1941 Film Named 'The Greatest Movie of All Time' Released 85 Years Ago Today
On May 1, 1941, Citizen Kane premiered at the RKO Palace Theater-though by then, the film had already stirred up enough controversy to make its release anything but routine.
Directed by and starring a 24-year-old Orson Welles, the film had originally been scheduled to open at Radio City Music Hall. But as word spread that its central character resembled powerful newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, resistance quickly mounted, according to the History Channel. Hearst's publications refused to run ads for the film, and behind-the-scenes pressure helped limit where and how widely it was released.
Despite strong reviews, Citizen Kane stumbled at the box office. It earned nine Academy Award nominations but took home just one, for Best Original Screenplay. At the Oscars, Welles was even met with boos, a reflection of how divisive the film had become.
But as the years passed, critics and filmmakers began to see Citizen Kane not as a misfire, but as something revolutionary. Its fragmented storytelling, shifting perspectives and deep-focus cinematography reshaped the language of film. Instead of a straightforward rise-and-fall narrative, it presents the life of newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane (Welles) through a series of conflicting memories, all orbiting a single unanswered question: what was the meaning behind his dying word-"Rosebud"?
That layered structure-along with its blend of drama, satire and biography-set a new standard for what movies could be.
In the decades since, Citizen Kane has consistently been called the greatest film ever made, topping major critics' polls and earning the No. 1 spot on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest American movies.
In 1998, renowned film critic Roger Ebert reviewed the film and wrote of it:
It is one of the miracles of cinema that in 1941 a first-time director; a cynical, hard-drinking writer; an innovative cinematographer, and a group of New York stage and radio actors were given the keys to a studio and total control, and made a masterpiece. Citizen Kane is more than a great movie; it is a gathering of all the lessons of the emerging era of sound, just as Birth of a Nation assembled everything learned at the summit of the silent era, and 2001 pointed the way beyond narrative. These peaks stand above all the others.
Eighty-five years after its debut, the story of Citizen Kane still carries a certain irony: a film once dismissed by audiences and nearly buried by controversy is now widely seen as the pinnacle of cinematic achievement.
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This story was originally published May 1, 2026 at 10:58 AM.