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2* [[ReferencedBy/CitizenKane Referenced by...]]
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4!! Trivia tropes
5* AcclaimedFlop: Hard to believe, but the "Greatest Film of All Time" was a box office failure for its time. Eventually it made a profit in repertory screenings and Welles lived off its royalties even when he was down and out in Europe.
6* {{Blooper}}: A scene intended to take place at a jungle-themed party reused some jungle clips from ''Film/TheSonOfKong'', and the producers failed to notice the ''pterodactyls'' in the background on the initial theatrical release. This became a lot more obvious on home video, and later releases would edit them out.
7* BreakthroughHit: For Creator/OrsonWelles. Also for Music/BernardHerrmann, who had been a music composer for the Mercury Theater, went to Hollywood along with Welles and the actors, composed the music to ''Citizen Kane'' as his very first film score, and went on to become one of [[PsychoStrings the most successful]] [[Film/{{Vertigo}} film composers]] [[Film/TaxiDriver in movie history]].
8* CompletelyDifferentTitle:
9** Hungary: ''The Golden Citizen''
10** Italy: ''Fourth Estate''
11** Portugal: ''The World At His Feet''
12** Sweden: ''A Sensation''
13** Taiwan: ''Great Nation''
14* CopiouslyCreditedCreator: Co-written, directed, produced by and starring Creator/OrsonWelles.
15* CreatorBacklash: To a marginal extent. While Welles never regretted or ''hated'' the film, much like Creator/AlanMoore and ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' he did regret how it overshadowed his entire career. He stated that he found the film too gimmicky and not mature, and he regretted how Creator/MarionDavies was wrongfully associated with the film. Despite this, he stated in interviews that Kane is the only film of his with which he is entirely satisfied in that it came out exactly as he wished with no budget constraints and no ExecutiveMeddling, though personally he preferred ''The Trial'' and ''Chimes at Midnight''.
16--> '''Orson Welles''': ''I've regretted early successes in many fields, but I don't regret that in Kane because it was the only chance of that kind I ever had. I'm glad I had it at any time in my life. I wish I had it more often. I wish I had a chance like that every year, there'd be eighteen pictures.''
17* DarkhorseCasting: Most of the cast were new to film, with ten of them being Creator/OrsonWelles' associates from the Mercury Theatre.
18** Creator/OrsonWelles, Creator/JosephCotten, William Alland, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, Everett Sloane and Paul Stewart all made their film debuts.
19** Cotten had recently become a Broadway star in ''Film/ThePhiladelphiaStory'', Sloane was well known for his role on ''Radio/TheGoldbergs'' and George Coulouris was a star of the stage in UsefulNotes/NewYork and UsefulNotes/{{London}}.
20* DeniedParody: Creator/OrsonWelles denied that Kane was based on William Randolph Hearst. It's unclear whether Welles was telling the truth or just was trying to avoid getting sued to Hell and back by Hearst,[[note]]Especially considering things such as Kane's line "You provide the prose poems. I'll provide the war." being strikingly similar to a phrase famously attributed to Hearst, "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war."[[/note]] but Hearst certainly went out of his way to make sure everyone would think Kane was based off him. [[HypocriticalHumor How very Charles Foster Kane of him.]] Welles actually tried to get around this by including a line in the film in which a journalist [[ExpyCoexistence makes a reference to both Kane and Hearst]], thus indicating that Hearst actually exists as a separate entity in the ''Citizen Kane'' universe. In later interviews, Welles said that Hearst along with Howard Hughes and other industrialists were certainly influences on Kane, but that Kane was never intended as a parody/critique/insult to Hearst specifically or other industrialists, it was meant as a serious exploration of an American mythical hero, the tycoon and capitalist.
21* DescendedCreator: Director Creator/OrsonWelles plays the titular role of Charles Foster Kane. This is made more noticeable in that, except for eight-year-old Kane (played by Buddy Swan), Welles plays Kane through ''all'' ages, all of them being Welles in makeup.
22* DuelingWorks: For a long time, ''Citizen Kane'' competed for #1 on a film list with Creator/JeanRenoir's ''Film/TheRulesOfTheGame''. The 2012 list saw it finally replaced from Sight and Sound's Best Film List. The critics list placed ''Film/{{Vertigo}}'' ahead of it, while the directors list placed ''Film/TokyoStory'' ahead of it.
