Welles best

Rating: 7/10 (28 March 2012)

Orson Welles has been called a one hit wonder for directing, co-writing, and starring in Citizen Kane. The story is a thinly disguised biography of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper publisher. Charles Foster Kane(Welles) lives as a recluse on an estate. He dies while lying in bed and his last word is rosebud. The media spend the rest of the movie trying to find out the meaning of the word.
The investigation is shown through a series of flashbacks and interviews with his second wife, his butler and a journal written by his childhood guardian who has passed away.
The research uncovers a poor early upbringing, living in a boarding house run by his parents. After gold is discovered on the property, they go from rags to riches.
Kane's life is a combination of great wealth accompanied by an equal amount of pain and sorrow with divorces, suicides, alcoholism, adultery and other asserted woes.
All of the troubles occur during his rise to power as a media tycoon who manipulates public opinion mostly through a underhanded newspaper. We finally are told the meaning of rosebud at the end. I was not overwhelmed by the supposed greatest movie ever made.