welles. They had one copy sent to their office in New York, resulting in it being leaked to press. Principal shooting wrapped October 24. Welles then took several weeks away from the film for a lecture tour, during which he also scouted additional locations with Toland and Ferguson. Filming resumed November 15 with some re-shoots. Toland had to leave due to a commitment to shoot Howard Hughes' The Outlaw, but Toland's camera crew continued working on the film and Toland was replaced by RKO cinematographer Harry J. Wild. The final day of shooting on November 30 was Kane's death scene. Welles boasted that he only went 21 days over his official shooting schedule, without factoring in the month of "camera tests". According to RKO records, the film cost $839,727. Its estimated budget had been $723,800. Post-production Citizen Kane was edited by Robert Wise and assistant editor Mark Robson. Both would become successful film directors. Wise was hired after Welles finished shooting the "camera tests" and began officially making the film. Wise said that Welles "had an older editor assigned to him for those tests and evidently he was not too happy and asked to have somebody else. I was roughly Orson's age and had several good credits." Wise and Robson began editing the film while it was still shooting and said that they "could tell certainly that we were getting something very special. It was outstanding film day in and day out." Welles gave Wise detailed instructions and was usually not present during the film's editing. The film was very well planned out and intentionally shot for such post-production techniques as slow dissolves. The lack of coverage made editing easy since Welles and Toland edited the film "in camera" by leaving few options of how it could be put together. Wise said the breakfast table sequence took weeks to edit and get the correct "timing" and "rhythm" for the whip pans and overlapping dialogue. The News on the March sequence was edited by RKO's newsreel division to give it authenticity. They used stock footage from Pathé News and the General Film Library. During post-production Welles and special effects artist Linwood G. Dunn experimented with an optical printer to improve certain scenes that Welles found unsatisfactory from the footage. Whereas Welles was often immediately pleased with Wise's work, he would require Dunn and post-production audio engineer James G. Stewart to re-do their work several times until he was satisfied. Welles hired Bernard Herrmann to compose the film's score. Where most Hollywood film scores were written quickly, in as few as two or three weeks after filming was completed, Herrmann was given 12 weeks to write the music. He had sufficient time to do his own orchestrations and conducting, and worked on the film reel by reel as it was shot and cut. He wrote complete musical pieces for some of the montages, and Welles edited many of the scenes to match their length. ==Style==

Film scholars and historians view Citizen Kane as Welles's attempt to create a new style of filmmaking by studying various forms of it and combining them into one. However, Welles stated that his love for cinema began only when he started working on the film. When asked where he got the confidence as a first-time director to direct a film so radically different from contemporary cinema, he responded, "Ignorance, ignorance, sheer ignorance—you know there's no confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a profession, I think, that you're timid or careful." Arguments against the film's cinematic innovations were made as early as 1946 when French historian Georges Sadoul wrote, "The film is an encyclopedia of old techniques." He pointed out such examples as compositions that used both the foreground and the background in the films of Auguste and Louis Lumière, special effects used in the films of Georges Méliès, shots of the ceiling in Erich von Stroheim's Greed and newsreel montages in the films of Dziga Vertov. French film critic André Bazin defended the film, writing, "In this respect, the accusation of plagiarism could very well be extended to the film's use of panchromatic film or its exploitation of the properties of gelatinous silver halide." Bazin disagreed with Sadoul's comparison to Lumière's cinematography since Citizen Kane used more sophisticated lenses, but acknowledged that it had similarities to such previous works as The Power and the Glory. Bazin stated that "even if Welles did not invent the cinematic devices employed in Citizen Kane, one should nevertheless credit him with the invention of their meaning." Storytelling techniques Citizen Kane rejects the traditional linear, chronological narrative and tells Kane's story entirely in flashbacks using different points of view, many of them from Kane's aged and forgetful associates, the cinematic equivalent of the unreliable narrator in literature. Welles also dispenses with the idea of a single storyteller and uses multiple narrators to recount Kane's life, a technique not used previously in Hollywood films. The film depicts Kane as an enigma, a complicated man who leaves viewers with more questions than answers as to his character, such as the newsreel footage where he is attacked for being both a communist and a fascist. but no film was as immersed in it as Citizen Kane. Thompson the reporter acts as a surrogate for the