Widely considered the greatest American movie ever made.

Rating: 10/10 (11 May 2010)

A newspaper tycoon (Orson Welles) dies, and a magazine reporter interviews his friends in an effort to discover the meaning of his last word: 'Rosebud.'
Citizen Kane is a brilliant piece of Hollywood cinema, using all the resources of the studio; despite lapses of characterization and gaps in the narrative, almost every shot and every line is utterly absorbing both as entertainment and as craft. A critical success, the film failed to recoup its costs at the box-office. Raising Kane by Pauline Kael, adapted from the 1971 New Yorker essay about the film, is recommended reading.