title: A Quiet Place

text: A Quiet Place is a 2018 American post-apocalyptic horror film directed by John Krasinski and written by Bryan Woods, Scott Beck and Krasinski, from a story conceived by Woods and Beck. The plot revolves around a father (Krasinski) and a mother (Emily Blunt) who struggle to survive and rear their children (Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe) in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by blind monsters with an acute sense of hearing.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Beck and Woods began developing the story while in college. In July 2016, Krasinski read their spec script and was hired to direct and rewrite the script in March the following year. Krasinski and Blunt were cast in the lead roles in May 2017. Filming took place in upstate New York from May to November 2017.


title: A Quiet Place

text: "A Quiet Place" premiered at South by Southwest on March 9, 2018, and was released in the United States on April 6, 2018, by Paramount Pictures. It grossed more than $350 million worldwide and received critical acclaim. The film was described as a "smart, wickedly frightening good time" by Rotten Tomatoes, and chosen by both the National Board of Review and American Film Institute as one of the top ten films of 2018. The film was nominated for several awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score; an Academy Award for Best Sound Editing; a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay; and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for Blunt, which she won.


title: A Quiet Place

text: A sequel, "A Quiet Place Part II", was released on May 28, 2021, with Krasinski returning to the director's chair and the main cast also returning with the addition of Cillian Murphy.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Sightless aliens with sharp hearing have taken over the planet and killed most of the human population. The Abbott family — mother Evelyn, father Lee, deaf daughter Regan, and sons Marcus and Beau — live on their isolated farm in the middle of a forest in upstate New York, and have survived by taking up special precautions in order to make as little noise as possible, such as laying sand paths to avoid stepping on crunching leaves, and using American Sign Language when communicating.


title: A Quiet Place

text: When the family goes into the nearby town for supplies, Beau finds a toy space shuttle, which Lee makes him leave alone because it would make too much noise. As they are getting ready to leave, Regan secretly gives him back the toy, but without its batteries. When they leave, Beau secretly takes back the batteries. While walking back home, Beau turns on the toy space shuttle, which starts making noise. The sound alerts a nearby creature which immediately jumps out of the forest and kills him.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Almost a year after Beau's death, the family has seemingly gone back to normal, with Evelyn several months pregnant. Marcus reluctantly goes fishing with Lee while Regan, upset that she cannot go, visits Beau's grave. While everybody is gone, Evelyn goes into labor; while going downstairs, she steps on a nail and drops a photo frame, which alerts nearby creatures. She flips a switch, turning the surrounding lights around the house red. She tries to go upstairs but finds out that one of the creatures has entered the house. Soon after, it enters the basement; Evelyn sets an egg timer, distracting the creature and giving herself time to run upstairs. She begins giving birth in the bathtub upstairs as the creature slowly makes its way towards her. Lee and Marcus, who are back from fishing, notice the red lights and set off fireworks to create a diversion.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Regan, seeing the fireworks, runs back to the house. Lee then enters the house and brings the baby and Evelyn into the basement. The baby cries, alerting a creature into the basement. This creature fails to find the source, but breaks some water pipes. Marcus and Regan go to the top of a silo and light a fire. Meanwhile, Evelyn wakes up in the flooded basement with the beast still inside; she hides behind a waterfront as this creature moves towards her.


title: A Quiet Place

text: After getting into an argument, Marcus falls through the silo's roof, and Regan jumps in after him. The creature in the basement runs towards the silo and attacks Regan and Marcus. Regan squeezes her cochlear implant, making a high pitched noise. The creature, in pain, runs off, breaking a hole in the silo. Lee finds Regan and Marcus, and tells them to get in his truck and drive back to the house. A creature then appears, attacks Lee, and wounds him; Marcus screams inside the truck, turning the creature's attention to them. Lee, realizing that his children are about to die unless he intervenes, signs to Regan that he has always loved her, before screaming loudly. The creature then kills Lee, giving Regan and Marcus time to drive back to the house.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Back at the house, the children are greeted by Evelyn and they embrace. After hearing a nearby creature shriek, they retreat to the basement, where Regan sees that her dad was studying cochlear implants to help her hear. A creature comes into the basement; Regan takes off her cochlear implant and slams it on a guitar amp; the resulting noise makes the creature shriek in pain and expose its soft inner mouth, allowing Evelyn to shoot and kill it. With Marcus and the baby hiding in the corner of the basement, Regan and Evelyn look on the screens connected to the security cameras and see two other creatures running towards the house. Regan turns up the wattage and lifts the microphone. Evelyn looks at Regan, smiles, and cocks her shotgun.


title: A Quiet Place

text: "A Quiet Place" is a production of Platinum Dunes produced on a budget of $17 million. Krasinski wrote the screenplay with Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Beck and Woods grew up together in Iowa and had watched numerous silent films in college, and they began working on the story that led to the film. They used their experience growing up close to farmland as the setting, including a grain silo as a place considered dangerous in their upbringing.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Beck and Woods began writing "A Quiet Place" in January 2016, and Krasinski read their initial script the following July. The concept of parents protecting their children appealed to Krasinski, especially as his second child with actress Emily Blunt had just been born, and Blunt encouraged him to direct the film. By March 2017, Paramount had bought Beck and Woods's script, and they hired Krasinski to rewrite the script and direct the film, which was his third directorial credit and his first for a major studio. Blunt did not want to be cast in the film, but she read the script on a plane flight and immediately told her husband, "I need to do it." He agreed, and they were both cast in the starring roles. After considering developing the film as a potential fourth installment in the "Cloverfield" franchise, Paramount and Krasinski decided that it would work better as a standalone film capable of forming an independent franchise.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Production took place from May to November 2017 in Dutchess and Ulster counties in upstate New York. Filmmakers spent their budget locally, including a purchase of of corn, which they hired local farmers to grow. Some filming took place on a soundstage in the town of Pawling in Dutchess County, as well as on-location in the county's city of Beacon. Filming also took place on the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail in New Paltz of Ulster County, using the Springtown Truss Bridge. Outside Dutchess and Ulster counties, filming took place on Main Street in Little Falls in Herkimer County, New York.


title: A Quiet Place

text: During filming, the crew avoided making noise so diegetic synchronized sounds (e.g., the sound of rolling dice on a game board) could be recorded; the sounds were amplified in post-production. A traditional musical score was also added, which Krasinski justified in wanting audiences to remain familiar with watching a mainstream film, and not feel like part of a "silence experiment."


title: A Quiet Place

text: Supervising sound editors Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn worked on "A Quiet Place". For scenes from the perspective of the deaf daughter, sound was removed to put greater focus on the visual. They also advised on organizing shots to reflect the creatures' perspective, like showing them noticing a sound, then showing what was causing the sound. Composer Marco Beltrami provided the sound editors music to work with in a way that would not interfere with the sound design throughout the film.


title: A Quiet Place

text: In the film, creatures are blind and communicate through clicking sounds. Aadahl and Van der Ryn said they were inspired by animal echolocation, such as that employed by bats. The sound of feedback, normally avoided by sound editors, was woven into the story at a loudness level that would not bother audiences too much.


title: A Quiet Place

text: The characters communicate in American Sign Language (ASL) to avoid making sound, so the filmmakers hired deaf mentor Douglas Ridloff to teach ASL to the actors and to be available to make corrections. They also hired an ASL interpreter for deaf actress Simmonds, so that spoken and signed language could be interpreted back and forth on set. Simmonds grew up with ASL, and she helped teach her fellow actors to sign. She said, "In the movie, we've been signing together for years and years. So it should look fluent." She observed that each character's use of sign language reflected his or her motivations: the father had short and brief signs which showed his survival mentality, while the mother had more expressive signs as part of wanting her children to experience more than survival. Krasinski said that Simmonds's character used "signing that's very defiant, it's very teenage defiant."


title: A Quiet Place

text: Simmonds said that she suggested for the daughter to rebel rather than cower during a sign-language fight with her father. She also said that the script originally had the father sign "I love you" to his daughter at the end of the film, but she suggested for him to follow with "I've always loved you" to make up for their arguing earlier in the film.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Producers Andrew Form and Bradley Fuller said that they initially planned not to provide on-screen subtitles for sign-language dialogue while providing only "context clues," but they realized that subtitles were necessary for the scene in which the deaf daughter and her hearing father argue about the modified hearing aid. They subsequently added subtitles for all sign-language dialogue in the film.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Production designer Jeffrey Beecroft headed the creature design, and Industrial Light & Magic created the creatures, led by visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar. The director wanted the creatures to look like they had evolved to no longer need eyes, and to be "somewhat humanoid" in nature. Farrar said the initial creature design showed them with rhinoceros-like horns out of their faces, later redesigned. "Vanity Fair" reported, "The team immediately set about pulling references; prehistoric fish, black snakes, and bats, particularly their movement patterns. Inspiration was also drawn from bog people: cadavers that have been mummified in peat, turning the skin black and giving it a sagging, leathery look." Krasinski provided motion-capture for the creatures.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Paramount Pictures released the first trailer for "A Quiet Place" in November 2017. It aired a 30-second commercial for the film during the US football championship Super Bowl LII on February 4, 2018. Of the seven trailers that aired during the playoff, "A Quiet Place" and "Red Sparrow" were shown during the pregame and had the lowest views and social conversations. "A Quiet Place" had 149,000 views on YouTube, 275,000 views on Facebook, and 2,900 social conversations. On February 12, 2018, Krasinski appeared on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" to present the full trailer for "A Quiet Place". The studio spent an estimated $86 million on prints and advertisements for the film.


title: A Quiet Place

text: "A Quiet Place" had its world premiere at the South by Southwest film festival as the opening-night film on March 9, 2018. It was selected from 2,458 submissions, and earned "raves" from critics, according to "IndieWire". Following its premiere, the film experienced social media growth to under views across multiple platforms, outpacing "Get Out" (2017), which had views.


