DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: Orson Welles
SCREENPLAY: Herman J Mankiewicz & Orson Welles
PHOTOGRAPHY: Gregg Toland
EDITOR: Robert Wise
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Van Nest Pohglase
COSTUME DESIGNER: Edward Stevenson
MUSIC: Bernard Herrmann
WITH: Orson Welles (Charles Foster Kane), Joseph Cotten (Jedediah Leland), Everett Sloane (Bernstein), Dorothy Comingore (Susan Alexander Kane), Ruth Warrick (Emily Monroe Norton Kane), William Alland (Jerry Thompson), George Coulouris (Walter Parks Thatcher, Agnes Moorehead (Kane's mother) 

REVIEW

At 80, Citizen Kane might have been knocked off its 'greatest of all time' perch but it's as fresh and relevant as ever in an era of petulant billionaire politicians with a taste for the big lie.   Famously, co-scenarists Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz based the story in part on the life of newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, a fact that was to impact on the film's short term critical reception, distribution and awards prospects.  However, the recent Netflix dramatisation of Kane's writing, David Fincher's Mank (2020), overstates the importance of the Hearst template and understates Welles' undoubted contribution to the script.  Kane's appetites - for food and for innovative artistic expression - reflect those of the wunderkind genius at the helm.
 
Citizen Kane is cinema's perfect match of form and content.  Welles examines politics, capitalism and mass media through the prism of a single life, a rags-to-riches tale in which power and material wealth give precious little joy.  The story-telling is dazzling - a fractured narrative, multiple narrators, unprecedented camera angles, set and sound design, editing and music - but it serves a definite purpose.  Like Trump, Kane is first and foremost "an American", looking for love in all the wrong places.

– Richard Swainson, Hamilton Film Society

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