Citizen Kane

Epic card · No. 6877

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film directed, produced by, and starring Orson Welles and co-written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, and was Welles's first feature film. The quasi-biographical film examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a composite character based on American media barons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, and Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick, as well as aspects of the screenwriters' own lives. After the Broadway success of Welles's Mercury Theatre and the controversial 1938 radio broadcast "The War of the Worlds" on The Mercury Theatre on the Air, Welles was courted by Hollywood. He signed a contract with RKO Pictures in 1939. Although it was unusual for an untried director, he was given freedom to develop his own story, to use his own cast and crew, and to have final cut privilege. Following two abortive attempts to get a project off the ground, he wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane with Herman J...

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