audience, questioning Kane's associates and piecing together his life. where the foreground, background and everything in between are all in sharp focus. Cinematographer Toland did this through his experimentation with lenses and lighting. Toland described the achievement in an article for Theatre Arts magazine, made possible by the sensitivity of modern speed film: New developments in the science of motion picture photography are not abundant at this advanced stage of the game but periodically one is perfected to make this a greater art. Of these I am in an excellent position to discuss what is termed "Pan-focus", as I have been active for two years in its development and used it for the first time in Citizen Kane. Through its use, it is possible to photograph action from a range of eighteen inches from the camera lens to over two hundred feet away, with extreme foreground and background figures and action both recorded in sharp relief. Hitherto, the camera had to be focused either for a close or a distant shot, all efforts to encompass both at the same time resulting in one or the other being out of focus. This handicap necessitated the breaking up of a scene into long and short angles, with much consequent loss of realism. With pan-focus, the camera, like the human eye, sees an entire panorama at once, with everything clear and lifelike. Another unorthodox method used in the film was the low-angle shots facing upwards, thus allowing ceilings to be shown in the background of several scenes. Every set was built with a ceiling, He called Toland "the best director of photography that ever existed." Sound Citizen Kanes sound was recorded by Bailey Fesler and re-recorded in post-production by audio engineer James G. Stewart, and chose to create all of the sound effects for the film instead of using RKO's library of sound effects. The film's sound cost $16,996, but was originally budgeted at $7,288. Cedric Belfrage of The Clipper wrote "of all of the delectable flavours that linger on the palate after seeing Kane, the use of sound is the strongest." He had not been accepted into the union, which recognized him as only an apprentice, but RKO nevertheless used him to make up principal actors. "My sculptural techniques for the characters' aging were handled by adding pieces of white modeling clay, which matched the plaster, onto the surface of each bust," Seiderman told Norman Gambill. When Seiderman achieved the desired effect, he cast the clay pieces in a soft plastic material Ferguson also designed statues from Kane's collection with styles ranging from Greek to German Gothic. Some shots included rear screen projection in the background, such as Thompson's interview of Leland and some of the ocean backgrounds at Xanadu. The optical printer improved some of the deep focus shots. who had composed for Welles's Mercury Theatre on the Air. and eschewed the typical Hollywood practice of scoring a film with virtually non-stop music. Instead Herrmann used what he later described as "radio scoring", musical cues typically 5–15 seconds in length that bridge the action or suggest a different emotional response. Herrmann realized that musicians slated to play his music were hired for individual unique sessions; there was no need to write for existing ensembles. This meant that he was free to score for unusual combinations of instruments, even instruments that are not commonly heard. In the opening sequence, for example, the tour of Kane's estate Xanadu, Herrmann introduces a recurring leitmotif played by low woodwinds, including a quartet of alto flutes. For Susan Alexander Kane's operatic sequence, Welles suggested that Herrmann compose a witty parody of a Mary Garden vehicle, an aria from Salammbô. Some incidental music came from other sources. Welles heard the tune used for the publisher's theme, "Oh, Mr. Kane", in Mexico. "In a Mizz", a 1939 jazz song by Charlie Barnet and Haven Johnson, bookends Thompson's second interview of Susan Alexander Kane. All of the music used in the newsreel came from the RKO music library, edited at Welles's request by the newsreel department to achieve what Herrmann called "their own crazy way of cutting". The News on the March theme that accompanies the newsreel titles is "Belgian March" by Anthony Collins, from the film Nurse Edith Cavell. Other examples are an excerpt from Alfred Newman's score for Gunga Din (the exploration of Xanadu), Roy Webb's theme for Reno (the growth of Kane's empire), and bits of Webb's score for Five Came Back (introducing Walter Parks Thatcher). Herrmann explained his use of motifs: I am not a great believer in the leitmotiv as a device for motion picture music—but in this film its use was practically imperative, because of the story itself and the manner in which it is unfolded. There are two main motifs. One—a simple four-note figure in the brass—is that of Kane's power. It is given out in the first two bars of the film. The second motif is that of Rosebud. Heard as a solo in the vibraphone, it first appears in the death scene at the very beginning of the picture. It is heard again and again throughout the film in various guises, and if followed closely, is a clue to the ultimate identity of Rosebud itself. The motif of power is also transformed, becoming a vigorous piece of ragtime, a hornpipe polka and, at the end of the picture, a commentary on Kane's life. Welles