title: A Quiet Place

text: "The Tracking Board" reported on , "The stellar reviews out of SXSW, coupled with the fact that there isn't anything like it in the marketplace, should help it stand out among its bigger-budget competition." "Deadline Hollywood" said on that the film was projected to gross around $20 million in its opening weekend. "Variety" reported on that the film "is tracking to open between" and , which reached a basement of low-$20 million by the week of its release.


title: A Quiet Place

text: "BoxOffice" initially estimated on , 2018, that "A Quiet Place" would gross in its opening weekend, and that it would gross a total of in the United States. By , it increased its estimate to an opening weekend gross of and a US total gross of . The magazine said the film's trailer was well-received online and that it appeared frequently in previews for "". "BoxOffice" wrote, "The horror genre has also shown a knack for over-performing against expectations at the box office in recent years, setting this release up for potential success." It added that "A Quiet Place" would have to compete against another horror film, "Truth or Dare", which would be released the following weekend. The magazine's staff drew "very favorable" comparisons between "A Quiet Place" and the 2016 films "10 Cloverfield Lane" and "Don't Breathe".


title: A Quiet Place

text: "A Quiet Place" was first commercially released in theaters in the first week of April 2018 in multiple territories, including North America. The film grossed $188 million in the United States and Canada, and $152 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $341 million. "Deadline Hollywood" estimates the net profit of the film to be $93 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Paramount Pictures released the film in in the United States and Canada on , 2018, alongside "Blockers", "Chappaquiddick", and "The Miracle Season". The film made $18.9 million on its first day (including $4.3 million from Thursday night previews at ), increasing weekend projections to $47 million. Unlike most horror films, which are front-loaded on Friday and experience drops the rest of the weekend, "A Quiet Place" made $19.1 million on Saturday. It went on to debut to $50.2 million, topping the box office and marking the biggest opening for a Paramount film since "Star Trek Beyond" in July 2016.


title: A Quiet Place

text: The film made $32.9 million in its second weekend, dropping 34% (better than the 50+% that horror films normally see) and finishing second at the box office, behind newcomer "Rampage" ($35.7 million). The hold represented the second-best-ever second weekend for a scary movie behind "It". The film regained the top spot the following week, grossing $20.9 million (a 36% drop), but dropped back down to second place the following weekend behind newcomer "" with $10.7 million.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Through its first two weeks of international release, the film had made $51.7 million, with its top markets being the United Kingdom ($9.2 million), Mexico ($5.1 million), Australia ($4.6 million), Brazil ($3.9 million), Indonesia ($3.4 million), the Philippines ($2.7 million) and Taiwan ($1.9 million). It also debuted to $2.2 million in Russia, the biggest-ever opening for a Paramount horror film in the country. In its third weekend overseas, it dipped only 37% for a total of $15 million from 57 markets. In its fourth weekend in international markets, it grossed $6.6 million. As of May 20, 2018, the film's largest markets were United Kingdom ($16.3 million), Australia ($9.3 million), Mexico ($7.5 million) and Brazil ($6.9 million). The film was released in China on May 18 and made $17.7 million from 8,731 screens in its opening weekend.


title: A Quiet Place

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, and an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads: ""A Quiet Place" artfully plays on elemental fears with a ruthlessly intelligent creature feature that's as original as it is scary – and establishes director John Krasinski as a rising talent." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 82 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an 81% overall positive score and a 63% "definite recommend".


title: A Quiet Place

text: Writing for "Rolling Stone", Peter Travers gave the film 3.5 out of 4, praising the movie's exploration of themes about parenthood, and saying "This new horror classic will fry your nerves to a frazzle."


title: A Quiet Place

text: "Variety"s Owen Gleiberman said, ""A Quiet Place" is a tautly original genre-bending exercise, technically sleek and accomplished, with some vivid, scary moments, though it's a little too in love with the stoned logic of its own premise." Michael Phillips of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film 2.5 out of 4 and said, "My favorite moment, an encounter between Regan and one of the monsters in a cornfield, plays with sound and image and tension, creatively. Other bits are more shameless...I don't know if I'd call "A Quiet Place" enjoyable; it's more grueling than cathartic."


title: A Quiet Place

text: Author Stephen King praised the film in a tweet, saying, "A QUIET PLACE is an extraordinary piece of work. Terrific acting, but the main thing is the SILENCE, and how it makes the camera's eye open wide in a way few movies manage." Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com called "A Quiet Place" "Krasinski's breakthrough as a triple-threat entertainer, but it's been a long time coming... By no accident, he's tackled the horror genre while relying on the unique strength that can be seen throughout his acting work, and one that has made him relatable as an everyman across TV and film—expressive silence."


title: A Quiet Place

text: Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" says: "In its simplicity and punch, this is a film that feels as if it could have been made decades ago, in the classic age of "Planet of the Apes" or "The Omega Man". It is a cracking back-to-basics thriller that does not depend too much on what these creatures look like."


title: A Quiet Place

text: Matthew Monagle of "Film School Rejects" said "A Quiet Place" seemed to be "the early frontrunner for the sparsely intellectual horror movie of the year", like previous films "The Babadook" (2014) and "The Witch" (2015). Monagle said Krasinski, who had directed two previous films, was "making an unusual pivot into a genre typically reserved for newcomers", and considered it to be part of a movement toward horror films layered "in storytelling, [with] character beats not typically found in a horror movie". Tatiana Tenreyro, writing for "Bustle", said while "A Quiet Place" was not a silent film, "It is the first of its kind within the modern horror genre for how little spoken dialogue it actually has." She said the rare moments of spoken dialogue "give depth to this horror movie, showing how the narrative defies the genre's traditional films even further".


title: A Quiet Place

text: Krasinski identified the primary theme of the film as a dramatization of "fears associated with modern parenthood". Krasinski, who had recently become a father, said in a conference interview that he "was already in a state of terror about whether or not [he] was a good enough father", and added that the meaning of parenthood had been elevated for him by imagining being a father in a nightmare world, struggling to simply keep his children alive. Krasinski has told CBS News that "the scares were secondary to how powerful this could be as an allegory or metaphor for parenthood. For me, this is all about parenthood."


title: A Quiet Place

text: Travers' "Rolling Stone" review argued that "the question Krasinski tackles is what defines a family and what's needed to preserve it? 'Who are we', asks Mom, 'if we can't protect our children?' The answers are worked out with satisfying complexity and genuine feeling, proving indeed that home is where family is." "The Hollywood Reporter"s John DeFore described the film as "a terrifying thriller with a surprisingly warm heart" and said, "you might have to go back to Jeff Nichols' 2011 "Take Shelter" to find a film that has used the fantastic this well to convey the combination of fear and responsibility a good parent feels".


title: A Quiet Place

text: Speaking of the political and social commentary the film encouraged, Krasinski said, "That's not what I was going for, but the best compliment you can get on any movie is that it starts a conversation. The fact that people are leaving and talking about anything is really fun—but certainly about deep stuff like that, is awesome." Krasinski, who did not grow up with horror films, said that prior films of the genre such as "Don't Breathe" (2016) and "Get Out" (2017) that had societal commentary were part of his research. In addition to considering his film a metaphor for parenthood, he compared the premise to US politics in 2018, "I think in our political situation, that's what's going on now: You can close your eyes and stick your head in the sand, or you can try to participate in whatever's going on." He cited "Jaws" (1975) as an influence, with how the protagonist police officer moved from New York to an island to avoid frightening situations, and was forced to encounter one in his new location with shark attacks.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Barron was surprised by what he saw as strikingly religious themes in the film. He likened the family's primitive, agrarian life of silence to monasticism, and commends their self-giving love. Barron suggested pro-life themes, especially in the choices of the parents, as Mrs. Abbott risks everything to give birth to a child, and her husband lays down his own life so that the children can live: what Barron sees as the ultimate expression of parental love. Sonny Bunch of "The Washington Post" also commented and expanded on a pro-life message.


title: A Quiet Place

text: Richard Brody, writing for "The New Yorker", criticized "A Quiet Place" for what he perceived to be the inclusion of conservative and pro-gun themes in the film. He described it as "the antithesis of 'Get Out'" and "both apparently unconscious and conspicuously regressive" and opined that it "[brings] to the fore the idealistic elements of gun culture while dramatizing the tragic implications that inevitably shadow that idealism." Krasinski addressed Brody's criticism in a subsequent interview with "Esquire", stating that he did not write the film with an intentional political message. Krasinski said, "I never saw it that way or ever thought of it until it was presented to me in that way. [The film] wasn't about being, you know, silent and political... my whole metaphor was solely about parenthood."


title: A Quiet Place

text: "A Quiet Place" was released on Digital HD on June 26, 2018, and on Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD on July 10, 2018. Paramount Pictures released a 4K, Steelbook+Blu-Ray+Digital version of the film on February 25, 2020.


title: A Quiet Place

text: A sequel to "A Quiet Place", titled "A Quiet Place Part II", was written and directed by Krasinski and stars Blunt, Simmonds, Jupe, Cillian Murphy, and Djimon Hounsou. Production took place in Western New York from June 2019 to September 2019. Paramount Pictures planned to release "A Quiet Place Part II" in theaters on March 20, 2020, however the film was rescheduled to September 4, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was delayed to April 2021 from July 2020, delayed again from September 2020 to January 2021, before being moved to May 28, 2021. The film would also be made available on Paramount+ 45 days after its theatrical release.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film produced by, directed by, and starring Orson Welles. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz. The picture was Welles' first feature film. "Citizen Kane" is frequently cited as the greatest film ever made. For 50 consecutive years, it stood at number 1 in the British Film Institute's "Sight & Sound" decennial poll of critics, and it topped the American Film Institute's 100 Years ... 100 Movies list in 1998, as well as its 2007 update. The film was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories and it won for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Mankiewicz and Welles. "Citizen Kane" is praised for Gregg Toland's cinematography, Robert Wise's editing, Bernard Herrmann's music, and its narrative structure, all of which have been considered innovative and precedent-setting.


