For decades, this one film has been at the top of many critics' Best Films of All Time lists. Is it the best film ever made? Well, in my opinion, no. Then again, what do I know? I loved Cutthroat Island! But seriously, Citizen Kane is a brilliantly made film. I can't really take the full impact of it because it was made in 1941, and all the film techniques Welle's used are used frequently today. Back in the 40s, no one had ever seen some of them before, and so it was new and original. Nowadays, a film has to be emotionally involving and have an original plot to get recognition. Some have done it (Schindler's List, Pulp Fiction, Fargo, Contact, etc.), but most haven't (don't expect me to list them all).

The thrills of Welles' breathtakingly exciting debut picture are multifarious. For one thing, there's the exhilaration of watching a cocky 25-year-old genius named Orson Welles explore the possibilities of the medium for the first time, playing provocatively with the properties of film as if he'd been doing it all his life. Visually and aurally -- from Gregg Toland's celebrated deep-focus cinematography to Robert Wise's crisp, complex editing to the multi-layered impressionistic/expressionistic soundtrack -- Kane is as stunning and sophisticated as any movie ever made, and it crackles and whizzes along at a pace that can even keep the MTV generation riveted to the screen.

Like that shining window in the distance, Rosebud becomes the elusive focal point for a newsreel reporter's investigation into the life and times of Citizen Kane, an exploration which provides the plot framework for the movie. And like those shifting, sometimes inverted initial images, each person reporter Thompson (William Alland) interviews provides a different perspective, a contrasting image of the same man: Charles Foster Kane.

As Thompson puts it near the end of the movie: "Perhaps Rosebud was something he couldn't get or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything. I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle." It's the mystery -- combined, of course, with the mastery of Orson Welles and his collaborators -- that draws us back to Kane again and again.

Then there's the thrill of watching the exuberant young Mercury Players, among the finest actors ever to work in front of a movie camera, having the time of their lives as they projecting themselves into the future and into the past. Their fresh performances still bristle with spontaneity and an edge that few contemporary actors (Robert DeNiro comes to mind) can match. And, behind that NO TRESPASSING sign, there's also the thrill of the forbidden. For Citizen Kane -- in its first few images -- takes us behind that barrier, erected to keep out the public, for an intimate look at a great and powerful man who got everything he ever wanted... and then lost it.

Curious about Kane's dying word, ``rosebud,'' the newsreel editor assigns Thompson, a reporter, to find out what it meant. Thompson is played by William Alland in a thankless performance; he triggers every flashback, yet his face is never seen. He questions Kane's alcoholic mistress, his ailing old friend, his rich associate and the other witnesses, while the movie loops through time. As often as I've seen ``Citizen Kane,'' I've never been able to firmly fix the order of the scenes in my mind. I look at a scene and tease myself with what will come next. But it remains elusive: By flashing back through the eyes of many witnesses, Welles and Mankiewicz created an emotional chronology set free from time.

``I don't think any word can explain a man's life,'' says one of the searchers through the warehouse of treasures left behind by Charles Foster Kane. Then we get the famous series of shots leading to the closeup of the word ``Rosebud'' on a sled that has been tossed into a furnace, its paint curling in the flames. We remember that this was Kane's childhood sled, tak

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Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page double spaced)