said that the idea for the breakfast scene "was stolen from The Long Christmas Dinner by Thornton Wilder ... a one-act play, which is a long Christmas dinner that takes you through something like 60 years of a family's life." The film often uses long dissolves to signify the passage of time and its psychological effect of the characters, such as the scene in which the abandoned sled is covered with snow after the young Kane is sent away with Thatcher. Welles was influenced by the editing theories of Sergei Eisenstein by using jarring cuts that caused "sudden graphic or associative contrasts", such as the cut from Kane's deathbed to the beginning of the News on the March sequence and a sudden shot of a shrieking cockatoo at the beginning of Raymond's flashback. Although the film typically favors mise-en-scène over montage, the scene in which Kane goes to Susan Alexander's apartment after first meeting her is the only one that is primarily cut as close-ups with shots and counter shots between Kane and Susan. Fabe says that "by using a standard Hollywood technique sparingly, [Welles] revitalizes its psychological expressiveness." ==Sources==

Laura Mulvey explored the anti-fascist themes of Citizen Kane in her 1992 monograph for the British Film Institute. The News on the March newsreel presents Kane keeping company with Hitler and other dictators while he smugly assures the public that there will be no war. She wrote that the film reflects "the battle between intervention and isolationism" then being waged in the United States; the film was released six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, while President Franklin D. Roosevelt was laboring to win public opinion for entering World War II. "In the rhetoric of Citizen Kane," Mulvey writes, "the destiny of isolationism is realised in metaphor: in Kane's own fate, dying wealthy and lonely, surrounded by the detritus of European culture and history." Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is sometimes labeled as a latter-day Citizen Kane. Comparisons have also been made between the career and character of Donald Trump and Charles Foster Kane. Citizen Kane is reported to be one of Trump's favorite films, and his biographer Tim O'Brien has said that Trump is fascinated by and identifies with Kane. ==Pre-release controversy==

To ensure that Hearst's life's influence on Citizen Kane was a secret, Welles limited access to dailies and managed the film's publicity. A December 1940 feature story in Stage magazine compared the film's narrative to Faust and made no mention of Hearst. Hearst began this ban by suppressing promotion of RKO's Kitty Foyle, Once RKO's legal team reassured Schaefer, the studio announced on January 21 that Kane would be released as scheduled, and with one of the largest promotional campaigns in the studio's history. Schaefer brought Welles to New York City for a private screening of the film with the New York corporate heads of the studios and their lawyers. There was no objection to its release provided that certain changes, including the removal or softening of specific references that might offend Hearst, were made. Welles agreed and cut the running time from 122 minutes to 119 minutes. The cuts satisfied the corporate lawyers. ==Trailer==

The trailer does include the only existing behind-the-scenes footage of the film: Welles narrates a tour around the film set, introduces the principal cast members, and offers a brief overview of Kane's character. While Citizen Kane is frequently cited as a groundbreaking, influential film, Simon Callow argues its trailer was no less original in its approach. Callow writes that it has "great playful charm ... it is a miniature documentary, almost an introduction to the cinema ... Teasing, charming, completely original, it is a sort of conjuring trick: Without his face appearing once on the screen, Welles entirely dominates its five [sic] minutes' duration." ==Release==

Radio City Music Hall's management refused to screen Citizen Kane for its premiere. A possible factor was Parsons's threat that The American Weekly would run a defamatory story on the grandfather of major RKO stockholder Nelson Rockefeller. Cecilia Ager, reviewing it in PM, wrote, "Seeing it, it's as if you never really saw a movie before." The Washington Post called it "one of the most important films in the history" of filmmaking. The Washington Evening Star said Welles was a genius who created "a superbly dramatic biography of another genius" and "a picture that is revolutionary". New York Daily News critic Kate Cameron called it "one of the most interesting and technically superior films that has ever come out of a Hollywood studio". New York World-Telegram critic William Boehnel said that the film was "staggering and belongs at once among the greatest screen achievements". Time magazine wrote that "it has found important new techniques in picture-making and story-telling." John O'Hara's Newsweek review called it the best picture he'd ever seen and said Welles was "the best actor in the history of acting." and Dilys Powell of The Sunday Times said the film's style was made "with the ease and boldness and resource of one who controls and is not controlled by his medium." Edward Tangye Lean of Horizon praised the film's technical style, calling it "perhaps a decade ahead of its contemporaries." Other reviews were mixed. Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times said it was brilliant and skillful at times, but had an ending that "rather fizzled". The Chicago Tribune called the film interesting and different but "its sacrifice of simplicity to eccentricity robs it of distinction and general entertainment value". Otis Ferguson of The New Republic said it was "the boldest free-hand stroke in major screen production since Griffith and Bitzer were running wild to unshackle the camera", but also criticized its style, calling it a "retrogression in film technique" and stating that "it holds no great place" in film history. Ferguson reacted to some of the film's celebrated visual techniques by calling them "just willful dabbling" and "the old shell game." In a rare film review, filmmaker Erich von Stroheim criticized the film's story and non-linear structure, but praised the technical style and performances, and wrote "Whatever the truth may be about it, Citizen Kane is a great picture and will go down in screen history. More power to Welles!" Some prominent critics wrote negative reviews. None of them dismissed the film as being altogether bad, noting the film's undeniable technical effects, but they did find fault with the narrative. Eileen Creelman of The New York Sun called it "a cold picture, unemotional, a puzzle rather than a drama". The Argus Weekend Magazine critic Erle Cox called the film "amazing" but thought that Welles's break with Hollywood traditions was "overdone". Tatlers James Agate called it "the well-intentioned, muddled, amateurish thing one expects from high-brows"; he admitted that it was "a quite good film" but insisted that it "tries to run the psychological essay in harness with your detective thriller, and doesn't quite succeed." Other people who disliked the film were W. H. Auden Reception from the public The film did well in cities and larger towns, but it fared poorly in more remote areas. RKO still had problems getting exhibitors to show the film. For example, one chain controlling more than 500 theaters got Welles's film as part of a package but refused to play it, reportedly out of fear of Hearst. The film earned $23,878 during its first week in New York. By the ninth week it only made $7,279. Overall it lost money in New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., but made a profit in Seattle. A college-town exhibitor reported, "I thought it was fine, as did the majority of people who attended the performances. However, there were some who either did not like it or did not get it. Business was just average." "Don't try to tell me Orson Welles isn't a genius; herein he has produced a mighty fine picture, and herewith he has established for me the lowest gross that I have ever, ever experienced. I would have sworn that such ridiculous receipts were utterly impossible. If you cater to film connoisseurs, this picture is made for you. But me, I hurt all over." Others were more blunt: "Nobody liked this and said so. We took in just enough to pay for it so considered ourselves very lucky." "One day after showing this we still feel hesitant about walking abroad without an escort. Half of the few dozen that paid to see this masterpiece walked out, and the other half remained only to think up new dirty cracks to cast in our direction on the way out." "High priced picture. But I made a little money on my help. They took off three days because they were afraid of being all alone in the theatre." "You can stand in front of a mirror and call yourself 'sucker' when you play this one. It does not have one redeeming feature. It will not draw; those that do come will not know what it is all about." A Minnesota exhibitor summed up the situation for rural areas: "My patrons still don't know what it was all about. Too long and too deep. No boxoffice value to small towns." Hearst's response Hearing about Citizen Kane enraged Hearst so much that he banned any advertising, reviewing, or mentioning of it in his papers, and had his journalists libel Welles. The Oscar-nominated documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane solely blames the failure of Citizen Kane on Hearst's actions. The film did decent business at the box office; it went on to be the sixth highest grossing film in its year of release, a modest success its backers found acceptable. Nevertheless, the film's commercial performance fell short of its creators' expectations. Hearst's attacks against Welles went beyond attempting to suppress the film. Welles said that while he was on his post-filming lecture tour a police detective approached him at a restaurant and advised him not to go back to his hotel. A 14-year-old girl had reportedly been hidden in the closet of his room, and two photographers were waiting for him to walk in. Knowing he would be jailed after the resulting publicity, Welles did not return to the hotel but waited until the train left town the following morning. "But that wasn't Hearst," Welles said, "that was a hatchet man from the local Hearst paper who thought he would advance himself by doing it." produced for The Free Company radio series on CBS. Welles described his chance encounter with Hearst in an elevator at the Fairmont Hotel on the night Citizen Kane opened in San Francisco. Hearst and Welles's father were acquaintances, so Welles introduced himself and asked Hearst if he would like to come to the opening. Hearst did not respond. "As he was getting off at his floor, I said, 'Charles Foster Kane would have accepted.' No reply", recalled Welles. "And Kane would have, you know. That was his style—just as he finished Jed Leland's bad review of Susan as an opera singer." Despite Hearst's attempts to destroy the film, since 1941 references to his life and career have usually included a reference to Citizen Kane, such as the headline "Son of Citizen Kane Dies" for the obituary of Hearst's son. In 2012, the Hearst estate agreed to screen the film at Hearst Castle in San Simeon, breaking Hearst's ban on the film. == Re-evaluation==

