Charles Foster Kane's Rosebud

For citizen Kane, the most important assets of his life are not the political ambitions, successful newspaper business, nor his relationships with the significant others. Judging by his last word, “Rosebud,” the most important piece of his life is memory from his childhood. Although his life is changed for what appears to be better, from a materialistic viewpoint, it actually leaves him vulnerable and alone. Kane’s life is ultimately destructed by his lust to fulfill the American dream of fame, power and wealth. The inevitable struggle of Kane is reflective of the struggle of many must confront in this materialistic world, as one on his or her quest to find the true meaning of

Charles Kane, a newspaper mogul, died at his home in Xanadu. His last dying words were ‘Rosebud’ which no one had any idea what they meant. A newspaper reporter is given the task to investigate what the word meant. He had to interview many people including Kane’s friends like Jedediah Leland and his concubine Susan Alexander who only shed some light on the mystery of Kane’s life but no information about the Rosebud word. Citizen Kane is the movie that has received lot applause for centuries despite flopping at the box office in 1941. The narrative structure line non-linear form, the mise-en-scene composition, and the cinematography put the film in high regard.

Citizen Kane is a film open to many interpretations and analyses. It tells the story of its main character through the complex points of view of those who knew him. Or thought they knew him. The character of Charles Foster Kane is played by, and done so in an enigmatic performance, by Orson Welles. The intrinsic bias and prejudice of the “narrators” in this film creates conflicting accounts of who Charles Foster Kane really was. Kane was a private man; closely guarding his true identity, making it difficult to differentiate the private Kane from his public identity. Throughout the film’s development of Kane, several inconsistencies and contradictions arise in the depiction of the character’s personality. All of these issues make it

Citizen Kane directed and co-written by Orson Welles, who also starred as the main character Charles Foster Kane, is considered the top movie of the top 100 movies. Citizen Kane starts with a newsreel that tells the life of Charles Foster Kane, who had just recently died. A newspaper team sets out to tell the real story of Charles Foster Kane and learn the truth behind Kane’s last words, “Rosebud” (Gottlieb, 1992). The reporter asked several prominent people in Kane’s life to give their story about the man and any information they would have about his last words. Although, no one knew why his last words were “Rosebud” and what “Rosebud” even was. The audience travels through Kane’s life seen through the eyes of other people, giving us details

Citizen Kane is presumably the best that American Cinema has ever offered, impeccable from beginning to the end. Frequently rivaling Its a Wonderful Life for number one, Citizen Kane is in a group of its own and unmatched in artistry on a number of fronts. The innovative development and the specialized headways used during production, can be minimally viewed as inconceivable and amazing, for a 1941 film. Citizen Kane has stood the test of time for well over six decades, serving as a benchmark and wellspring of motivation to storytellers of all walks of life. Citizen Kane is a sad tragedy about the fictions character Charles Foster Kane, a business head honcho and a daily paper investor. Through this movie, Orson Welles deified Charles Foster Kane as well as showed his determination, as an author, chief, on-screen character and above all as an auteur. The scenes displayed as flashbacks, not simply show his flexibility as an on-screen character (dealing with the subtleties and the nuances anticipated that would depict the diverse stages and parts of Kane's life), additionally his narrating brightness. Kane's muttering of "rosebud" at the moment of his demise and him openly destroying his political adversary, Jim Getys, speak to the two extremes of human life, the low and the high, individually. The scenes in the middle of Welles and Joseph Cotton are a flat out treat to watch. Feelings of sensitivity and disdain towards his childhood friend,

in that Thompson, the man in charge of Kane's life story is now on the

The year is 1941, and Charles Foster Kane has died in his massive private palace and zoo, Xanadu. In the wake of his death, news show News on the March runs a segment on Kane’s life, including an interview with Walter Thatcher, Kane’s caretaker as a child. During the ensuing media storm, his last word, spoken only to his butler comes to light, “Rosebud”, and reporter Jerry Thompson is sent to investigate the meaning of Kane’s final utterance.

