Orson Welles: Citizen Kane/Waterloo/The Lady From Shanghai/A Man For All Seasons

Citizen Kane (Dir. Orson Welles, 1941): In May of 1941, RKO Radio Pictures released a controversial film by a 25-year-old, first-time director. That premier of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane was to have a profound and lasting effect of the art of motion pictures. It has been hailed as the best American film ever made, and it's as powerful a film today as it was fifty years ago. It earned eight Academy Award nominations and won the Oscar for Best Screenplay. Through its unique jigsaw-puzzle storyline, inventive cinematography, brilliant ensemble acting, and direction by Welles, the story of Charles Foster Kane is a fascinating portrait of America's love of power and materialism, and the corruption it sometimes fosters. Like all great films, Citizen Kane is a memorable fusion of cinematic art and marvellous entertainment.

Waterloo (Dir. Sergei Bondarchuk, 1970): Waterloo is a film on an epic scale with a cast to match. Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer, Orson Welles and Jack Hawkins all contribute brilliant performances of great men against a magnificent backdrop of battle and bloodshed. Napoleon's final bid for power and glory and his narrow defeat at Waterloo.

Lady From Shanghai (Dir. Orson Welles, 1948): Fascinated by the gorgeous Mrs. Bannister (Hayworth), seaman Michael O'Hara (Welles) joins a bizarre yachting cruise, and ends up mired in a complex murder plot...

A Man For All Seasons (Dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1966): A Man For All Seasons: a motion picture for all time! Winner of six Academy Awards - including 1966 Best Picture - A Man For All Seasons stars Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More, a respected English statesman whose steadfast refusal to recognise King Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn cost him his head.