23* DVDCommentary: Creator/RogerEbert contributes an excellent, in-depth commentary notable for the breakdown of cinematography, shot design, and other interesting tidbits.
24* DyeingForYourArt: To simulate heavy drunkenness, Creator/JosephCotten stayed awake for 24 straight hours, resulting in some unscripted flubbery (that caused Welles to grin despite himself).
25* EnforcedMethodActing: Poor Dorothy Comingore endured physical and mental abuse from Orson Welles and ended up a near wreck by the end.
26** Soprano Jean Forward dubbed Dorothy Comingore’s singing voice. Bernard Herrmann deliberately wrote the part in such a high range that even a trained singer would strain to reach the high notes, which is why Susan is audibly struggling.
27* FromEntertainmentToEducation: The film is often used to teach cinematography, and as a master work in storytelling and narrative form, and pretty much defined cinema as an artist's medium, with all its different visual and audio techniques used cohesively to tell a complex story.
28* MagnumOpusDissonance: Orson Welles saw ''Film/ChimesAtMidnight'' as his masterpiece, but that was also driven by people using ''Citizen Kane'' to write him off as a OneBookAuthor, he was generally proud of ''Kane'' and stated that it was his only movie that he's totally satisfied with, having no budget or executive compromises as he did on his other films.
29* MethodActing:
30** To simulate being drunk, Creator/JosephCotten remained awake for 24 straight hours. You can see Welles break character and grin when Cotten flubs his line and says "dramatic crimiticism." Of course, it was a ThrowItIn moment.
31** Creator/OrsonWelles himself let himself go during the famous room trashing sequence, even hurting himself badly bloodying his hands while doing it. After filming the scene, Welles breathed, "I felt it. I ''felt'' it."
32* OnSetInjury: Creator/OrsonWelles tripped down a staircase and chipped his anklebone, forcing him to use a wheelchair for the next two weeks. He also gashed his own hand during a scene where he destroyed a room. He quickly improvised, grabbing a curtain and using it to cover his bleeding hand while he completed the scene, which appears in the film.
33* OneTakeWonder: When Kane's wife leaves him, he completely destroys her bedroom. Given the destruction Creator/OrsonWelles caused to the set, the first take of this infamous scene was, understandably, the only take.
34* ProductionPosse: Famously so, as the cast was from Welles' Mercury Theatre.
35* StarMakingRole: ''Kane'' was a Star Making Role to some extent for most of the cast, since the bulk of them were members of Creator/OrsonWelles' Mercury Theater troupe and they were all making their film debuts together.
36** Creator/JosephCotten went on to a long and very successful career as a leading man and character actor in Hollywood.
37** Ray Collins (Jim Gettys) enjoyed a prolific career as a Hollywood character actor. Besides ''Kane'', he's probably best-remembered for his role as Lt. Arthur Tragg on ''Series/PerryMason'' towards the end of his career.
38** Welles himself is an interesting aversion. An acknowledged [[ChildProdigy child genius]], he was a theatrical star since age 16, and became famous for his theatre and [[Radio/TheWarOfTheWorlds radio]]. He had in fact made three films prior to this (a bizarre short in 1934, a 40-minute film that was intended to be part of a hybrid stage play/movie performance in 1938, and he narrated a version of ''Swiss Family Robinson'' a year before Kane came out). As an actor, Welles came to be in demand for playing sinister anti-hero/villains and specialized in OneSceneWonder but as a director he struggled to find funding for his works. As such Welles found greater demand as an actor than as a director.[[note]]That didn't stop him from making some of the most famous films in history.[[/note]]
39** Sadly averted for Dorothy Comingore, who delivered a powerful performance as Susan Alexander but saw her career derailed by [[{{Defictionalization}} alcoholism]] and poor decision-making even before it was permanently ended when she was put on the [[RedScare Hollywood blacklist]].
40* StreisandEffect: Most people today, outside of specialists in mass media, know Hearst largely for his association with this film. Ironically, at the time, Hearst was somewhat aware of this trope as a result of his yellow journalism origins, and tried to avoid it by refusing to mention the film: rather than rail against it or say that it was terrible, Hearst ordered his newspapers to not mention it at all. This is thought to be a primary reason for its failure, that and bribing distributors not to play it in many theatres.
