The movie's line "Rosebud." was voted as the #17 movie quote by the American Film Institute
The movie's line "Rosebud." was voted as the #3 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
The opening scene in a darkened theater (after the newsreel) is played by all the main male characters from the rest of the film, including Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles.
The opera in which Suzan Alexander Kane stars was, originally, to have been based upon, and titled, Thaïs, after the novel by Anatole France - a choice which would have been highly significant: the novel is the bitingly satirical story of a beautiful (and successful) Alexandrian courtesan who is converted to holiness and sainthood by a fanatical monk (who eventually dies without having achieved the salvation he had sought for himself by having denied himself sensual love). For unspecified reasons, the opera was eventually changed to be based on the novel Salammbô (by Gustave Flaubert), which is a much more straightforward sword-and-sandals story of a princess, barbarians and that sort of thing. Ultimately, though, all verbal references to the opera by title were deleted in the completed film, and the name 'Salammbo' appears only within texts on various editions of the Inquirer. However, it seems likely that, during some stages of filming, references to a 'Thaïs' title were still expected to appear during certain scenes, as Bernstein's line that he 'still can't pronounce [the opera's] name' seem more likely to refer to such a word as that than to 'Salammbo'.
The original nitrate negatives are gone; they were lost in a fire during the 1970s.
The piece of music that Susan is repeatedly shown singing is "Una voce poco fa" from "Il barbiere di Siviglia" by Gioachino Rossini. The character in the opera who sings it, Rosina, sings in this piece about the voice of an admirer she has just heard and how she plans to escape with him from her jealous and overbearing guardian.
The production number of this movie given by RKO is: 281
The reporter interviewing an aged Kane in the newsreel is the film's cinematographer Gregg Toland.
The reporter Jerry Thompson's (William Alland) face is never fully seen. It is always in the shadows.
The scene outside Ma Kane's boarding house reportedly drove Orson Welles crazy. The director always resented that, although it was set in a snowy field, the breath of the actors was not visible because the scene was actually filmed on a sound stage.
The scene where Kane destroys Susan's room after she's left him was done on the first take. Director/star Orson Welles' hands were bleeding, and he is quoted as saying, "I really felt it."
The scene with Charles Bennett and the "chorus girls" was supposed to have taken place in a brothel, but the Hays Office would not allow it. That didn't bother Orson Welles too much, as he knew the brothel setting would draw their attention away from other elements of the script he knew they would object to, which was why he had introduced it in the first place.
The sled that Thatcher gives Kane for Christmas has "THE CRUSADER" written on it.
The voice of the newsreel announcer at the beginning of the film is provided by William Alland, who plays the reporter Mr. Thompson.
To keep studio execs off his back, Orson Welles claimed the cast and crew were "in rehearsal" during the first few days of shooting, when in fact they were actually shooting the film. It took a number of days before the studio caught on.
Voted #6 in Total Film's 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time list (November 2005).
Was voted the 2nd Greatest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Welles' 156-page personal working copy of the script for the film sold for $97,000 in 2007.
When asked by friends how Kane's last words would be known when he died alone, Orson Welles reportedly stared for a long time before saying, "Don't you ever tell anyone of this." See also the Goofs entry.
When Kane's mother, father and Thatcher walk from the living room into the kitchen, they sit down at a table. For a second, you can see Thatcher's hat jiggle a few inches and then be still again. This is mainly because the camera had to move through the table to do the shot. When the camera went into the kitchen, the table split in two, and then reassembled itself just in time for Agnes Moorehead to sit down in the chair.