'The Battle Over Citizen Kane': a review of the documentary

'The Battle Over Citizen Kane': a review of the documentary

There are some film documentaries that are so good that they stand on their own. The 1996 documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane is the rare instance where the appetizer may actually be better than the main course. Produced by Michael Epstein and Thomas Lennon, written by Richard Ben Cramer and Thomas Lennon, and powerfully narrated by Richard Cramer, The Battle Over Citizen Kane originally aired as an episode of the Public Broadcast System's The American Experience looking at the lives, the careers and the ultimate showdown between Hearst and Welles over Welles' 1941 film Citizen Kane. 

Reportedly, Welles' weaved strands of his own life with that of Hearst's in making the film and the battleship-sized egos of the 2 in the documentary are compared, showing how each man in his own world seized power by the white-hot force of his personality and how each man eventually lost that power through excess and appetite. Estate photos and videos interwoven with interviews with journalists like Jimmy Breslin along with stock footage of turn of the century America add the color and humor that keeps this 2 hour documentary entertaining from the gate to the finish line. There are no lapses in this presentation but my favorite parts show Orson's Broadway career directing Depression Era Black actors to perform Shakespeare; then there’s  the legend of Orson's famous 1938 War of The Worlds radio hoax that later went on to inspire 2 films! If you see no other documentary on a film see this 1.