More than a masterpiece, better than the best, no other film so frequently merits or receives the title of “the greatest film of all time” more than Citizen Kane. The 1941 Oscar winner for Best Screenplay marked the directorial debut of the oft-celebrated Orson Welles, who also portrays the films title character. Welles’s collaboration with cinematographer Gregg Toland produced an eden of originality in terms of lighting, focus, and framing. Among its other innovations were remarkable advancements in makeup, editing, miniatures, and a number of other techniques that combined to create a film light years ahead of its time.

The story itself is considered to have one of the all time best “twist” endings, beginning with the death of its main character, news emperor, billionaire, public figure, and eventually recluse, Charles Foster Kane (Welles). After viewing a newsreel summing up his life, reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) is charged with finding out who Kane really was by discovering the meaning of “Rosebud,” the last words Kane uttered on his death bed.

Thompson sets out, interviewing those Kane knew and ultimately betrayed in his quest for power. The film follows Kane from his neglected childhood through his idealistic foray into news media and eventually “yellow” journalism, his doomed marriage to a President’s niece, his failed gubernatorial campaign, his second marriage to a molded opera singer, and the various friendships he trounces and tramples along his path to entropy. In the end, Thompson discovers only a lonely and bitter man consumed by his lust for power. The origin of the mysterious “Rosebud” remains a mystery until the film’s final, dramatic revelation.

Although nominated for nine Academy Awards, the film was booed at every mention during the Oscar ceremony and was initially a colossal failure. Although the character of Charles Foster Kane was allegedly cobbled from numerous influential people (Harold McCormick, Jules Brulatour, Howard Hughes, and Samuel Insull to name a few), newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst took particular exception and offered RKO eight hundred grand to burn all prints and copies of the film. When RKO refused, Hearst blacklisted both the film and its director. The film languished in anonymity for over a decade until mostly foreign critics “rediscovered” it. By the end of the 1950s, it was being called “the greatest film of all time,” recognition that ultimately came too late for the jaded Welles. Now, after thousands of films have come after it, Citizen Kane is still perennially listed as the “greatest movie of all time.”