Modern critics have given Citizen Kane an even more positive response. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 99% of 133 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 9.70/10. In April 2021, it was noted that the addition of an 80-year-old negative review from the Chicago Tribune reduced the film's rating from 100% to 99% on the site; Citizen Kane held its 100% rating until early 2021. On Metacritic, however, the film still has a very rare weighted average score of 100 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". The film was included by the Vatican in a list of important films compiled in 1995, under the category of "Art". The February 2020 issue of New York Magazine lists Citizen Kane as among "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars." Roger Ebert wrote of it, "Its surface is as much fun as any movie ever made. Its depths surpass understanding. I have analyzed it a shot at a time with more than 30 groups, and together we have seen, I believe, pretty much everything that is there on the screen. The more clearly I can see its physical manifestation, the more I am stirred by its mystery." Accolades recognized both Welles and George Coulouris for their performances in Citizen Kane, which was also voted the best film of 1941. It was widely believed the film would win most of its Academy Award nominations, but it received only the award for Best Original Screenplay. Variety reported that block voting by screen extras deprived Citizen Kane of Best Picture and Best Actor, and similar prejudices were likely to have been responsible for the film receiving no technical awards. In 2006, the Writers Guild of America ranked its screenplay 4th in WGA’s list of 101 Greatest Screenplays. ==Legacy==

Citizen Kane was the only film made under Welles's original contract with RKO Pictures, which gave him complete creative control. Welles reluctantly signed a new and less favorable deal with RKO and lost the right to final cut, which later allowed RKO to modify and re-cut The Magnificent Ambersons over his objections. In the U.S., the film was initially neglected until it began appearing on television in the 1950s and was re-released in theaters. American film critic Andrew Sarris was significant in reviving its reputation, describing it as a profoundly influential American film. Over the decades, Citizen Kane has been consistently ranked highly in critical surveys and polls, often cited as the greatest film ever made.' Roger Ebert wrote, ==Rights and home media==

The composited camera negative of Citizen Kane is believed to be lost forever. The most commonly reported explanation is that it was destroyed in a New Jersey film laboratory fire in the 1970s. However, in 2021, Nicolas Falacci revealed that he had been told "the real story" by a colleague, when he was one of two employees in the film restoration lab which assembled the 1991 "restoration" from the best available elements. Falacci noted that throughout the process he had daily visits in 1990-91 from an unnamed "older RKO executive showing up every day – nervous and sweating". According to Falacci's colleague, this elderly man was keen to cover up a clerical error he had made decades earlier when in charge of the studio's inventory, which had resulted in the original camera negatives being sent to a silver reclamation plant, destroying the nitrate film to extract its valuable silver content. Falacci's account is impossible to verify, but it would have been fully in keeping with industry standard practice for many decades, which was to destroy prints and negatives of countless older films deemed non-commercially viable, to extract the silver. Subsequent prints were derived from a master positive (a fine-grain preservation element) made in the 1940s and originally intended for use in overseas distribution. Modern techniques were used to produce a pristine print for a 50th Anniversary theatrical reissue in 1991 which Paramount Pictures released for then-owner Turner Broadcasting System, which earned $1.6 million in North America and worldwide. In 1955, RKO sold the American television rights to its film library, including Citizen Kane, to C&C Television Corp. In 1960, television rights to the pre-1959 RKO's live-action library were acquired by United Artists. RKO kept the non-broadcast television rights to its library. In 1976, when home video was in its infancy, entrepreneur Snuff Garrett bought cassette rights to the RKO library for what United Press International termed "a pittance". In 1978 The Nostalgia Merchant released the film through Media Home Entertainment. By 1980 the 800-title library of The Nostalgia Merchant was earning $2.3 million a year. "Nobody wanted cassettes four years