title: Citizen Kane

text: 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. Upon its release, Hearst prohibited the film from being mentioned in his newspapers.


title: Citizen Kane

text: 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", collaborating with Herman J. Mankiewicz. Principal photography took place in 1940, the same year its innovative trailer was shown, and the film was released in 1941.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Although it was a critical success, "Citizen Kane" failed to recoup its costs at the box office. The film faded from view after its release, but it returned to public attention when it was praised by French critics such as André Bazin and re-released in 1956. In 1958, the film was voted number 9 on the prestigious Brussels 12 list at the 1958 World Expo. "Citizen Kane" was selected by the Library of Congress as an inductee of the 1989 inaugural group of 25 films for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: Citizen Kane

text: In a mansion called Xanadu, part of a vast palatial estate in Florida, the elderly Charles Foster Kane is on his deathbed. Holding a snow globe, he utters his last word, "Rosebud", and dies. A newsreel obituary tells the life story of Kane, an enormously wealthy newspaper publisher and industrial magnate. Kane's death becomes sensational news around the world, and the newsreel's producer tasks reporter Jerry Thompson with discovering the meaning of "Rosebud".


title: Citizen Kane

text: Thompson sets out to interview Kane's friends and associates. He tries to approach his second wife, Susan Alexander Kane, now an alcoholic who runs her own nightclub, but she refuses to talk to him. Thompson goes to the private archive of the late banker Walter Parks Thatcher. Through Thatcher's written memoirs, Thompson learns about Kane's rise from a Colorado boarding house and the decline of his personal fortune.


title: Citizen Kane

text: In 1871, gold was discovered through a mining deed belonging to Kane's mother, Mary Kane. She hired Thatcher to establish a trust that would provide for Kane's education and to assume guardianship of him. While the parents and Thatcher discussed arrangements inside the boarding house, the young Kane played happily with a sled in the snow outside. When Kane's parents introduced him to Thatcher, the boy struck Thatcher with his sled and attempted to run away.


title: Citizen Kane

text: By the time Kane gained control of his trust at the age of 25, the mine's productivity and Thatcher's prudent investing had made him one of the richest men in the world. He took control of the "New York Inquirer" newspaper and embarked on a career of yellow journalism, publishing scandalous articles that attacked Thatcher's (and his own) business interests. Kane sold his newspaper empire to Thatcher after the 1929 stock market crash left him short of cash.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Thompson interviews Kane's personal business manager, Mr. Bernstein. Bernstein recalls that Kane hired the best journalists available to build the "Inquirer"s circulation. Kane rose to power by successfully manipulating public opinion regarding the Spanish–American War and marrying Emily Norton, the niece of the President of the United States.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Thompson interviews Kane's estranged best friend, Jedediah Leland, in a retirement home. Leland says that Kane's marriage to Emily disintegrated over the years, and he began an affair with amateur singer Susan Alexander while running for Governor of New York. Both his wife and his political opponent discovered the affair and the public scandal ended his political career. Kane married Susan and forced her into a humiliating operatic career for which she had neither the talent nor the ambition, even building a large opera house for her. After Leland began to write a negative review of Susan's disastrous opera debut, Kane fired him but finished the negative review and printed it. Susan protested that she never wanted the opera career anyway, but Kane forced her to continue the season.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Susan consents to an interview with Thompson and describes the aftermath of her opera career. She attempted suicide and so Kane finally allowed her to abandon singing. After many unhappy years and after being hit by Kane, she finally decided to leave him. Kane's butler Raymond recounts that, after Susan left him, he began violently destroying the contents of her bedroom. When he happened upon a snow globe, he grew calm and said "Rosebud". Thompson concludes that he cannot solve the mystery and that the meaning of Kane's last word will remain a mystery.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Back at Xanadu, Kane's belongings are cataloged or discarded by the staff. They find the sled on which the eight-year-old Kane was playing on the day that he was taken from his home in Colorado and throw it into a furnace with other items. Behind their backs, the sled slowly burns and its trade name becomes visible through the flames: "Rosebud".


title: Citizen Kane

text: The beginning of the film's ending credits state that "Most of the principal actors in "Citizen Kane" are new to motion pictures. The Mercury Theatre is proud to introduce them." The cast is listed in the following order:


title: Citizen Kane

text: Additionally, Charles Bennett appears as the entertainer at the head of the chorus line in the "Inquirer" party sequence, and cinematographer Gregg Toland makes a cameo appearance as an interviewer depicted in part of the "News on the March" newsreel. Actor Alan Ladd, still unknown at that time, makes a small appearance as a reporter smoking a pipe at the end of the film.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Hollywood had shown interest in Welles as early as 1936. He turned down three scripts sent to him by Warner Bros. In 1937, he declined offers from David O. Selznick, who asked him to head his film company's story department, and William Wyler, who wanted him for a supporting role in "Wuthering Heights". "Although the possibility of making huge amounts of money in Hollywood greatly attracted him," wrote biographer Frank Brady, "he was still totally, hopelessly, insanely in love with the theater, and it is there that he had every intention of remaining to make his mark."


title: Citizen Kane

text: Following "The War of the Worlds" broadcast of his CBS radio series "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", Welles was lured to Hollywood with a remarkable contract. RKO Pictures studio head George J. Schaefer wanted to work with Welles after the notorious broadcast, believing that Welles had a gift for attracting mass attention. RKO was also uncharacteristically profitable and was entering into a series of independent production contracts that would add more artistically prestigious films to its roster. Throughout the spring and early summer of 1939, Schaefer constantly tried to lure the reluctant Welles to Hollywood. Welles was in financial trouble after failure of his plays "Five Kings" and "The Green Goddess". At first he simply wanted to spend three months in Hollywood and earn enough money to pay his debts and fund his next theatrical season. Welles first arrived on July 20, 1939 and on his first tour, he called the movie studio "the greatest electric train set a boy ever had".


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles signed his contract with RKO on August 21, which stipulated that Welles would act in, direct, produce and write two films. Mercury would get $100,000 for the first film by January 1, 1940, plus 20% of profits after RKO recouped $500,000, and $125,000 for a second film by January 1, 1941, plus 20% of profits after RKO recouped $500,000. The most controversial aspect of the contract was granting Welles complete artistic control of the two films so long as RKO approved both projects' stories and so long as the budget did not exceed $500,000. RKO executives would not be allowed to see any footage until Welles chose to show it to them, and no cuts could be made to either film without Welles's approval. Welles was allowed to develop the story without interference, select his own cast and crew, and have the right of final cut. Granting final cut privilege was unprecedented for a studio since it placed artistic considerations over financial investment. The contract was deeply resented in the film industry, and the Hollywood press took every opportunity to mock RKO and Welles. Schaefer remained a great supporter and saw the unprecedented contract as good publicity. Film scholar Robert L. Carringer wrote: "The simple fact seems to be that Schaefer believed Welles was going to pull off something really big almost as much as Welles did himself."


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles spent the first five months of his RKO contract trying to get his first project going, without success. "They are laying bets over on the RKO lot that the Orson Welles deal will end up without Orson ever doing a picture there," wrote "The Hollywood Reporter". It was agreed that Welles would film "Heart of Darkness", previously adapted for "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", which would be presented entirely through a first-person camera. After elaborate pre-production and a day of test shooting with a hand-held camera—unheard of at the time—the project never reached production because Welles was unable to trim $50,000 from its budget. Schaefer told Welles that the $500,000 budget could not be exceeded; as war loomed, revenue was declining sharply in Europe by the fall of 1939.


title: Citizen Kane

text: He then started work on the idea that became "Citizen Kane". Knowing the script would take time to prepare, Welles suggested to RKO that while that was being done—"so the year wouldn't be lost"—he make a humorous political thriller. Welles proposed "The Smiler with a Knife", from a novel by Cecil Day-Lewis. When that project stalled in December 1939, Welles began brainstorming other story ideas with screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who had been writing Mercury radio scripts. "Arguing, inventing, discarding, these two powerful, headstrong, dazzlingly articulate personalities thrashed toward "Kane"", wrote biographer Richard Meryman.


title: Citizen Kane

text: One of the long-standing controversies about "Citizen Kane" has been the authorship of the screenplay. Welles conceived the project with screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who was writing radio plays for Welles's CBS Radio series, "The Campbell Playhouse". Mankiewicz based the original outline on the life of William Randolph Hearst, whom he knew socially and came to hate after being exiled from Hearst's circle.


title: Citizen Kane

text: In February 1940 Welles supplied Mankiewicz with 300 pages of notes and put him under contract to write the first draft screenplay under the supervision of John Houseman, Welles's former partner in the Mercury Theatre. Welles later explained, "I left him on his own finally, because we'd started to waste too much time haggling. So, after mutual agreements on storyline and character, Mank went off with Houseman and did his version, while I stayed in Hollywood and wrote mine." Taking these drafts, Welles drastically condensed and rearranged them, then added scenes of his own. The industry accused Welles of underplaying Mankiewicz's contribution to the script, but Welles countered the attacks by saying, "At the end, naturally, I was the one making the picture, after all—who had to make the decisions. I used what I wanted of Mank's and, rightly or wrongly, kept what I liked of my own."


title: Citizen Kane

text: The terms of the contract stated that Mankiewicz was to receive no credit for his work, as he was hired as a script doctor. Before he signed the contract Mankiewicz was particularly advised by his agents that all credit for his work belonged to Welles and the Mercury Theatre, the "author and creator". As the film neared release, however, Mankiewicz began wanting a writing credit for the film and even threatened to take out full-page advertisements in trade papers and to get his friend Ben Hecht to write an exposé for "The Saturday Evening Post". Mankiewicz also threatened to go to the Screen Writers Guild and claim full credit for writing the entire script by himself.


