The film Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) has been hailed as a masterpiece and is often cited as one of the best films if not the best film ever made. The film has been much imitated, but much of it was totally fresh and new when the film was first released. The film has a density that most films never even attempt, telling a massive story and using a wide variety of cinematic devices, tricks, and elements to connect the viewer to the story. Many of these devices had been used by others prior to this, but no one had brought them all together in this manner or made such good use of them to create a cinematic world, a drama that could exist only on film and not on a stage or in any other medium without losing its essential qualities.
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 as thousands of people on the East Coast, hearing that there are Martians in New Jersey and elsewhere in the Northeast, fled their homes in panic. There were several reasons why this happened, including the fact that the public in 1938 was not as accustomed to the methods of the media as they would be today, but primarily it was because people turned the show on after the disclaimer at the beginning which explained that it was just a play. At any rate, Welles w...