Unlike Gatsby however, Kane would like to relive his childhood, something Gatsby destroyed. Kane’s last utterance, “rosebud” is a large standing testament to his want to return to childhood. Throughout the movie we see him as a large, powerful figure that is newsworthy for scandals and successes among other things. We realize though that the things that made him who he was, were not the things that made him such a renowned figure, it was the things that drove him and although we never truly understand what those things are, we can speculate. And the last word, “rosebud” is certainly an argument to that because it is the last thing we understand of him, and it is essentially him being at his most venerable and most alone time. When he leaves his family he is embarking on a lonely trail, Thatcher is a money obsessed business mogul and therefore does not develop Kane or even try to create a solid relationship with him, which sets Kane up for a lifestyle of loneliness. This loneliness extends into his business deals as he takes the world by storm.

Nineteen minutes into Orson Welles’s masterpiece Citizen Kane, the audience sees titular character Charles Foster Kane as a boy playing with his sled in the snow. This scene acts as the beginning of the story, while the film’s plot begins with Kane’s death and last words, “Rosebud.” The film follows with flashbacks and journalistic investigations to solve the meaning of “Rosebud,” until one of the last shots of the film reveals the word painted across Kane’s childhood sled as it burns in a furnace. Thompson, a reporter searching for the meaning of Kane’s last words, interviews Kane’s best friend, old business manager, and ex-wife in hopes that their insider knowledge will reveal the true meaning of “Rosebud” and “solve the puzzle.” Thompson’s

Perhaps one of the most famous and highly rated classics Citizen Kane (directed by Orson Welles and premiered in 1941) revolves around the fictional life story of newspaper mogul Charles Kane (inspired by the life of William Randolph Hearst) and the grand search for the meaning of his parting words: “Rosebud.” Despite a very rough beginning and being met with criticism from the likes of renowned French cinema historian and journalist George Sadoul who claimed, “Citizen Kane is just an encyclopedia of old techniques” the film’s ever steady spot as number sixty eight on IMDb’s top two hundred fifty list is a testament to its fame both in the past and the present. Why is that so? Some would say it is the film’s witty and quotable one-liners as

Citizen Kane, from a film technician’s perspective is essentially an incarnation of “cinematography” and “mise en scene” which is extensively used to convey meaning. In terms of cinematography, the use of “extreme close-up shot” on a person or an object gives it a great deal of “symbolic significance”. It is best illustrated in the opening scene where an extreme close-up shot accentuates on Kane’s lips, while he utters the word ‘Rosebud’ on his deathbed. This moment creates a sense of mystery as it is unexplained to the viewers because it occurs right at beginning of the film.

“Maybe rosebud was something he couldn 't get, or something he lost” (Citizen Kane). The first motif; a rosebud, a representation of security, hope and the innocence of childhood. The rose presented within the film serves as a symbolic code towards the protagonist ‘Kanes’ value, which contextually we see he looses throughout life. The movie begins with a frame of Kanes home in Xanadu, where Kanes lips mutter “rosebud” and he lets go of the snow globe and dies. Not till the end does the movie reveal the significance of rosebud, as it was present on Kanes sled, the one we see in a flashback of his childhood. In the entire movie close up shots are very rare; therefore establishing significance of rosebud due to the rareness of

Film scholars and historians view Citizen Kane as Welles's attempt to create a new style of filmmaking by studying various forms of film making, and combining them all into one. However, Welles stated that his love for cinema began only when he started the work on the film. When asked where he got the confidence as a first-time director to direct a film so radically different from contemporary cinema, he responded, "Ignorance, ignorance, sheer ignorance — you know there's no confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a profession, I think, that you're timid or careful."[48]:80

The quote "The film in like a complicated jigsaw puzzle which the viewer must piece together, bit by bit, in order to see the whole picture" is talking about the fact that we hear Mr.Kane life story through different people. Each person describes their life with Kane and as the audience, we have to connect when those moments together to know what happens in his life. In the film, there are two endings, one for the characters and another one for the audience. The characters never find out the meaning of Rosebud. However even though we have the knowledge of what it is, we don't know what it means to him. This means that as the audience we may connect all the pieces to the “jigsaw puzzle”, but we will never fully know everything.

This film tells a story of the rise and fall of Charles Foster Kane. It is pieced together by multiple flashbacks of his past life as he grew up. After witnessing Kane's death, in the beginning, we the audience follow a reporter as he searches for the significance of Kane's last words, “Rosebud.” The film jumps around in many large cities like New York, Chicago, and