title: Citizen Kane

text: After lodging a protest with the Screen Writers Guild, Mankiewicz withdrew it, then vacillated. The question was resolved in January 1941 when the studio, RKO Pictures, awarded Mankiewicz credit. The guild credit form listed Welles first, Mankiewicz second. Welles's assistant Richard Wilson said that the person who circled Mankiewicz's name in pencil, then drew an arrow that put it in first place, was Welles. The official credit reads, "Screenplay by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles". Mankiewicz's rancor toward Welles grew over the remaining twelve years of his life.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Questions over the authorship of the "Citizen Kane" screenplay were revived in 1971 by influential film critic Pauline Kael, whose controversial 50,000-word essay "Raising Kane" was commissioned as an introduction to the shooting script in "The Citizen Kane Book", published in October 1971. The book-length essay first appeared in February 1971, in two consecutive issues of "The New Yorker" magazine.


title: Citizen Kane

text: In the ensuing controversy, Welles was defended by colleagues, critics, biographers and scholars, but his reputation was damaged by its charges. The essay's thesis was later questioned and some of Kael's findings were also contested in later years.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Questions of authorship continued to come into sharper focus with Carringer's 1978 thoroughly researched essay, "The Scripts of "Citizen Kane"". Carringer studied the collection of script records—"almost a day-to-day record of the history of the scripting"—that was then still intact at RKO. He reviewed all seven drafts and concluded that "the full evidence reveals that Welles's contribution to the "Citizen Kane" script was not only substantial but definitive."


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles never confirmed a principal source for the character of Charles Foster Kane. Houseman wrote that Kane is a synthesis of different personalities, with Hearst's life used as the main source. Some events and details were invented, and Houseman wrote that he and Mankiewicz also "grafted anecdotes from other giants of journalism, including Pulitzer, Northcliffe and Mank's first boss, Herbert Bayard Swope." Welles said, "Mr. Hearst was quite a bit like Kane, although Kane isn't really founded on Hearst in particular. Many people sat for it, so to speak". He specifically acknowledged that aspects of Kane were drawn from the lives of two business tycoons familiar from his youth in Chicago—Samuel Insull and Harold Fowler McCormick.


title: Citizen Kane

text: The character of Jedediah Leland was based on drama critic Ashton Stevens, George Stevens's uncle and Welles's close boyhood friend. Some detail came from Mankiewicz's own experience as a drama critic in New York.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Many assumed that the character of Susan Alexander Kane was based on Marion Davies, Hearst's mistress whose career he managed and whom Hearst promoted as a motion picture actress. This assumption was a major reason Hearst tried to destroy "Citizen Kane". Welles denied that the character was based on Davies, whom he called "an extraordinary woman—nothing like the character Dorothy Comingore played in the movie." He cited Insull's building of the Chicago Opera House, and McCormick's lavish promotion of the opera career of his second wife, Ganna Walska, as direct influences on the screenplay.


title: Citizen Kane

text: As a known supporter of President Roosevelt, whom both McCormick and Hearst opposed based on his successful attempts to control the content of radio programs and his ongoing efforts to control print, Welles may have had incentive to use the film to smear both men.


title: Citizen Kane

text: The character of political boss Jim W. Gettys is based on Charles F. Murphy, a leader in New York City's infamous Tammany Hall political machine.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles credited "Rosebud" to Mankiewicz. Biographer Richard Meryman wrote that the symbol of Mankiewicz's own damaged childhood was a treasured bicycle, stolen while he visited the public library and not replaced by his family as punishment. He regarded it as the prototype of Charles Foster Kane's sled. In his 2015 Welles biography, Patrick McGilligan reported that Mankiewicz himself stated that the word "Rosebud" was taken from the name of a famous racehorse, Old Rosebud. Mankiewicz had a bet on the horse in the 1914 Kentucky Derby, which he won, and McGilligan wrote that "Old Rosebud symbolized his lost youth, and the break with his family". In testimony for the Lundberg suit, Mankiewicz said, "I had undergone psycho-analysis, and Rosebud, under circumstances slightly resembling the circumstances in ["Citizen Kane"], played a prominent part."


title: Citizen Kane

text: The "News on the March" sequence that begins the film satirizes the journalistic style of "The March of Time", the news documentary and dramatization series presented in movie theaters by Time Inc. From 1935 to 1938 Welles was a member of the uncredited company of actors that presented the original radio version.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Houseman claimed that banker Walter P. Thatcher was loosely based on J. P. Morgan. Bernstein was named for Dr. Maurice Bernstein, appointed Welles's guardian; Sloane's portrayal was said to be based on Bernard Herrmann. Herbert Carter, editor of "The Inquirer", was named for actor Jack Carter.


title: Citizen Kane

text: "Citizen Kane" was a rare film in that its principal roles were played by actors new to motion pictures. Ten were billed as Mercury Actors, members of the skilled repertory company assembled by Welles for the stage and radio performances of the Mercury Theatre, an independent theater company he founded with Houseman in 1937. "He loved to use the Mercury players," wrote biographer Charles Higham, "and consequently he launched several of them on movie careers."


title: Citizen Kane

text: The film represents the feature film debuts of William Alland, Ray Collins, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Erskine Sanford, Everett Sloane, Paul Stewart, and Welles himself. Despite never having appeared in feature films, some of the cast members were already well known to the public. Cotten had recently become a Broadway star in the hit play "The Philadelphia Story" with Katharine Hepburn and Sloane was well known for his role on the radio show "The Goldbergs". Mercury actor George Coulouris was a star of the stage in New York and London.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Not all of the cast came from the Mercury Players. Welles cast Dorothy Comingore, an actress who played supporting parts in films since 1934 using the name "Linda Winters", as Susan Alexander Kane. A discovery of Charlie Chaplin, Comingore was recommended to Welles by Chaplin, who then met Comingore at a party in Los Angeles and immediately cast her.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles had met stage actress Ruth Warrick while visiting New York on a break from Hollywood and remembered her as a good fit for Emily Norton Kane, later saying that she looked the part. Warrick told Carringer that she was struck by the extraordinary resemblance between herself and Welles's mother when she saw a photograph of Beatrice Ives Welles. She characterized her own personal relationship with Welles as motherly.


title: Citizen Kane

text: "He trained us for films at the same time that he was training himself," recalled Agnes Moorehead. "Orson believed in good acting, and he realized that rehearsals were needed to get the most from his actors. That was something new in Hollywood: nobody seemed interested in bringing in a group to rehearse before scenes were shot. But Orson knew it was necessary, and we rehearsed every sequence before it was shot."


title: Citizen Kane

text: When "The March of Time" narrator Westbrook Van Voorhis asked for $25,000 to narrate the "News on the March" sequence, Alland demonstrated his ability to imitate Van Voorhis and Welles cast him.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles later said that casting character actor Gino Corrado in the small part of the waiter at the El Rancho broke his heart. Corrado had appeared in many Hollywood films, often as a waiter, and Welles wanted all of the actors to be new to films.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Other uncredited roles went to Thomas A. Curran as Teddy Roosevelt in the faux newsreel; Richard Baer as Hillman, a man at Madison Square Garden, and a man in the "News on the March" screening room; and Alan Ladd, Arthur O'Connell and Louise Currie as reporters at Xanadu.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Ruth Warrick (died 2005) was the last surviving member of the principal cast. Sonny Bupp (died 2007), who played Kane's young son, was the last surviving credited cast member. Kathryn Trosper Popper (died March 6, 2016) was reported to have been the last surviving actor to have appeared in "Citizen Kane". Jean Forward (died September 2016), a soprano who dubbed the singing voice of Susan Alexander, was the last surviving performer from the film.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Production advisor Miriam Geiger quickly compiled a handmade film textbook for Welles, a practical reference book of film techniques that he studied carefully. He then taught himself filmmaking by matching its visual vocabulary to "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", which he ordered from the Museum of Modern Art, and films by Frank Capra, René Clair, Fritz Lang, King Vidor and Jean Renoir. The one film he genuinely studied was John Ford's "Stagecoach", which he watched 40 times. "As it turned out, the first day I ever walked onto a set was my first day as a director," Welles said. "I'd learned whatever I knew in the projection room—from Ford. After dinner every night for about a month, I'd run "Stagecoach", often with some different technician or department head from the studio, and ask questions. 'How was this done?' 'Why was this done?' It was like going to school."