41** In the long-run, Hearst's persecution of Welles and sabotage of the film's release permanently linked him with Kane, to the extent that a biography of his life is titled "Citizen Hearst", and Kane's satirical depiction of Hearst as this controlling frustrated politician became how people remember Hearst. Most biographers argue that Hearst was not really as much of a ByronicHero as Kane is, nor such a DomesticAbuser, likewise, Hearst's good deeds such as his championing of George Herriman's ''ComicStrip/KrazyKat'', E.C. Segar's ''ComicStrip/ThimbleTheater'' (which gave us ''Popeye'') and other comics artists is forgotten in favor of his association with the Yellow Press.
42** Creator/SamuelFuller who worked with the Hearst Press in his youth and later became a film-maker (and who also admired Welles) noted that the real Hearst was not like Kane at all, arguing that Hearst was neither as personally aloof or a ControlFreak. Even Welles scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum noted that Xanadu was a ShallowParody of Hearst's estate San Simeon. He noted upon visiting San Simeon that contrary to the extravagant, gaudy and tacky Xanadu, San Simeon is actually reflective of good aesthetic taste. Incidentally, in 2012, Hearst's descendants actually screened [[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jan/24/citizen-kane-screening-hearst-castle Kane at San Simeon]] in part to posthumously bury the hatchet, but also to highlight to visitors how different San Simeon was from Xanadu.
43** Welles for his part regretted the damage the film may have done to Marion Davies' reputation since he greatly admired her work in Creator/KingVidor's classic ''Film/ShowPeople''. He also said that he intended Kane to be a larger-than-life media tycoon figure rather than based solely on Hearst, who he did not have [[NothingPersonal any personal grudge]] against.
44* ThrowItIn: Creator/JosephCotten stumbling over the word "criticism". It was a genuine flub, but fortunately both he and Welles stayed in character (albeit Welles grins) and Cotten follows up with a brilliant ad-lib "I AM drunk", so it stayed in the film as-is.
45* UnderageCasting: Creator/OrsonWelles was ''only'' 25 years old when he played Charles Foster Kane from age 25 until his 70s.
46* WhatCouldHaveBeen
47** Originally, the movie was going to be based on the life of Creator/HowardHughes with Cotten in the lead. Eventually, Welles realized [[RealityIsUnrealistic nobody would believe most of the stuff Hughes had done]], so he decided to make Kane a media baron instead.
48** Towards the end of his life, Welles was asked to provide a commentary for the film. He declined, as he was done talking about it.
49** Welles was originally going to make an adaptation of Creator/JosephConrad's ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness'' but the executives didn't believe they could possibly stretch a budget far enough to cover it, so he made ''[[Administrivia/TropesAreTools Kane]]'' instead.
50** Welles originally intended for Kane to basically be a different person in each flashback, since each narrator would remember him differently. Welles admits that although there is some of this present in the movie, it doesn't actually work as he intended. What could be written off as one person's biased remembrance could also be explained as Kane himself changing as he got older, which is what most people assume is the case.
51** In 1989, UsefulNotes/TedTurner (having secured the home distribution rights for the film in 1986 through Turner Entertainment Co.) announced that the film would receive a {{Colorization}}, but this was cancelled following immense backlash among critics, cinephiles, and the Welles estate (Welles himself was aware of Turner's increasingly controversial pursuit of colorization, allegedly stating in 1985 just weeks before his death: "Don't let Ted Turner deface my movie with his crayons.") Supposedly, an entire reel of the film was fully colorized, but only one minute of it was ever revealed to the public (as part of the 1991 BBC documentary ''The Complete Citizen Kane'').
52** Jedediah Leland was originally named Bradford Leleand.
53* WorkingTitle: ''The American''; ''John Citizen, U. S. A.''
54!!Misc. Trivia
55* There actually is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBjCUYrdSxo an operatic version]] of Flaubert's ''Salammbô''. Written in 1900, it's by Ernest Reyer. There have been two or three others. Rachmaninoff and Mussorgsky had a go at it, too, but Reyer's is the best known. Presumably they either didn't know about it or it wouldn't have worked for other reasons; possibly because the title role is sung by a mezzo-soprano (deeper register) and they needed something Susan (and Dorothy) couldn't tackle.
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