Behind The Scenes With Ed

Citizen Kane is inarguably the greatest film ever made. It is a groundbreaking achievement that changed the course of film making so to chose one scene is like trying to single out one brush stroke from a great master. One of the most famous scenes in Orson Welles’ 1942 directorial debut finds his Charles Foster Kane, brokenhearted over the departure of his second wife Susan, methodically tearing their bedroom to pieces. The story goes that co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz based the scene on Welles’ own legendary temper tantrums — specifically, one thrown in the presence of Mercury Theatre co-founder John Houseman, who told the story to Mankiewicz. Welles, who could have removed the scene from the script, instead took its inclusion as a kind of dare, and did some of his finest acting in the scene; he ran four cameras to catch all possible angles (since a second take would have been difficult and costly) and bloodied his hands while taking the room apart.