called Citizen Kane the greatest cinematic achievement of all
time. It is indeed a true masterpiece of acting, screen writing, and
directing. Orson Welles, its young genius director, lead actor, and a co-
writer, used the best talents and techniques of the day (Bordwell 103) to
tell the story of a newspaper giant, Charles Kane, through the eyes of the
people who loved and hated him. However, when it came out, it was scorned
by Hollywood and viewed only in the private theaters of RKO, the producer.
Nominated for nine Academy Awards, it was practically booed off the stage,
and only won one award, that for Best Screenplay, which Welles and Herman
Mankiewicz shared (Mulvey 10). This was all due to the pressure applied by
the greatest newspaper man of the time, one of the most powerful men in the
nation, the man Citizen Kane portrayed as a corrupt power monger, namely
One cannot ignore the striking similarities between Hearst and Kane. In
order to make clear at the outset exactly what he intended to do, Orson
Welles included a few details about the young Kane that, given even a
rudimentary knowledge of Hearst's life, would have set one thinking about
the life of that newspaper giant. Shortly after the film opens, a reporter
is seen trying to discover the meaning of Kane's last word, "Rosebud." He
begins his search by going through the records of Kane's boyhood guardian,
Thatcher. The scene comes to life in midwinter at the Kane boarding house.
Kane's mother has come into one of the richest gold mines in the world
through a defaulting boarder, and at age twenty-five, Kane will inherit his
sixty million dollars (Citizen Kane). His mother is doubtful of the
quality of the education her son will receive in Colorado, and therefore
wishes to send her son to study with Thatcher. Hearst's parents came by
their money through gold mines (Swanberg 5), so both Hearst and Kane were
rais...