ago," Garrett told UPI. "It wasn't the first time people called me crazy. It was a hobby with me which became big business." RKO Home Video released the film on VHS and Betamax in 1985. On December 3, 1984, The Criterion Collection released the film as its first LaserDisc. It was made from a fine grain master positive provided by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. When told about the then-new concept of having an audio commentary on the disc, Welles was skeptical but said "theoretically, that's good for teaching movies, so long as they don't talk nonsense." Turner Broadcasting System acquired broadcast television rights to the RKO library in 1986 and the full worldwide rights to the library in 1987. The RKO Home Video unit was reorganized into Turner Home Entertainment that year. In 1991 Turner released a 50th Anniversary Edition on VHS and as a collector's edition that includes the film, the documentary Reflections On Citizen Kane, Harlan Lebo's 50th anniversary album, a poster and a copy of the original script. In 1996, Time Warner acquired Turner and Warner Home Video absorbed Turner Home Entertainment. In 2011, Time Warner's Warner Bros. unit had distribution rights for the film. In 2001, Warner Home Video released a 60th Anniversary Collectors Edition DVD. The two-disc DVD included feature-length commentaries by Roger Ebert and Peter Bogdanovich, as well as a second DVD with the feature-length documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1999). It was simultaneously released on VHS. The DVD was criticized for being " bright, ; the dirt and grime had been cleared away, but so had a good deal of the texture, the depth, and the sense of film grain." In 2003, Welles's daughter Beatrice Welles sued Turner Entertainment, claiming the Welles estate is the legal copyright holder of the film. She claimed that Welles's deal to terminate his contracts with RKO meant that Turner's copyright of the film was null and void. She also claimed that the estate of Orson Welles was owed 20% of the film's profits if her copyright claim was not upheld. In 2007 she was allowed to proceed with the lawsuit, overturning the 2004 decision in favor of Turner Entertainment on the issue of video rights. In 2011, it was released on Blu-ray and DVD in a 70th anniversary edition. It was called “the Blu-ray release of the year” by the San Francisco Chronicle, ironically owned by the Hearst family at this point. Supplements included everything available on the 2001 Warner Home Video release, including The Battle Over Citizen Kane DVD. A 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition added a third DVD with RKO 281 (1999), an award-winning TV movie about the making of the film. Its packaging extras included a hardcover book and a folio containing mini reproductions of the original souvenir program, lobby cards, and production memos and correspondence. The transfer for the US releases were scanned as 4K resolution from three different 35mm prints and rectified the quality issues of the 2001 DVD. On August 11, 2021, Criterion announced their first Ultra HD Blu-ray releases, a six-film slate, would include Citizen Kane. Criterion indicated each title was to be available in a combo pack including a 4K UHD disc of the feature film as well as the film and special features on the companion Blu-rays. Citizen Kane was released on November 23, 2021, as a 4K and 3-Blu-ray-disc package. However, the release was recalled because at the half-hour mark on the regular Blu-ray, the contrast fell sharply, which resulted in a much darker image than what was supposed to occur. However, this issue does not affect the 4K disc. Colorization controversy In the 1980s, Citizen Kane became a catalyst in the controversy over the colorization of black-and-white films. One proponent of film colorization was Ted Turner, whose Turner Entertainment Company owned the RKO library. A Turner Entertainment spokesperson initially stated that Citizen Kane would not be colorized, but in July 1988 Turner said, "Citizen Kane? I'm thinking of colorizing it." In early 1989 it was reported that two companies were producing color tests for Turner Entertainment. Criticism increased when filmmaker Henry Jaglom stated that shortly before his death Welles had implored him "don't let Ted Turner deface my movie with his crayons." In February 1989, Turner Entertainment President Roger Mayer announced that work to colorize the film had been stopped due to provisions in Welles's 1939 contract with RKO that "could be read to prohibit colorization without permission of the Welles estate." Mayer added that Welles's contract was "quite unusual" and "other contracts we have checked out are not like this at all." Turner had only colorized the final reel of the film before abandoning the project. In 1991 one minute of the colorized test footage was included in the BBC Arena documentary The Complete Citizen Kane. The colorization controversy was a factor in the passage of the National Film Preservation Act in 1988 which created the National Film Registry the following year. ABC News anchor Peter Jennings reported that "one major reason for doing this is to require people like the broadcaster Ted Turner, who's been adding color to some movies and re-editing others for television, to put notices on those versions saying that the movies have been altered". ==Bibliography==