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles's cinematographer for the film was Gregg Toland, described by Welles as "just then, the number-one cameraman in the world." To Welles's astonishment, Toland visited him at his office and said, "I want you to use me on your picture." He had seen some of the Mercury stage productions (including "Caesar") and said he wanted to work with someone who had never made a movie. RKO hired Toland on loan from Samuel Goldwyn Productions in the first week of June 1940.


title: Citizen Kane

text: "And he never tried to impress us that he was doing any miracles," Welles recalled. "I was calling for things only a beginner would have been ignorant enough to think anybody could ever do, and there he was, "doing" them." Toland later explained that he wanted to work with Welles because he anticipated the first-time director's inexperience and reputation for audacious experimentation in the theater would allow the cinematographer to try new and innovative camera techniques that typical Hollywood films would never have allowed him to do. Unaware of filmmaking protocol, Welles adjusted the lights on set as he was accustomed to doing in the theater; Toland quietly re-balanced them, and was angry when one of the crew informed Welles that he was infringing on Toland's responsibilities. During the first few weeks of June, Welles had lengthy discussions about the film with Toland and art director Perry Ferguson in the morning, and in the afternoon and evening he worked with actors and revised the script.


title: Citizen Kane

text: On June 29, 1940—a Saturday morning when few inquisitive studio executives would be around—Welles began filming "Citizen Kane". After the disappointment of having "Heart of Darkness" canceled, Welles followed Ferguson's suggestion and deceived RKO into believing that he was simply shooting camera tests. "But we were shooting the "picture"," Welles said, "because we wanted to get started and be already into it before anybody knew about it."


title: Citizen Kane

text: At the time RKO executives were pressuring him to agree to direct a film called "The Men from Mars", to capitalize on "The War of the Worlds" radio broadcast. Welles said that he would consider making the project but wanted to make a different film first. At this time he did not inform them that he had already begun filming "Citizen Kane."


title: Citizen Kane

text: The early footage was called "Orson Welles Tests" on all paperwork. The first "test" shot was the "News on the March" projection room scene, economically filmed in a real studio projection room in darkness that masked many actors who appeared in other roles later in the film. "At $809 Orson did run substantially beyond the test budget of $528—to create one of the most famous scenes in movie history," wrote Barton Whaley.


title: Citizen Kane

text: The next scenes were the El Rancho nightclub scenes and the scene in which Susan attempts suicide. Welles later said that the nightclub set was available after another film had wrapped and that filming took 10 to 12 days to complete. For these scenes Welles had Comingore's throat sprayed with chemicals to give her voice a harsh, raspy tone. Other scenes shot in secret included those in which Thompson interviews Leland and Bernstein, which were also shot on sets built for other films.


title: Citizen Kane

text: During production, the film was referred to as "RKO 281". Most of the filming took place in what is now Stage 19 on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood. There was some location filming at Balboa Park in San Diego and the San Diego Zoo. Photographs of German-Jewish investment banker Otto Hermann Kahn's real-life estate Oheka Castle were used to portray the fictional Xanadu.


title: Citizen Kane

text: In the end of July, RKO approved the film and Welles was allowed to officially begin shooting, despite having already been filming "tests" for several weeks. Welles leaked stories to newspaper reporters that the "tests" had been so good that there was no need to re-shoot them. The first "official" scene to be shot was the breakfast montage sequence between Kane and his first wife Emily. To strategically save money and appease the RKO executives who opposed him, Welles rehearsed scenes extensively before actually shooting and filmed very few takes of each shot set-up. Welles never shot master shots for any scene after Toland told him that Ford never shot them. To appease the increasingly curious press, Welles threw a cocktail party for selected reporters, promising that they could watch a scene being filmed. When the journalists arrived Welles told them they had "just finished" shooting for the day but still had the party. Welles told the press that he was ahead of schedule (without factoring in the month of "test shooting"), thus discrediting claims that after a year in Hollywood without making a film he was a failure in the film industry.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles usually worked 16 to 18 hours a day on the film. He often began work at 4 a.m. since the special effects make-up used to age him for certain scenes took up to four hours to apply. Welles used this time to discuss the day's shooting with Toland and other crew members. The special contact lenses used to make Welles look elderly proved very painful, and a doctor was employed to place them into Welles's eyes. Welles had difficulty seeing clearly while wearing them, which caused him to badly cut his wrist when shooting the scene in which Kane breaks up the furniture in Susan's bedroom. While shooting the scene in which Kane shouts at Gettys on the stairs of Susan Alexander's apartment building, Welles fell ten feet; an X-ray revealed two bone chips in his ankle.


title: Citizen Kane

text: The injury required him to direct the film from a wheelchair for two weeks. He eventually wore a steel brace to resume performing on camera; it is visible in the low-angle scene between Kane and Leland after Kane loses the election. For the final scene, a stage at the Selznick studio was equipped with a working furnace, and multiple takes were required to show the sled being put into the fire and the word "Rosebud" consumed. Paul Stewart recalled that on the ninth take the Culver City Fire Department arrived in full gear because the furnace had grown so hot the flue caught fire. "Orson was delighted with the commotion", he said.


title: Citizen Kane

text: When "Rosebud" was burned, Welles choreographed the scene while he had composer Bernard Herrmann's cue playing on the set.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Unlike Schaefer, many members of RKO's board of governors did not like Welles or the control that his contract gave him. However such board members as Nelson Rockefeller and NBC chief David Sarnoff were sympathetic to Welles. Throughout production Welles had problems with these executives not respecting his contract's stipulation of non-interference and several spies arrived on set to report what they saw to the executives. When the executives would sometimes arrive on set unannounced the entire cast and crew would suddenly start playing softball until they left. Before official shooting began the executives intercepted all copies of the script and delayed their delivery to Welles. They had one copy sent to their office in New York, resulting in it being leaked to press.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Principal shooting wrapped October 24. Welles then took several weeks away from the film for a lecture tour, during which he also scouted additional locations with Toland and Ferguson. Filming resumed November 15 with some re-shoots. Toland had to leave due to a commitment to shoot Howard Hughes' "The Outlaw", but Toland's camera crew continued working on the film and Toland was replaced by RKO cinematographer Harry J. Wild. The final day of shooting on November 30 was Kane's death scene. Welles boasted that he only went 21 days over his official shooting schedule, without factoring in the month of "camera tests". According to RKO records, the film cost $839,727. Its estimated budget had been $723,800.


title: Citizen Kane

text: "Citizen Kane" was edited by Robert Wise and assistant editor Mark Robson. Both would become successful film directors. Wise was hired after Welles finished shooting the "camera tests" and began officially making the film. Wise said that Welles "had an older editor assigned to him for those tests and evidently he was not too happy and asked to have somebody else. I was roughly Orson's age and had several good credits." Wise and Robson began editing the film while it was still shooting and said that they "could tell certainly that we were getting something very special. It was outstanding film day in and day out."


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles gave Wise detailed instructions and was usually not present during the film's editing. The film was very well planned out and intentionally shot for such post-production techniques as slow dissolves. The lack of coverage made editing easy since Welles and Toland edited the film "in camera" by leaving few options of how it could be put together. Wise said the breakfast table sequence took weeks to edit and get the correct "timing" and "rhythm" for the whip pans and overlapping dialogue. The "News on the March" sequence was edited by RKO's newsreel division to give it authenticity. They used stock footage from Pathé News and the General Film Library.


title: Citizen Kane

text: During post-production Welles and special effects artist Linwood G. Dunn experimented with an optical printer to improve certain scenes that Welles found unsatisfactory from the footage. Whereas Welles was often immediately pleased with Wise's work, he would require Dunn and post-production audio engineer James G. Stewart to re-do their work several times until he was satisfied.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles hired Bernard Herrmann to compose the film's score. Where most Hollywood film scores were written quickly, in as few as two or three weeks after filming was completed, Herrmann was given 12 weeks to write the music. He had sufficient time to do his own orchestrations and conducting, and worked on the film reel by reel as it was shot and cut. He wrote complete musical pieces for some of the montages, and Welles edited many of the scenes to match their length.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Written and directed by Welles at Toland's suggestion, the theatrical trailer for "Citizen Kane" differs from other trailers in that it did not feature a single second of footage of the actual film itself, but acts as a wholly original, tongue-in-cheek, pseudo-documentary piece on the film's production. Filmed at the same time as "Citizen Kane" itself, it offers the only existing behind-the-scenes footage of the film. The trailer, shot by Wild instead of Toland, follows an unseen Welles as he provides narration for a tour around the film set, introductions to the film's core cast members, and a brief overview of Kane's character. The trailer also contains a number of trick shots, including one of Everett Sloane appearing at first to be running into the camera, which turns out to be the reflection of the camera in a mirror.


title: Citizen Kane

text: At the time, it was almost unprecedented for a film trailer to not actually feature anything of the film itself; and while "Citizen Kane" is frequently cited as a groundbreaking, influential film, Simon Callow argues its trailer was no less original in its approach. Callow writes that it has "great playful charm ... it is a miniature documentary, almost an introduction to the cinema ... Teasing, charming, completely original, it is a sort of conjuring trick: Without his face appearing once on the screen, Welles entirely dominates its five [sic] minutes' duration."


title: Citizen Kane

text: Film scholars and historians view "Citizen Kane" as Welles's attempt to create a new style of filmmaking by studying various forms of it and combining them into one. However, Welles stated that his love for cinema began only when he started working on the film. When asked where he got the confidence as a first-time director to direct a film so radically different from contemporary cinema, he responded, "Ignorance, ignorance, sheer ignorance—you know there's no confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a profession, I think, that you're timid or careful."


title: Citizen Kane

text: David Bordwell wrote that "The best way to understand "Citizen Kane" is to stop worshipping it as a triumph of technique." Bordwell argues that the film did not invent any of its famous techniques such as deep focus cinematography, shots of the ceilings, chiaroscuro lighting and temporal jump-cuts, and that many of these stylistics had been used in German Expressionist films of the 1920s, such as "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". But Bordwell asserts that the film did put them all together for the first time and perfected the medium in one single film. In a 1948 interview, D. W. Griffith said, "I loved "Citizen Kane" and particularly loved the ideas he took from me."


title: Citizen Kane

text: Arguments against the film's cinematic innovations were made as early as 1946 when French historian Georges Sadoul wrote, "The film is an encyclopedia of old techniques." He pointed out such examples as compositions that used both the foreground and the background in the films of Auguste and Louis Lumière, special effects used in the films of Georges Méliès, shots of the ceiling in Erich von Stroheim's "Greed" and newsreel montages in the films of Dziga Vertov.


title: Citizen Kane

text: French film critic André Bazin defended the film, writing: "In this respect, the accusation of plagiarism could very well be extended to the film's use of panchromatic film or its exploitation of the properties of gelatinous silver halide." Bazin disagreed with Sadoul's comparison to Lumière's cinematography since "Citizen Kane" used more sophisticated lenses, but acknowledged that it had similarities to such previous works as "The 49th Parallel" and "The Power and the Glory". Bazin stated that "even if Welles did not invent the cinematic devices employed in "Citizen Kane", one should nevertheless credit him with the invention of their "meaning"." Bazin championed the techniques in the film for its depiction of heightened reality, but Bordwell believed that the film's use of special effects contradicted some of Bazin's theories.


