The film has this kind of delayed appearance on the European scene, and interestingly, it appears alongside neorealism. The main critic who I think really creates the fortunes for this is a man named Andrei Bazzin,. He goes on to write a small book on Wells, which is full of all kinds of interesting factual errors but he bestows more than any other critic that gives the film its world historical significance. And so there's that sense of it as something rather like a great painting, rather like agreat sonata, that every time you go back to it, you pick out and you learn something new.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orson Welles' film, released in 1941, which is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, films yet made. Welles plays the lead role of Charles Foster Kane, a newspaper magnate, and Welles directed, produced and co-wrote this story of loneliness at the heart of a megalomaniac. The plot was partly inspired by the life of William Randolph Hearst, who then used the power of his own newspapers to try to suppress the film’s release. It was to take some years before Citizen Kane reached a fuller audience and, from that point, become so celebrated.
The image above is of Kane addressing a public meeting while running for Governor.
With
Stella Bruzzi
Professor of Film and Dean of Arts and Humanities at University College London
Ian Christie
Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck, University of London
And
John David Rhodes
Professor of Film Studies and Visual Culture at the University of Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson