Фильм об истории репортера, которому поручено выяснить подробности биографии недавно умершего газетного магната Кейна.
Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.