title: Citizen Kane

text: "Citizen Kane" rejects the traditional linear, chronological narrative and tells Kane's story entirely in flashbacks using different points of view, many of them from Kane's aged and forgetful associates, the cinematic equivalent of the unreliable narrator in literature. Welles also dispenses with the idea of a single storyteller and uses multiple narrators to recount Kane's life, a technique not used previously in Hollywood films. Each narrator recounts a different part of Kane's life, with each story overlapping another. The film depicts Kane as an enigma, a complicated man who leaves viewers with more questions than answers as to his character, such as the newsreel footage where he is attacked for being both a communist and a fascist.


title: Citizen Kane

text: The technique of flashbacks had been used in earlier films, notably "The Power and the Glory" (1933), but no film was as immersed in it as "Citizen Kane". Thompson the reporter acts as a surrogate for the audience, questioning Kane's associates and piecing together his life.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Films typically had an "omniscient perspective" at the time, which Marilyn Fabe says give the audience the "illusion that we are looking with impunity into a world which is unaware of our gaze". "Citizen Kane" also begins in that fashion until the "News on the March" sequence, after which we the audience see the film through the perspectives of others. The "News on the March" sequence gives an overview of Kane's entire life (and the film's entire story) at the beginning of the film, leaving the audience without the typical suspense of wondering how it will end. Instead, the film's repetitions of events compels the audience to analyze and wonder why Kane's life happened the way that it did, under the pretext of finding out what "Rosebud" means. The film then returns to the omniscient perspective in the final scene, when only the audience discovers what "Rosebud" is.


title: Citizen Kane

text: The most innovative technical aspect of "Citizen Kane" is the extended use of deep focus, where the foreground, background, and everything in between are all in sharp focus. Cinematographer Toland did this through his experimentation with lenses and lighting. Toland described the achievement in an article for "Theatre Arts" magazine, made possible by the sensitivity of modern speed film:


title: Citizen Kane

text: New developments in the science of motion picture photography are not abundant at this advanced stage of the game but periodically one is perfected to make this a greater art. Of these I am in an excellent position to discuss what is termed "Pan-focus", as I have been active for two years in its development and used it for the first time in "Citizen Kane". Through its use, it is possible to photograph action from a range of eighteen inches from the camera lens to over two hundred feet away, with extreme foreground and background figures and action both recorded in sharp relief. Hitherto, the camera had to be focused either for a close or a distant shot, all efforts to encompass both at the same time resulting in one or the other being out of focus. This handicap necessitated the breaking up of a scene into long and short angles, with much consequent loss of realism. With pan-focus, the camera, like the human eye, sees an entire panorama at once, with everything clear and lifelike.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Another unorthodox method used in the film was the low-angle shots facing upwards, thus allowing ceilings to be shown in the background of several scenes. Every set was built with a ceiling which broke with studio convention, and many were constructed of fabric that concealed microphones. Welles felt that the camera should show what the eye sees, and that it was a bad theatrical convention to pretend that there was no ceiling—"a big lie in order to get all those terrible lights up there," he said. He became fascinated with the look of low angles, which made even dull interiors look interesting. One extremely low angle is used to photograph the encounter between Kane and Leland after Kane loses the election. A hole was dug for the camera, which required drilling into the concrete floor.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles credited Toland on the same title card as himself. "It's impossible to say how much I owe to Gregg," he said. "He was superb." He called Toland "the best director of photography that ever existed."


title: Citizen Kane

text: "Citizen Kane"s sound was recorded by Bailey Fesler and re-recorded in post-production by audio engineer James G. Stewart, both of whom had worked in radio. Stewart said that Hollywood films never deviated from a basic pattern of how sound could be recorded or used, but with Welles "deviation from the pattern was possible because he demanded it." Although the film is known for its complex soundtrack, much of the audio is heard as it was recorded by Fesler and without manipulation.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles used techniques from radio like overlapping dialogue. The scene in which characters sing "Oh, Mr. Kane" was especially complicated and required mixing several soundtracks together. He also used different "sound perspectives" to create the illusion of distances, such as in scenes at Xanadu where characters speak to each other at far distances. Welles experimented with sound in post-production, creating audio montages, and chose to create all of the sound effects for the film instead of using RKO's library of sound effects.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles used an aural technique from radio called the "lightning-mix". Welles used this technique to link complex montage sequences via a series of related sounds or phrases. For example, Kane grows from a child into a young man in just two shots. As Thatcher hands eight-year-old Kane a sled and wishes him a Merry Christmas, the sequence suddenly jumps to a shot of Thatcher fifteen years later, completing the sentence he began in both the previous shot and the chronological past. Other radio techniques include using a number of voices, each saying a sentence or sometimes merely a fragment of a sentence, and splicing the dialogue together in quick succession, such as the projection room scene. The film's sound cost $16,996, but was originally budgeted at $7,288.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Film critic and director François Truffaut wrote that "Before "Kane", nobody in Hollywood knew how to set music properly in movies. "Kane" was the first, in fact the only, great film that uses radio techniques. ... A lot of filmmakers know enough to follow Auguste Renoir's advice to fill the eyes with images at all costs, but only Orson Welles understood that the sound track had to be filled in the same way." Cedric Belfrage of "The Clipper" wrote "of all of the delectable flavours that linger on the palate after seeing "Kane", the use of sound is the strongest."


title: Citizen Kane

text: The make-up for "Citizen Kane" was created and applied by Maurice Seiderman (1907–1989), a junior member of the RKO make-up department. He had not been accepted into the union, which recognized him as only an apprentice, but RKO nevertheless used him to make up principal actors. "Apprentices were not supposed to make up any principals, only extras, and an apprentice could not be on a set without a journeyman present," wrote make-up artist Dick Smith, who became friends with Seiderman in 1979. "During his years at RKO I suspect these rules were probably overlooked often." "Seiderman had gained a reputation as one of the most inventive and creatively precise up-and-coming makeup men in Hollywood," wrote biographer Frank Brady.


title: Citizen Kane

text: On an early tour of RKO, Welles met Seiderman in the small make-up lab that he created for himself in an unused dressing room. "Welles fastened on to him at once," wrote biographer Charles Higham, as Seiderman had developed his own makeup methods "that ensured complete naturalness of expression—a naturalness unrivaled in Hollywood." Seiderman developed a thorough plan for aging the principal characters, first making a plaster cast of the face of each of the actors who aged. He made a plaster mold of Welles's body down to the hips.


title: Citizen Kane

text: "My sculptural techniques for the characters' aging were handled by adding pieces of white modeling clay, which matched the plaster, onto the surface of each bust," Seiderman told Norman Gambill. When Seiderman achieved the desired effect, he cast the clay pieces in a soft plastic material that he formulated himself. These appliances were then placed onto the plaster bust and a four-piece mold was made for each phase of aging. The castings were then fully painted and paired with the appropriate wig for evaluation.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Before the actors went before the cameras each day, the pliable pieces were applied directly to their faces to recreate Seiderman's sculptural image. The facial surface was underpainted in a flexible red plastic compound; The red ground resulted in a warmth of tone that was picked up by the panchromatic film. Over that was applied liquid grease paint, and finally a colorless translucent talcum. Seiderman created the effect of skin pores on Kane's face by stippling the surface with a negative cast made from an orange peel.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles often arrived on the set at 2:30 am, as application of the sculptural make-up took 3½ hours for the oldest incarnation of Kane. The make-up included appliances to age Welles's shoulders, breast, and stomach. "In the film and production photographs, you can see that Kane had a belly that overhung," Seiderman said. "That was not a costume, it was the rubber sculpture that created the image. You could see how Kane's silk shirt clung wetly to the character's body. It could not have been done any other way."


title: Citizen Kane

text: Seiderman worked with Charles Wright on the wigs. These went over a flexible skull cover that Seiderman created and sewed into place with elastic thread. When he found the wigs too full, he untied one hair at a time to alter their shape. Kane's mustache was inserted into the makeup surface a few hairs at a time, to realistically vary the color and texture. He also made scleral lenses for Welles, Dorothy Comingore, George Coulouris, and Everett Sloane to dull the brightness of their young eyes. The lenses took a long time to fit properly, and Seiderman began work on them before devising any of the other makeup. "I painted them to age in phases, ending with the blood vessels and the "arcus senilis" of old age." Seiderman's tour de force was the breakfast montage, shot all in one day. "Twelve years, two years shot at each scene," he said.


title: Citizen Kane

text: The major studios gave screen credit for make-up only to the department head. When RKO make-up department head Mel Berns refused to share credit with Seiderman, who was only an apprentice, Welles told Berns that there would be no make-up credit. Welles signed a large advertisement in the Los Angeles newspaper:


title: Citizen Kane

text: THANKS TO EVERYBODY WHO GETS SCREEN CREDIT FOR "CITIZEN KANE"AND THANKS TO THOSE WHO DON'TTO ALL THE ACTORS, THE CREW, THE OFFICE, THE MUSICIANS, EVERYBODYAND PARTICULARLY TO MAURICE SEIDERMAN, THE BEST MAKE-UP MAN IN THE WORLD


title: Citizen Kane

text: Although credited as an assistant, the film's art direction was done by Perry Ferguson. Welles and Ferguson got along during their collaboration. In the weeks before production began Welles, Toland and Ferguson met regularly to discuss the film and plan every shot, set design and prop. Ferguson would take notes during these discussions and create rough designs of the sets and story boards for individual shots. After Welles approved the rough sketches, Ferguson made miniature models for Welles and Toland to experiment on with a periscope in order to rehearse and perfect each shot. Ferguson then had detailed drawings made for the set design, including the film's lighting design. The set design was an integral part of the film's overall look and Toland's cinematography.


