That may be true, but it is also to overlook the greatness of so many of his later films, from the (admittedly mangled) The Magnificent Ambersons to Chimes at Midnight. Read More: Citizen Kane: A Film of Mythological ProportionsĬonventional wisdom has it that Welles encapsulates the inherent danger of making a great debut, namely that it is impossible to match it, let alone exceed it. In the 1930s and early 1940s, he reinvented three different art forms: theatre, with his “Voodoo Macbeth” in Harlem radio, with his adaptation of The War of the Worlds, which legend has it (and Welles may have started the legend himself) terrified millions of listeners into believing it was an actual report of an alien invasion and, finally, cinema with Citizen Kane. That is due to the enduring influence of its radical cinematography, which introduced deep-focus photography to cinema, and its radical storytelling/screenwriting, which introduced novelistic complexity to cinema.įor all its intrinsic greatness, however, Citizen Kane must also be seen in the context of Orson Welles’ own greatness over the previous decade. Mankiewicz and WellesĬitizen Kane remains one of the greatest directorial debut films ever made. Read More: First Time’s The Charm: The Greatest Screenwriting DebutsĬitizen Kane (1941) Directed by Orson Welles Written by Herman J. From Welles to Godard to Ramsay, the directorial debut films of these directors often landed with the biggest splash imaginable, and their ripple effect continues to be felt. Their innovations were often imitated to the point of becoming almost ubiquitous, and they remain so to this day. Each one invented a cinematic style or language that had never been seen before. Let’s uncover ten directorial debut films spanning much of the history of cinema. Nevertheless, history is the ultimate judge, and history has ultimately judged that their work was of the highest order. However, that does not mean that they were all instantly widely appreciated or instantly commercially successful far from it, some great first-time directors attracted such hostility for their first films that they never directed again. The greatest directorial debut films were all instant classics, almost immediately establishing their directors as formidable new forces in cinema.
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