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August 30
Fred Films | 7pm
Citizen Kane (USA/1941/dir. by Orson Welles) 119 minutes
Certainly the most famous first film of all time, and arguably the most famous film of all time, Citizen Kane is a movie that probably needs no introduction. Having established a reputation as an artistic genius on stage and in radio, the twenty-six-year-old Orson Welles was given extraordinary artistic freedom by RKO to make his first film. Surrounding himself with an extraordinarily talented cast (including Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead, and Everett Sloan), a great co-screenwriter (Herman Mankiewicz) and arguably Hollywood's greatest cinematographer (Gregg Tolland) and composer (Bernard Herrmann), but putting himself front and center in the title role, Welles' tale of the rise and fall of newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane was a critical success but a box office failure. As a result, never again would he enjoy the kind of creative freedom he had on Kane. To this day, Citizen Kane frequently tops critics' lists of the greatest films of all time, most recently earning top honors among the American Film Institute's "100 Greatest Films."
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