title: Citizen Kane

text: In the original script the Great Hall at Xanadu was modeled after the Great Hall in Hearst Castle and its design included a mixture of Renaissance and Gothic styles. "The Hearstian element is brought out in the almost perverse juxtaposition of incongruous architectural styles and motifs," wrote Carringer. Before RKO cut the film's budget, Ferguson's designs were more elaborate and resembled the production designs of early Cecil B. DeMille films and "Intolerance". The budget cuts reduced Ferguson's budget by 33 percent and his work cost $58,775 total, which was below average at that time.


title: Citizen Kane

text: To save costs Ferguson and Welles re-wrote scenes in Xanadu's living room and transported them to the Great Hall. A large staircase from another film was found and used at no additional cost. When asked about the limited budget, Ferguson said "Very often—as in that much-discussed 'Xanadu' set in "Citizen Kane"—we can make a foreground piece, a background piece, and imaginative lighting suggests a great deal more on the screen than actually exists on the stage." According to the film's official budget there were 81 sets built, but Ferguson said there were between 106 and 116.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Still photographs of Oheka Castle in Huntington, New York, were used in the opening montage, representing Kane's Xanadu estate. Ferguson also designed statues from Kane's collection with styles ranging from Greek to German Gothic. The sets were also built to accommodate Toland's camera movements. Walls were built to fold and furniture could quickly be moved. The film's famous ceilings were made out of muslin fabric and camera boxes were built into the floors for low angle shots. Welles later said that he was proud that the film production value looked much more expensive than the film's budget. Although neither worked with Welles again, Toland and Ferguson collaborated in several films in the 1940s.


title: Citizen Kane

text: The film's special effects were supervised by RKO department head Vernon L. Walker. Welles pioneered several visual effects to cheaply shoot things like crowd scenes and large interior spaces. For example, the scene in which the camera in the opera house rises dramatically to the rafters, to show the workmen showing a lack of appreciation for Susan Alexander Kane's performance, was shot by a camera craning upwards over the performance scene, then a curtain wipe to a miniature of the upper regions of the house, and then another curtain wipe matching it again with the scene of the workmen. Other scenes effectively employed miniatures to make the film look much more expensive than it truly was, such as various shots of Xanadu.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Some shots included rear screen projection in the background, such as Thompson's interview of Leland and some of the ocean backgrounds at Xanadu. Bordwell claims that the scene where Thatcher agrees to be Kane's guardian used rear screen projection to depict young Kane in the background, despite this scene being cited as a prime example of Toland's deep focus cinematography. A special effects camera crew from Walker's department was required for the extreme close-up shots such as Kane's lips when he says "Rosebud" and the shot of the typewriter typing Susan's bad review.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Optical effects artist Dunn claimed that "up to 80 percent of some reels was optically printed." These shots were traditionally attributed to Toland for years. The optical printer improved some of the deep focus shots. One problem with the optical printer was that it sometimes created excessive graininess, such as the optical zoom out of the snow globe. Welles decided to superimpose snow falling to mask the graininess in these shots. Toland said that he disliked the results of the optical printer, but acknowledged that "RKO special effects expert Vernon Walker, ASC, and his staff handled their part of the production—a by no means inconsiderable assignment—with ability and fine understanding."


title: Citizen Kane

text: Any time deep focus was impossible—as in the scene in which Kane finishes a negative review of Susan's opera while at the same time firing the person who began writing the review—an optical printer was used to make the whole screen appear in focus, visually layering one piece of film onto another. However, some apparently deep-focus shots were the result of in-camera effects, as in the famous scene in which Kane breaks into Susan's room after her suicide attempt. In the background, Kane and another man break into the room, while simultaneously the medicine bottle and a glass with a spoon in it are in closeup in the foreground. The shot was an in-camera matte shot. The foreground was shot first, with the background dark. Then the background was lit, the foreground darkened, the film rewound, and the scene re-shot with the background action.


title: Citizen Kane

text: The film's music was composed by Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann had composed for Welles for his Mercury Theatre radio broadcasts. Because it was Herrmann's first motion picture score, RKO wanted to pay him only a small fee, but Welles insisted he be paid at the same rate as Max Steiner.


title: Citizen Kane

text: The score established Herrmann as an important new composer of film soundtracks and eschewed the typical Hollywood practice of scoring a film with virtually non-stop music. Instead Herrmann used what he later described as "radio scoring", musical cues typically 5–15 seconds in length that bridge the action or suggest a different emotional response. The breakfast montage sequence begins with a graceful waltz theme and gets darker with each variation on that theme as the passage of time leads to the hardening of Kane's personality and the breakdown of his first marriage.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Herrmann realized that musicians slated to play his music were hired for individual unique sessions; there was no need to write for existing ensembles. This meant that he was free to score for unusual combinations of instruments, even instruments that are not commonly heard. In the opening sequence, for example, the tour of Kane's estate Xanadu, Herrmann introduces a recurring leitmotif played by low woodwinds, including a quartet of alto flutes.


title: Citizen Kane

text: For Susan Alexander Kane's operatic sequence, Welles suggested that Herrmann compose a witty parody of a Mary Garden vehicle, an aria from "Salammbô". "Our problem was to create something that would give the audience the feeling of the quicksand into which this simple little girl, having a charming but small voice, is suddenly thrown," Herrmann said. Writing in the style of a 19th-century French Oriental opera, Herrmann put the aria in a key that would force the singer to strain to reach the high notes, culminating in a high D, well outside the range of Susan Alexander. Soprano Jean Forward dubbed the vocal part for Comingore. Houseman claimed to have written the libretto, based on Jean Racine's "Athalie" and "Phedre", although some confusion remains since Lucille Fletcher remembered preparing the lyrics. Fletcher, then Herrmann's wife, wrote the libretto for his opera "Wuthering Heights".


title: Citizen Kane

text: Music enthusiasts consider the scene in which Susan Alexander Kane attempts to sing the famous cavatina "Una voce poco fa" from "Il barbiere di Siviglia" by Gioachino Rossini with vocal coach Signor Matiste as especially memorable for depicting the horrors of learning music through mistakes.


title: Citizen Kane

text: In 1972, Herrmann said, "I was fortunate to start my career with a film like "Citizen Kane", it's been a downhill run ever since!" Welles loved Herrmann's score and told director Henry Jaglom that it was 50 percent responsible for the film's artistic success.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Some incidental music came from other sources. Welles heard the tune used for the publisher's theme, "Oh, Mr. Kane", in Mexico. Called "A Poco No", the song was written by Pepe Guízar and special lyrics were written by Herman Ruby.


title: Citizen Kane

text: "In a Mizz", a 1939 jazz song by Charlie Barnet and Haven Johnson, bookends Thompson's second interview of Susan Alexander Kane. "I kind of based the whole scene around that song," Welles said. "The music is by Nat Cole—it's his trio." Later—beginning with the lyrics, "It can't be love"—"In a Mizz" is performed at the Everglades picnic, framing the fight in the tent between Susan and Kane. Musicians including bandleader Cee Pee Johnson (drums), Alton Redd (vocals), Raymond Tate (trumpet), Buddy Collette (alto sax) and Buddy Banks (tenor sax) are featured.


title: Citizen Kane

text: All of the music used in the newsreel came from the RKO music library, edited at Welles's request by the newsreel department to achieve what Herrmann called "their own crazy way of cutting". The "News on the March" theme that accompanies the newsreel titles is "Belgian March" by Anthony Collins, from the film "Nurse Edith Cavell". Other examples are an excerpt from Alfred Newman's score for "Gunga Din" (the exploration of Xanadu), Roy Webb's theme for the film "Reno" (the growth of Kane's empire), and bits of Webb's score for "Five Came Back" (introducing Walter Parks Thatcher).


title: Citizen Kane

text: One of the editing techniques used in "Citizen Kane" was the use of montage to collapse time and space, using an episodic sequence on the same set while the characters changed costume and make-up between cuts so that the scene following each cut would look as if it took place in the same location, but at a time long after the previous cut. In the breakfast montage, Welles chronicles the breakdown of Kane's first marriage in five vignettes that condense 16 years of story time into two minutes of screen time. Welles said that the idea for the breakfast scene "was stolen from "The Long Christmas Dinner" by Thornton Wilder ... a one-act play, which is a long Christmas dinner that takes you through something like 60 years of a family's life." The film often uses long dissolves to signify the passage of time and its psychological effect of the characters, such as the scene in which the abandoned sled is covered with snow after the young Kane is sent away with Thatcher.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles was influenced by the editing theories of Sergei Eisenstein by using jarring cuts that caused "sudden graphic or associative contrasts", such as the cut from Kane's deathbed to the beginning of the "News on the March" sequence and a sudden shot of a shrieking cockatoo at the beginning of Raymond's flashback. Although the film typically favors mise-en-scène over montage, the scene in which Kane goes to Susan Alexander's apartment after first meeting her is the only one that is primarily cut as close-ups with shots and counter shots between Kane and Susan. Fabe says that "by using a standard Hollywood technique sparingly, [Welles] revitalizes its psychological expressiveness."


title: Citizen Kane

text: Laura Mulvey explored the anti-fascist themes of "Citizen Kane" in her 1992 monograph for the British Film Institute. The "News on the March" newsreel presents Kane keeping company with Hitler and other dictators while he smugly assures the public that there will be no war. She wrote that the film reflects "the battle between intervention and isolationism" then being waged in the United States; the film was released six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, while President Franklin D. Roosevelt was laboring to win public opinion for entering World War II. "In the rhetoric of "Citizen Kane"," Mulvey writes, "the destiny of isolationism is realised in metaphor: in Kane's own fate, dying wealthy and lonely, surrounded by the detritus of European culture and history."


