150 Word Review: 'Citizen Kane' (1941)
*Whispers* "Rosebud"
Directed and co-written by 25-year-old wunderkind theater director and actor Orson Welles, Citizen Kane tells the story of a lonely rich man with an inner emptiness that is bottomless. There’s not enough money, power, or love that can fill it. The movie famously opens on his death. He is alone inside a giant palace and whispers a single word that becomes the movie's primary mystery.
The word answers the question: What does a man who has everything want?
Charles Foster Kane is a uniquely American archetype based on the very real 20th-century newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. Like other industrialists of the era, Hearst leveraged new technologies and ruthless business practices to become fabulously wealthy. Citizen Kane remains a sharply observed and visually inventive masterpiece that is in conversation with our current moment. Welles’ Kane is brilliant and wounded, and he would have made an amazing Silicon Valley tech bro.