Classics: Citizen Kane Poster Store

Top 20 Classic Movies 1. Casablanca 2. The Godfather 3. Gone With the Wind 4. My Fair Lady 5. High Noon 6. Citizen Kane 7. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid 8. Wizard of Oz 9. Rebel Without a Cause 10. Star Wars 11. The Graduate 12. King Kong (1933) 13. Breakfast at Tiffany's 14. Rocky 15. On the Waterfront 16. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 17. An American in Paris 18. African Queen 19. Apocalypse Now 20. Frankenstein More Classic Movies

Citizen Kane (1941) Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane, Dorothy Comingore Directed by: Orson Welles Produced by: Orson Welles CITIZEN KANE is Orson Welles's greatest achievement--and a landmark of cinema history. The story charts the rise and fall of a newspaper publisher whose wealth and power ultimately isolates him in his castlelike refuge. The film's protagonist, Charles Foster Kane, was based on a composite of Howard Hughes and William Randolph Hearst--so much so that Hearst tried to have the film suppressed. Every aspect of the production marked an advance in film language: the deep focus and deeply shadowed cinematography (from Gregg Toland); the discontinuous narrative, relying heavily on flashbacks and newsreel footage (propelled by a script largely written by Herman L. Mankiewicz); the innovative use of sound and score (sound by Bailey Fesler and James G. Stewart, music composed and conducted by Bernard Herrmann); and the ensemble acting forged in the fires of Welles's Mercury Theatre (featuring the film debuts of, among others, Joseph Cotten, Everett Sloane, and Agnes Moorehead). Every moment of the film, every shot, has been choreographed to perfection. The film is essential viewing, quite possibly the greatest film ever made and, along with THE BIRTH OF A NATION, certainly the most influential.