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Citizen Kane

File:Citizen_Kane_poster,_1941_(Style_B,_unrestored).jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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Citizen Kane

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1941 American drama film directed by Orson Welles

OverviewAI-generated

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama and mystery film directed by Orson Welles. The screenplay was written by Welles, Herman J. Mankiewicz, and John Houseman, with Welles also serving as producer. The cast includes Welles, Joseph Cotten, Ruth Warrick, and Everett Sloane. Gregg Toland served as director of photography, while Robert Wise edited the film. Bernard Herrmann composed the score. The production involved RKO Pictures and Mercury Productions.

The narrative is set in New York City and Florida, with filming locations in San Diego and Malibu. The movie has a runtime of 119 minutes. It received the Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay, and was nominated for Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Film Editing. It also won National Board of Review Awards for Top Ten Films and Best Film. The film has a vote average of 7.976 and an IMDb rating of 8.2.

Synthesized by Vinony from 40 facts across 4 sources: Wikidata, TMDb, IMDb, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Film · TMDB

8.0

Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.

Released: 1941-04-17119 minDir: Orson WellesMystery, DramaBudget: $839,727Box office: $23.2M

Cast

  • Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane
  • Joseph Cotten as Jedediah Leland
  • Dorothy Comingore as Susan Alexander Kane
  • Ray Collins as Jim W. Gettys
  • George Coulouris as Walter Parks Thatcher
  • Agnes Moorehead as Mary Kane

Themes

  • media tycoon
  • florida
  • art collector
  • newspaper
  • capitalist
  • journalist
  • sleigh
  • banker
  • american dream
  • failure

This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.

Ratings

IMDb

8.2/10

493,213 votes

Year
1941
Runtime
119 min
Genres
Drama, Mystery

via IMDb

Wikidata facts

Instance of
film
Country of origin
United States
Original language
English language
Director
Orson Welles
Screenwriter
Orson Welles
Cast member
Georgia Backus
Production company
RKO Pictures
Cinematographer
Gregg Toland
Narrative location
Florida
Filming location
Malibu
Duration
119
FilmAffinity ID
615891
Distribution format
video on demand
Image
Citizen Kane poster, 1941 (Style A).jpg
Show 17 more facts
Commons category
Citizen Kane
publication date
1941-00-00
film editor
Robert Wise
topic's main category
Category:Citizen Kane
Commons gallery
Citizen Kane
title
Citizen Kane
production designer
Van Nest Polglase
distributed by
HBO Max
first line
Rosebud...
costume designer
Edward Stevenson
capital cost
839727
review score
4.2/5
on focus list of Wikimedia project
Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
Sources (15)

via Wikidata · CC0

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film directed and produced by, and starring Orson Welles and co-written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz. It 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, 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. Mankiewicz. Principal photography took place in 1940, the same year that its innovative trailer was shown, and the film was released in 1941.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Citizen Kane” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (20)