What's the real story behind Citizen Kane? Orson Welles' acclaimed 1941 film was a thinly-veiled biopic of William Randolph Hearst — but how much is fact and how much is fiction? | American Experience | PBS

“Citizen Kane” (1941): A Film That Invented the Language There is cinema before Citizen Kane, and cinema after. The difference resembles daylight breaking through a shuttered room. Orson Welles was twenty-five. Let that sink in: twenty-five years old. He made Kane not as a film alone, but as a statement, a revolution veiled in the form of a debut. A man entered Hollywood with a voice shaped by radio, a soul steeped in Shakespeare, and the audacity of youth — and created something that continues