Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane is probably the most accomplished and startling film debut for a director in film history. Welles had made a name for himself first in theater, with major productions for the Federal Theater Project and other venues. As an actor, he had played the Shadow on radio beginning in 1938 but was not billed, since the producers wanted the character of The Shadow to be mysterious and not identified as an actor. Welles became nationally famous on October 30, 1938 when his radio show, The Mercury Theater, did a production of H.G. Well's "War of the Worlds," part of which was in the form of newscasts, as if this were a real event. What happened would become known as probably the most famous case of mass delusion and hysteria in history

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Darkness, which he had previously done as a radio show. The story fit the pattern than clearly appealed to him most: Again and again in his films, he would return to the dramatic situation of a morally transcendent hero, excessive and compulsively self-destructive, who is an object of veneration to a lesser man--Kane and Leland, Arkadin and Van Stratten, Quinlan and Menzies, even Falstaff and Prince Hal (Carringer 3). The budget for the film was more than twice what Welles had been allotted, which came at a bad time for RKO because the studio was facing financial difficulties. It was agreed that Welles would make a more commercial film first, and he chose a thriller called The Smiler with a Knife. He changed the setting from Britain to America. the film was supposed to be for Carole Lombard, but she turned it down. Welles also gave up on Heart of Darkness after this (Carringer 1-15). Welles next got together with Herman J. Mankiewicz, and between them, they came up with the idea for a send-up of William Randolph Hearst. There is a dispute as to who thought of the idea. the idea of lampooning Hearst was not really new and had been done by several other writers, notably Aldous Huxley in his novel After Many a Summer Die
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Approximate Word count = 5602
Approximate Pages = 22 (250 words per page)

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