Orson Welles’s 1955 film seems a deliberate, bitter parody of Citizen Kane, with the grandeur turned to transparent theatrical fakery and the quest for truth deflected into shoddy opportunism. The film has the eerie, placeless quality of international coproduction (France and Spain in this case); many of the minor characters have been dubbed with Welles’s voice, which increases the sense of a sinister puppet show. Sporting an outrageously false beard, Welles plays the mysterious title character, an international businessman who lures a young hustler (Robert Arden) into investigating his past. For all of the film’s perversity, there is greatness in it—a greatness harshly criticizing itself. With Michael Redgrave, Mischa Auer, and Akim Tamiroff.