Welles called Toland "the greatest gift any director—young or old—could ever, ever have," and said, "I was calling for things only a beginner would have been ignorant enough to to think anybody could ever do, and there he was, doing them."

Citizen Kane is perhaps most studied for its use of deep-focus photography, wherein the entire frame remains in focus at all time. This technique challenges audiences to search the screen for crucial pieces of the puzzle, and allows for cinematic sleight of hand. An otherwise ordinary fireplace, for example, is a background piece in Kane's mansion. It's not until Kane steps next to it that its massive size is revealed, and Kane's captivity to his outsized riches fully expressed. In another scene, when Kane loses control of his media empire, he dominates the frame, signing away his holdings while claiming a moral superiority to his new corporate masters. He then turns and walks to a window at the far end of the room, and is visually diminished. Through deep focus, the camera captures the magnitude of Kane's defeat without a single word spoken.

Yet for all its renown, for all its acclaim, for all its influence, Welles would never again "ride the crest" of greatness in Hollywood. His follow-up project, The Magnificent Ambersons, was butchered by the studio, the result of unfavorable test screenings and a loophole in Welles's contract. (Though Welles would disown the film and its altered "happy" ending, it is still considered one of the great works of American cinema.) Though sheer force of personality, Welles likely would have prevailed over the studio hands carving away at his baby. But immediately after submitting his final cut, Welles departed to Brazil to film It's All True, a documentary commissioned by the U.S. government's Good Neighbor Policy as part of the war effort.

According to Orson Welles scholar Lawrence French, It's All True was the "biggest mistake of [Welles's] life." He returned from Brazil and was fired by RKO for allegedly going over budget, and the same journalists who elevated Welles to the stratosphere pounced on his oversized personality. Though Welles would go on to helm twelve more features and contribute to dozens more (to say nothing of the literally hundreds of roles he performed as an actor) he never truly regained his cinematic luster. Critic David Thompson went so far as to call Welles a failed artist, which in Mr. French's view is absurd. "Look at the work he's done all these years. Even if he only made twelve films, they're twelve of the greatest films ever made.”

Interestingly, Orson Welles never lost his personal connection with the general public. In a March 1967 Playboy interview, Kenneth Tynan notes, "At 51, he has long since joined the select group of international celebrities whose fame is self-sustaining, no matter how widely opinions of their work may vary, and no matter how much the work itself may fluctuate in quality." Tynan places Welles on a list that includes Chaplin, Ellington, Picasso, and Hemingway. And that fame seems only to have grown with time. A countless number of biographies have been written about him, and he's featured in hundreds of books. He has been portrayed on stage and in film—notably in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, but most recently in Richard Linklater's acclaimed Me and Orson Welles. Woody Allen described Welles as "the only American director." Jack White of the band The White Stripes considers Welles a hero, and wrote a song consisting entirely of lines from Citizen Kane. In a Mother Jones interview, television virtuoso Joss Whedon admitted to weeping at the news of Welles's death, lamenting that a "great genius had been trodden down," a man that had "shown such promise and not been allowed to speak." Television and radio personality Glenn Beck went so far as to name his media company Mercury Radio Arts in honor of Welles. Film critic Roger Ebert refers to Welles solemnly as "the Great Man."