Citizen Kane trailer (1940)

Directed by

Orson Welles

Country

United States

Runtime

4 min

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This is a short film made to promote the movie Citizen Kane. It shows the filmmakers at work creating the movie, but it does not include any clips from the actual movie itself.

self-containedexperimentaltheatricalpseudo-documentaryinnovativemetapromotionalbehind-the-scenes

What happens

The Citizen Kane trailer is a four-minute, self-contained, "making of" promotional short film by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre, released in 1940 to promote the film Citizen Kane. Unlike other standard theatrical trailers of the era, it did not feature any footage of the actual film itself, but was a wholly original pseudo-documentary piece. It is considered by numerous film scholars such as Simon Callow, Joseph McBride and Jonathan Rosenbaum to be a standalone short film, rather than a conventional trailer, and to represent an important stage in developing Welles's directorial style. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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