<Tr> <Th> Budget </Th> <Td> $839,727 </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Box office </Th> <Td> $1.6 million (1991 re-release) </Td> </Tr> <P> Citizen Kane is a 1941 American mystery drama film by Orson Welles, its producer, co-screenwriter, director and star . The picture was Welles's first feature film . Nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories, it won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay) by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Welles . Considered by many critics, filmmakers, and fans to be the greatest film of all time, Citizen Kane was voted as such in five consecutive British Film Institute Sight & Sound polls of critics, until it was displaced by Vertigo in the 2012 poll . It topped the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Movies list in 1998, as well as its 2007 update . Citizen Kane is particularly praised for its cinematography, music, editing and narrative structure, which have been considered innovative and precedent - setting . </P> <P> The quasi-biographical film examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a character based in part upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick, and aspects of Welles's own life . Upon its release, Hearst prohibited mention of the film in any of his newspapers . Kane's career in the publishing world is born of idealistic social service, but gradually evolves into a ruthless pursuit of power . Narrated principally through flashbacks, the story is told through the research of a newsreel reporter seeking to solve the mystery of the newspaper magnate's dying word: "Rosebud ." </P>

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