Citizen Kane (1941) Facts
| Director(s) | Orson Welles |
| Producer(s) | Orson Welles, George Schaefer (uncredited) |
| Featured Cast | Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick |
| Total Facts | 81 |
The audience that watches Kane make his speech is, in fact, a still photo. To give the illusion of movement, hundreds of holes were pricked in with a pin, and lights moved about behind it.
The camera looks up at Charles Foster Kane and his best friend Jedediah Leland and down at weaker characters like Susan Alexander Kane. This was a technique that Orson Welles borrowed from John Ford who had used it two years previously on Stagecoach. Welles privately watched Stagecoach about 40 times while making this film.
The character Jedediah Leland is based on celebrated newspaper columnist Ashton Stevens, drama critic for the San Francisco Examiner and later of the Chicago Herald-American, noted interviewer to the stars and man-about-town. His brother, actor Landers Stevens, appears uncredited in the film as an investigator. Ashton was the uncle of director George Stevens, Landers' son.
The character of Mr. Bernstein was named after Orson Welles's guardian Dr. Maurice Bernstein, a Kenosha (WI) surgeon who became close to the Welles after having treated Orson Welles' grandmother in her final illness.
The credited cast was entirely from the Mercury Theatre troupe, which Orson Welles founded when he was 21 years old. The Mercury Theatre did radio dramatizations of such works as "Les Miserables", "A Tale of Two Cities", "Treasure Island", "The 39 Steps", "Abraham Lincoln", "The Count of Monte Cristo' and, most famously, "The War of the Worlds".
The favorite film of "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. He incorporated many references to it in his strips over the years. In 1974 Schultz ruined the movie for anyone who hadn't seen it yet. In a Sunday Comics edition of Peanuts, Linus is watching TV and Lucy asks what he's watching. Linus says "Citizen Kane" and Lucy replies "Rosebud was his sled."
The film showcased a technique called "universal focus." To get the image of Kane and the poster picture during the speech sequence, short lenses were used. At the same time, the key light (the main lights) were gradually increased to get both images sharp and clear.
The ice sculptures at the Inquirer party behind Mr. Bernstein are caricatures of Bernstein and Leland. The placards under them read ["Broadway Jed" Leland] and ["Mr. (Big Business) Bernstein"]. The "Broadway Jed" is certainly due to Leland being the newspaper's drama critic, and "Mr. Big Business" could be due to Bernstein being something of a manager, but no clue is given as to why "(Big Business)" appears in parentheses.
The lengthy scene where the older Jedediah Leland is interviewed at the old folks' home was Joseph Cotten's very first scene in front of a Hollywood camera. Orson Welles' broken ankle had forced the rescheduling of this scene, which originally was supposed to be shot towards the end of the film, so Cotten hadn't gotten around to learning his lines yet. Consequently he was supposed to do the scene from cue cards but because his old-age make-up included contact lenses dipped in milk and a wig that wouldn't stay on (hence the sun visor) Cotten took a couple of hours out to learn the lines properly.
The movie's line "Old age... it's the only disease, Mr. Thompson, that you don't look forward to being cured of." was voted as the #90 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
The movie's line "Rosebud." was voted as the #17 movie quote by the American Film Institute
The movie's line "Rosebud." was voted as the #3 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
The opening scene in a darkened theater (after the newsreel) is played by all the main male characters from the rest of the film, including Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles.
The opera in which Suzan Alexander Kane stars was, originally, to have been based upon, and titled, Thaïs, after the novel by Anatole France - a choice which would have been highly significant: the novel is the bitingly satirical story of a beautiful (and successful) Alexandrian courtesan who is converted to holiness and sainthood by a fanatical monk (who eventually dies without having achieved the salvation he had sought for himself by having denied himself sensual love). For unspecified reasons, the opera was eventually changed to be based on the novel Salammbô (by Gustave Flaubert), which is a much more straightforward sword-and-sandals story of a princess, barbarians and that sort of thing. Ultimately, though, all verbal references to the opera by title were deleted in the completed film, and the name 'Salammbo' appears only within texts on various editions of the Inquirer. However, it seems likely that, during some stages of filming, references to a 'Thaïs' title were still expected to appear during certain scenes, as Bernstein's line that he 'still can't pronounce [the opera's] name' seem more likely to refer to such a word as that than to 'Salammbo'.
The original nitrate negatives are gone; they were lost in a fire during the 1970s.
The piece of music that Susan is repeatedly shown singing is "Una voce poco fa" from "Il barbiere di Siviglia" by Gioachino Rossini. The character in the opera who sings it, Rosina, sings in this piece about the voice of an admirer she has just heard and how she plans to escape with him from her jealous and overbearing guardian.
The production number of this movie given by RKO is: 281
The reporter interviewing an aged Kane in the newsreel is the film's cinematographer Gregg Toland.
The reporter Jerry Thompson's (William Alland) face is never fully seen. It is always in the shadows.
The scene outside Ma Kane's boarding house reportedly drove Orson Welles crazy. The director always resented that, although it was set in a snowy field, the breath of the actors was not visible because the scene was actually filmed on a sound stage.
The scene where Kane destroys Susan's room after she's left him was done on the first take. Director/star Orson Welles' hands were bleeding, and he is quoted as saying, "I really felt it."
The scene with Charles Bennett and the "chorus girls" was supposed to have taken place in a brothel, but the Hays Office would not allow it. That didn't bother Orson Welles too much, as he knew the brothel setting would draw their attention away from other elements of the script he knew they would object to, which was why he had introduced it in the first place.
The sled that Thatcher gives Kane for Christmas has "THE CRUSADER" written on it.
The voice of the newsreel announcer at the beginning of the film is provided by William Alland, who plays the reporter Mr. Thompson.
To keep studio execs off his back, Orson Welles claimed the cast and crew were "in rehearsal" during the first few days of shooting, when in fact they were actually shooting the film. It took a number of days before the studio caught on.
Voted #6 in Total Film's 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time list (November 2005).
Was voted the 2nd Greatest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Welles' 156-page personal working copy of the script for the film sold for $97,000 in 2007.
When asked by friends how Kane's last words would be known when he died alone, Orson Welles reportedly stared for a long time before saying, "Don't you ever tell anyone of this." See also the Goofs entry.
When Kane's mother, father and Thatcher walk from the living room into the kitchen, they sit down at a table. For a second, you can see Thatcher's hat jiggle a few inches and then be still again. This is mainly because the camera had to move through the table to do the shot. When the camera went into the kitchen, the table split in two, and then reassembled itself just in time for Agnes Moorehead to sit down in the chair.
Xanadu's design is based on William Randolph Hearst's elaborate home in San Simeon and Mont St Michel in France.