title: Citizen Kane

text: Journalist Ignacio Ramonet has cited the film as an early example of mass media manipulation of public opinion and the power that media conglomerates have on influencing the democratic process. He believes that this early example of a media mogul influencing politics is outdated and that today "there are media groups with the power of a thousand Citizen Kanes." Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is sometimes labeled as a latter-day "Citizen Kane".


title: Citizen Kane

text: Comparisons have also been made between the career and character of Donald Trump and Charles Foster Kane. "Citizen Kane" is reported to be one of Trump's favorite films, and his biographer Tim O’Brien has said that Trump is fascinated by and identifies with Kane.


title: Citizen Kane

text: To ensure that Hearst's life's influence on "Citizen Kane" was a secret, Welles limited access to dailies and managed the film's publicity. A December 1940 feature story in "Stage" magazine compared the film's narrative to "Faust" and made no mention of Hearst.


title: Citizen Kane

text: The film was scheduled to premiere at RKO's flagship theater Radio City Music Hall on February 14, but in early January 1941 Welles was not finished with post-production work and told RKO that it still needed its musical score. Writers for national magazines had early deadlines and so a rough cut was previewed for a select few on January 3, 1941 for such magazines as "Life", "Look" and "Redbook". Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (an arch-rival of Louella Parsons, the Hollywood correspondent for Hearst papers) showed up to the screening uninvited. Most of the critics at the preview said that they liked the film and gave it good advanced reviews. Hopper wrote negatively about it, calling the film a "vicious and irresponsible attack on a great man" and criticizing its corny writing and old fashioned photography.


title: Citizen Kane

text: "Friday" magazine ran an article drawing point-by-point comparisons between Kane and Hearst and documented how Welles had led on Parsons. Up until this Welles had been friendly with Parsons. The magazine quoted Welles as saying that he couldn't understand why she was so nice to him and that she should "wait until the woman finds out that the picture's about her boss." Welles immediately denied making the statement and the editor of "Friday" admitted that it might be false. Welles apologized to Parsons and assured her that he had never made that remark.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Shortly after "Friday"s article, Hearst sent Parsons an angry letter complaining that he had learned about "Citizen Kane" from Hopper and not her. The incident made a fool of Parsons and compelled her to start attacking Welles and the film. Parsons demanded a private screening of the film and personally threatened Schaefer on Hearst's behalf, first with a lawsuit and then with a vague threat of consequences for everyone in Hollywood. On January 10 Parsons and two lawyers working for Hearst were given a private screening of the film. James G. Stewart was present at the screening and said that she walked out of the film.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Soon after, Parsons called Schaefer and threatened RKO with a lawsuit if they released "Kane". She also contacted the management of Radio City Music Hall and demanded that they should not screen it. The next day, the front page headline in "Daily Variety" read, "HEARST BANS RKO FROM PAPERS." Hearst began this ban by suppressing promotion of RKO's "Kitty Foyle", but in two weeks the ban was lifted for everything except "Kane."


title: Citizen Kane

text: When Schaefer did not submit to Parsons she called other studio heads and made more threats on behalf of Hearst to expose the private lives of people throughout the entire film industry. Welles was threatened with an exposé about his romance with the married actress Dolores del Río, who wanted the affair kept secret until her divorce was finalized. In a statement to journalists Welles denied that the film was about Hearst. Hearst began preparing an injunction against the film for libel and invasion of privacy, but Welles's lawyer told him that he doubted Hearst would proceed due to the negative publicity and required testimony that an injunction would bring.


title: Citizen Kane

text: "The Hollywood Reporter" ran a front-page story on January 13 that Hearst papers were about to run a series of editorials attacking Hollywood's practice of hiring refugees and immigrants for jobs that could be done by Americans. The goal was to put pressure on the other studios to force RKO to shelve "Kane". Many of those immigrants had fled Europe after the rise of fascism and feared losing the haven of the United States. Soon afterwards, Schaefer was approached by Nicholas Schenck, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's parent company, with an offer on the behalf of Louis B. Mayer and other Hollywood executives to RKO Pictures of $805,000 to destroy all prints of the film and burn the negative.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Once RKO's legal team reassured Schaefer, the studio announced on January 21 that "Kane" would be released as scheduled, and with one of the largest promotional campaigns in the studio's history. Schaefer brought Welles to New York City for a private screening of the film with the New York corporate heads of the studios and their lawyers. There was no objection to its release provided that certain changes, including the removal or softening of specific references that might offend Hearst, were made. Welles agreed and cut the running time from 122 minutes to 119 minutes. The cuts satisfied the corporate lawyers.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Hearing about "Citizen Kane" enraged Hearst so much that he banned any advertising, reviewing, or mentioning of it in his papers, and had his journalists libel Welles. Welles used Hearst's opposition as a pretext for previewing the film in several opinion-making screenings in Los Angeles, lobbying for its artistic worth against the hostile campaign that Hearst was waging. A special press screening took place in early March. Henry Luce was in attendance and reportedly wanted to buy the film from RKO for $1 million to distribute it himself. The reviews for this screening were positive. A "Hollywood Review" headline read, "Mr. Genius Comes Through; 'Kane' Astonishing Picture". The "Motion Picture Herald" reported about the screening and Hearst's intention to sue RKO. "Time" magazine wrote that "The objection of Mr. Hearst, who founded a publishing empire on sensationalism, is ironic. For to most of the several hundred people who have seen the film at private screenings, "Citizen Kane" is the most sensational product of the U.S. movie industry." A second press screening occurred in April.


title: Citizen Kane

text: When Schaefer rejected Hearst's offer to suppress the film, Hearst banned every newspaper and station in his media conglomerate from reviewing—or even mentioning—the film. He also had many movie theaters ban it, and many did not show it through fear of being socially exposed by his massive newspaper empire. The Oscar-nominated documentary "The Battle Over Citizen Kane" lays the blame for the film's relative failure squarely at the feet of Hearst. The film did decent business at the box office; it went on to be the sixth highest grossing film in its year of release, a modest success its backers found acceptable. Nevertheless, the film's commercial performance fell short of its creators' expectations. Hearst's biographer David Nasaw points out that Hearst's actions were not the only reason "Kane" failed, however: the innovations Welles made with narrative, as well as the dark message at the heart of the film (that the pursuit of success is ultimately futile) meant that a popular audience could not appreciate its merits.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Hearst's attacks against Welles went beyond attempting to suppress the film. Welles said that while he was on his post-filming lecture tour a police detective approached him at a restaurant and advised him not to go back to his hotel. A 14-year-old girl had reportedly been hidden in the closet of his room, and two photographers were waiting for him to walk in. Knowing he would be jailed after the resulting publicity, Welles did not return to the hotel but waited until the train left town the following morning. "But that wasn't Hearst," Welles said, "that was a hatchet man from the local Hearst paper who thought he would advance himself by doing it."


title: Citizen Kane

text: In March 1941, Welles directed a Broadway version of Richard Wright's "Native Son" (and, for luck, used a "Rosebud" sled as a prop). "Native Son" received positive reviews, but Hearst-owned papers used the opportunity to attack Welles as a communist. The Hearst papers vociferously attacked Welles after his April 1941 radio play, "His Honor, the Mayor", produced for The Free Company radio series on CBS.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Welles described his chance encounter with Hearst in an elevator at the Fairmont Hotel on the night "Citizen Kane" opened in San Francisco. Hearst and Welles's father were acquaintances, so Welles introduced himself and asked Hearst if he would like to come to the opening. Hearst did not respond. "As he was getting off at his floor, I said, 'Charles Foster Kane would have accepted.' No reply", recalled Welles. "And Kane would have, you know. That was his style—just as he finished Jed Leland's bad review of Susan as an opera singer."


title: Citizen Kane

text: In 1945, Hearst journalist Robert Shaw wrote that the film got "a full tide of insensate fury" from Hearst papers, "then it ebbed suddenly. With one brain cell working, the chief realized that such hysterical barking by the trained seals would attract too much attention to the picture. But to this day the name of Orson Welles is on the official son-of-a-bitch list of every Hearst newspaper."


title: Citizen Kane

text: Despite Hearst's attempts to destroy the film, since 1941 references to his life and career have usually included a reference to "Citizen Kane", such as the headline 'Son of Citizen Kane Dies' for the obituary of Hearst's son. In 2012, the Hearst estate agreed to screen the film at Hearst Castle in San Simeon, breaking Hearst's ban on the film.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Radio City Music Hall's management refused to screen "Citizen Kane" for its premiere. A possible factor was Parsons's threat that "The American Weekly" would run a defamatory story on the grandfather of major RKO stockholder Nelson Rockefeller. Other exhibitors feared being sued for libel by Hearst and refused to show the film. In March Welles threatened the RKO board of governors with a lawsuit if they did not release the film. Schaefer stood by Welles and opposed the board of governors. When RKO still delayed the film's release Welles offered to buy the film for $1 million and the studio finally agreed to release the film on May 1.


title: Citizen Kane

text: Schaefer managed to book a few theaters willing to show the film. Hearst papers refused to accept advertising. RKO's publicity advertisements for the film erroneously promoted it as a love story.


title: Citizen Kane

text: "Kane" opened at the RKO Palace Theatre on Broadway in New York on May 1, 1941, in Chicago on May 6, and in Los Angeles on May 8. Welles said that at the Chicago premiere that he attended the theater was almost empty. It did well in cities and larger towns but fared poorly in more remote areas. RKO still had problems getting exhibitors to show the film. For example, one chain controlling more than 500 theaters got Welles's film as part of a package but refused to play it, reportedly out of fear of Hearst. Hearst's disruption of the film's release damaged its box office performance and, as a result, it lost $160,000 during its initial run. The film earned $23,878 during its first week in New York. By the ninth week it only made $7,279. Overall it lost money in New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., but made a profit in Seattle.