In 1998, Roger Ebert had this to say about Orson Welles’ 1941 clas­sic, Cit­i­zen Kane:

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.

Cit­i­zen Kane blazed many new trails. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy, the sto­ry telling, the spe­cial effects, the sound­track — they were all inno­v­a­tive. And they were all woven into an artis­tic whole by a 26 year old direc­tor mak­ing his first film. Years lat­er, Welles explained the alche­my of Kane. Igno­rance, he said, was per­haps the genius of the film. “I did­n’t know what you could­n’t do. I did­n’t delib­er­ate­ly set out to invent any­thing. It just seemed to me, why not? And there is a great gift that igno­rance has to bring to any­thing. That was the gift I brought to Kane, igno­rance.”

Of course, Welles is also quick to rec­og­nize that Gregg Toland — “the great­est cam­era­man who ever lived” — con­tributed to the great­ness of Cit­i­zen Kane too, pro­vid­ing the right spir­it and cin­e­mato­graph­ic touch. If you’re unfa­mil­iar with Toland’s work, we’ve pro­vid­ed a short mini doc­u­men­tary on the leg­endary cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er below.

Sev­er­al films direct­ed by and star­ring Orson Welles can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

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Relat­ed Con­tent

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

Orson Welles Nar­rates Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry, Kafka’s Para­ble, and Free­dom Riv­er

“Nobody could make a movie bet­ter than Stan­ley Kubrick–in his­to­ry,” says Steven Spiel­berg in this reveal­ing 1999 inter­view with British film­mak­er Paul Joyce. Spiel­berg sat down with Joyce just four months after Kubrick­’s sud­den death from a heart attack. He talks about the emo­tion­al effect Kubrick­’s films had on him when he was a young man, the friend­ship the two men shared after Spiel­berg became suc­cess­ful, and Kubrick­’s James Joyce-like abil­i­ty to rein­vent him­self with each new work. “He was a chameleon,” Spiel­berg says. “He nev­er made the same pic­ture twice. Every sin­gle pic­ture is a dif­fer­ent genre, a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, a dif­fer­ent risk. The only thing that bond­ed all of his films was the incred­i­ble vir­tu­oso that he was with craft.”

Note: Paul Joyce filmed sim­i­lar talks with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kid­man, the stars of Kubrick­’s final film Eyes Wide Shut. You can see those inter­views by fol­low­ing these links: Cruise; Kid­man.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash’

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)