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Some years ago I read the book "This Is Orson Welles", a very interesting book indeed. "The Power and the Glory" was referred to as one of the influences of "Citizen Kane", but I recall that other films also were suggested. Do you remember which ones? Thanks!

In THIS IS ORSON WELLES, by Peter Bogdanovich, Welles specifically states that THE POWER AND THE GLORY was NOT an influence on CITIZEN KANE, as he never saw the film.

Welles specifically states that THE POWER AND THE GLORY was NOT an influence on CITIZEN KANE, as he never saw the film.

But what, I wonder, about ?

I happen to have my copy of This is Orson Welles at hand. When they discuss influences on Kane, OW mentions John Ford in a general sense and Stagecoach, specifically. In reply, PB cites Peter Nobles’s 1956 biography of Welles, in which it was claimed that he screened lots of movies by major directors (Hitchcock, Capra, Lang, Vidor) in preparation for his debut. OW replies: “I never really got to talk to Noble when he was doing that thing, he pasted it together out of newspapers and magazines, so it’s no fault of his that the book is a perfect treasury of misinformation. No, Stagecoach was the only picture I looked at—in those terms, I mean.”

I only just watched "RKO 281" the other day which is a film about a film. I thought it played quite well and gave an insight into the making of "Citizen Kane" - how much was true and how much was made up (for dramatisation purposes of course) one doesn't know.

The feeling I had after watching this picture was that Welles did look at a lot of pictures in order to gain an idea of how to photograph Kane - there is a scene in "RKO 281" for instance where he has a hole dug in the studio floor so he could site a camera to photograph from a very low angle.

There's also the wonder that the film actually got released when one considers the power that William Randolph Hearst appeared to yield.

20 facts you might not know about 'Citizen Kane'
https://www.yardbarker.com/entertainmen ... 92#slide_1

Better than the average click-bait article, but I winced at this line, "Granted, it was 1941, so the film industry itself was relatively new."