The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

85. 1941 - Citizen Kane

Honourable Mentions: How Green Was My Valley, The Lady Eve, The Maltese Falcon

If you were to attempt to sum up Orson Welles' Citizen Kane with just a word, monumental would probably be the most fitting. While obviously it doesn't infer the great many multitudes that comprise Welles' film on a narrative and thematic front, it does speak to its stature both in a filmic sense and as a piece of cinema history - another of those 1940s classics that, though pilloried in its time, became a lodestar for cinephiles as the years went on.

Welles' direction and performance were revolutionary and daring, and while Hollywood didn't immediately alert to this multifaceted and ultimately hugely influential talent, subsequent productions - such as The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, and The Third Man - soon changed that.