A landmark in the history of the cinema; it was ranked Number 1 in the American Film Institute's 100 greatest films of all time in two polls (1998 and 2007) of more than 1,500 film industry movers and shakers and again by UK directors in a BFI poll. "Citizen Kane" narrates the rise and fall of a newspaper tycoon driven by a childhood obssession and is loosely based round the life of William Randolph Hurst, who tried to have it banned, but incorporates elements from the lives of other fat cats il find out more...

The film is based on the life of John Reed, the Communist, journalist, and writer who chronicled the Russian Revolution in his book Ten Days that Shook the World. The film works both as a history of the American left and as an epic romance, between Reed and Louise Bryant, an important feminist and radical journalist in her own right. After involvement with labour and political disputes in the US, they go to Russia in time for the 1917 October Revolution and, inspired, return to the US, hoping to find out more...