Citizen Kane, the New Deal, and the Second World War
Orson Welles’ belief in the New Deal and his anxieties over American isolationism in the years before Pearl Harbour are inextricably entangled in the epic Citizen Kane.
The production history of Citizen Kane reads like a film script. Unfettered by the constraints of the Hollywood studio system, a boy genius is granted his wish to produce a film without studio interference, hire his theatrical friends and use the best technicians in Hollywood. When Orson Welles signed his contract in July 1939 with RKO, one of Hollywood's major film studios, he was given final cut: complete control over what eventually appeared on screen, provided the film did not exceed a modest budget of $500,000.
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