Citizen Kane (1941)

Citizen Kane is a 119-minute running drama movie from America, which was released during 1941. The movie was produced, co-written, directed by Orson Welles, who was an American director, actor and writer. He himself acted in a leading role in the movie and it was his first feature movie. Citizen Kane was considered by several filmmakers, critics, and fans to be the greatest movie ever produced. The movie was voted the best movie of all time in five successive in the polls of critics of Sight & Sound, pending it was screened by Vertigo, a psychological thriller movie from America, during the 2012 ballot. The movie topped the list of several movies during 1998, including the 2007 update of the American Film Institute. The movie is chiefly admired for its music, cinematography, and narrative composition, which were pioneering for its time.

Plot of the movie

Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), a publisher of an enormously rich newspaper, has been living unaccompanied in Florida in Xanadu, his huge palatial estate, during the last part of his life, with a "No Encroaching" signal on the gate. On his decease bed, he embraces a snow ball and utters the only word, "Rosebud", earlier than dying. The snow ball slips from his hand and shatters on the ground. The death of Kane turns out to be sensational news all over the world. Jerry Thompson, the Newsreel reporter, turns into intrigued, and makes a decision to learn all he can, regarding the private life of Kane to find out the meaning of the word "Rosebud".

The Newsreel reporter interviews the associates and friends of the Kane, and the story of Kane opens out as a sequence of flashbacks. The reporter meets Susan Alexander, the second wife of Kane, currently an alcoholic who operates her individual nightclub, but she declines to inform him anything and insists that he leave. Then, the reporter, Thompson goes to the personal library of a banker of the late Walter Parks Thatcher, who served as a guardian of Kane during his early days and teenage years. Through the written memoirs of Thatcher, the reporter comes to know about Kane's the childhood of Kane. He then interviews Mr. Bernstein, the personal business manager of Kane, Jedediah Leland, Kane’s alienated best buddy, Susan Alexander, for a second time, productively this time; and, lastly, Raymond, the Kane’s his butler at the Xanadu estate. The butler tells that Kane had said "Rosebud" following Susan left him, exactly subsequent to observing and pocketing a snow sphere.

As the movie ends, the camera discloses that Rosebud was the name of a toboggan from the childhood of Kane, the hint to the only time during his life that he was really happy.

Nominations and awards

Citizen Kane was nominated for Oscar for eight categories during 1942, and the movie grabbed the award for the best writing during 1942.

The movie won the 2001 DVD Exclusive Awards for the best audio commentary and a National Film Registry award in 1989.

The movie won the New York Film Critics Circle Awards for the best film category, and won the second place for the best actor and best director categories in 1941.

It won the Online Film & Television Association award for the best motion picture in 1997.