Directed at the tender age of 26, Orson Welles’ first feature film - which he also produced, co-wrote, and played the title role - proved to be his most important and influential work. Regularly cited as the greatest American film ever made, the story of newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane’s meteoric rise and fall is a fascinating portrait of America's love of power, materialism and the corruption it fosters. A timeless fusion of cinematic art and marvelous entertainment.

When ageing newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane (Welles) dies in his sprawling Florida estate after uttering a single, enigmatic final word - Rosebud, a newsreel producer sends reporter Jerry Thompson out on assignment to uncover the meaning behind the great man's dying thought. Along the way he uncovers the facts of Kane's eventful and ultimately tragic life. Through his abandonment by his parents after becoming the heir to a silver mine; to his rise from scandal sheet publisher to the owner of America's largest and most influential newspaper chain. All this set alongside his marriage to the socially prominent Emily Norton and his ambitious (and ultimately ruinous) bid for public office that leads to a self-imposed exile in the massive and never-completed pleasure palace called Xanadu.

The fabulous screenplay and performances apart, Welles’ pioneering formal innovations such as its use of deep-focus photography and abstracted camera angles, as well as a non-chronological narrative structure and overlapping dialogue, are what add up to the groundbreaking cinematic tour de force it is recognised as today. The effect the film has had on the art-form is perhaps ultimately incalculable but as ‘the movie that changed movies’ it remains the case that no one who is interested in the art of cinema can really afford to miss it.

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