Who really designed the sets of Citizen Kane, according to Ian Christie?

Ian Christie says the art director was Perry Ferguson, a fact that emerged only late in the film's scholarship. Hollywood credited the head of the art department on every film, so the formal credit went to someone who played no part, and the set decorator is even harder to trace. Christie argues the decor, which tracks what is happening to Kane at every stage, is wrongly credited to Welles, who had never filled a frame with detail in his monumental stage productions.

• The panel says reused RKO sets, drapes and deliberate obscurity at the back of shots made Xanadu look bigger than any set built for it.
• Stella Bruzzi singles out Susan's small, crowded bedroom in Xanadu as the one room that feels alive.

▸In their words

“It's a film of objects, it's a film of decor, many, many decors.” Ian Christie · at 52:35 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on In Our Time (2026-11-02). Read the whole episode summary →

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