Orson Welles' first film is an amazing adventure in celluloid narrative, into a newer screen technique. That it is by no means completely successful is natural. Such a technique can only come after years of experiment.

Welles has taken the story of a great publisher and he tells it over a period of fifty years. Charles Foster Kane, his great man, is dead at the very beginning. Then Welles goes back and you see Kane as a rich boy acquire a moribund New York newspaper, ruthlessly invest it with a shoddy vitality. You see Kane go on to power, to a huge chain of newspapers, to even start a war, to run for governor, to acquire a tremendous collection of art treasures, to build a great retreat for himself on a lonely mountain, to marry and lose two women. Finally you see his huge newspaper empire crumble and collapse — and you see Kane himself, bitter and deserted, die with one word, "Rosebud," on his lips. That word has significance, but I shall not spoil your viewing of Citizen Kane by telling it here.

Welles doesn't relate this as film stories usually are fabricated. In a sort of tapestry pattern you see Citizen Kane through the eyes of his associates, each with a different conception of him. It's a pitiless vivisection of a lonely man, hungry for power, who collected newspapers, art, and women, who failed because he felt he could buy anything.

Orson Welles gives a remarkable performance of the man from twenty-five to seventy. Best of the cast are Dorothy Comingore as Kane's second wife and Joseph Cotten as his boyhood friend.

The picture is a fascinating experiment. It frequently fumbles, grows repetitious, even dull. But it has electric moments.

Citizen Kane distinctly isn't for dyed-in-the-wool movie fans who take their entertainment straight.

Publication Date: May 24, 1941