The response of French Communist critics to the films of Orson Welles changed dramatically within a period of fifteen years. When Citizen Kane was first shown to the French public in July 1946, Georges Sadoul, the leading Communist critic and historian, dismissed the film as “an encyclopedia of outmoded techniques, directed by an artless, impetuous and clumsy beginner”. Six months after the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, Albert Cervoni, an emerging Communist critic who described Welles as “Broadway’s Hugo”, praised the director’s “refinement and openness to social issues” and Citizen Kane as “a monument of the Seventh Art”. Moreover, Cervoni also applauded the American film-maker’s contribution in terms of mise en scène, pointing to his use of depth of field, his sense of framing and lighting, and his expressionism. In addition the Communist reappraisal of Orson Welles coincided with the overall positive reception of the French New Wave in the PCF’s press. This paper will analyze the reasons behind Communist critics’ change of tone and attitude towards Welles from the late Forties to the birth of the Fifth Republic, showing how this change illustrated Communist critics’ increasing weariness of Cold War discourse and rhetoric which reached its peak during the debate over form and content that took place at the beginning of the decade.