The American Dream In Orson Welles's Citizen Kane

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Orson Welles’s debut on a big screen, “Citizen Kane,” undoubtedly could be considered as one of the greatest masterpieces of the world cinematography. “Citizen Kane” was highly appraised both by the critics and the general audience, nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories and even topped the list of the greatest films of all times by the American Film Institute. The film was created in 1941, and it contained innovative visual and musical techniques as well as revolutionary plot, which has not lost its topicality.
I do consider, that in his film Welles throws American society a challenge: he questions generally accepted values and destroys the American Dream. Basing on real material, the young director created a mythological personality and at the same time tried to destroy the myth itself.
The plot tells us the whole life story of a certain Charles Foster Kane, one of the most influential and rich people of his time. Kane is the example of person who achieved everything by good fortune. He got education and all his wealth because of luck and good investments of his mother, who wanted her …show more content…

However, the director ruins this myth, he shows us that Kane is not the perfect combination of what we want to call “the American,” but just one of the many, not a god, but a mere mortal, with his vulnerabilities and sorrows. To sum up, Orson Welles ruins social perception of the “successful person,” highlighting the difference between the weakness of person himself and his powerful image through the prism of public opinion. He shows us that there is nothing else, but wind and garbage behind the walls of the temple of the American