Citizen Kane

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Citizen Kane

• Orson Welles 1941

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Citizen Kane
Unlike the conventional mystery key, Rosebud is
the answer to a mans life rather than his death.
And since the intangible meanings of life end in
the mystery of death, Rosebud is not the final
solution but only the symbolic summation. Andrew
Sarris, Citizen Kane The American Baroque
The quest for information. Thompson gets his
mission search out Rosebud.
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Rosebud
Rosebud does not, as one would expect turn out
to be the name of a girl it stands as a token of
Kanes unhappy relations with people in
general. Peter Cowie, 1965 As a matter of
fact, the Rosebud gimmick is what I like least
about the movie. Its dollar-book
Freud. Orson Welles, 1963 Rosebud is found
throughout Victorian pornography as a code word
for the female genitals and other private
parts. Robin Bates, 1987
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Two Views on Rosebud

• The Enigma Perspective
• The nature of a person is ultimately a mystery
• A multiplicity of selves
• The Rosebud Perspective
• The notion of lost innocence, lost promise
• Lost sexuality

Kane Bigger than other men
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The Enigma Perspective

• Rosebud is at the centre of the plot, but is
  actually irrelevant
• a plot device to enable us to follow the story
  into other peoples memories
• The hunt for Rosebud slips into the background
  smoke pouring out of the Xanadus chimneys

Two Kanes
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The Rosebud Perspective
By whispering Rosebud, Kane admits before
dying that there is no profit in gaining the
whole world if one has lost ones own
childhood. Andre Bazin
Lost childhood
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The Puzzle Motif

• News on the March Sequence
• Kane is described in opposition and oxymorons
• A communist, a fascist, and an American
• He starts one war and opposes another
• He makes history and becomes history

A Puzzling Life
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Puzzles and Fragmentation

• Kane is introduced as a mass of contradictions
• Not a coherent identity, so much as a collision
  of contrasting figures
• Kane is more than one person, and this view is
  supported by the film. Where do we see examples?

The Biggest Man of them All
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Puzzles and Fragmentation

• Political Rally
• Tells Thatcher that he is speaking to two people
• Reflections in glass
• Kane leaving his wifes room reflection of
  mirrors
• Susans puzzles
• The puzzle of boxes during the closing sequence
• The structure of the film

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Rosebud Interpretation

• Kane does have trouble maintaining reciprocal
  love relations the rose is a romantic
  metaphorit fails to bloom.
• When others fail to bend to his needs, he reacts
  with anger or retreat
• Art objects and statues people who cant talk
  back
• Animals in cages the need for control
• His life was nipped in the bud

Lost Childhood
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Rosebud Perspective

• This does make for a simpler perspective.
• It renders intelligible the reasons for his
  self-destruction.
• Rationalizes and explains Kanes creation of his
  world.
• By amassing statues and animals, he can gain the
  control that he lost.

Here, Kane has lost control of Susan and her
career.
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One Final Perspective

• The possibility that this film is not about Kane
  at all
• A way of discussing human life in general
• Can a life be summed up with a single object, or
  are lives more complex?
• Orson Welles and audience participation deep
  focus photography allows the viewer to choose
  among the dominant and subsidiary contrasts.

Rosebud
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Technique

• The film is an encyclopedia of old techniques.
  One can find in it all of the following the
  simultaneous clarity of the foregrounds and the
  most distant backgrounds, as in Louis Lumieres
  Arrival of a Train in the Station Méliès taste
  for special effects and cardboard sets. One
  senses that Welles is intoxicated with the
  apparent novelty of his means and
  technique. George Sadoul

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Mise en Scene

• Analysis of this shot shows the care taken with
  mise en scene.
• Deep focus allows the viewer to choose what to
  look at.
• Eye-lines draw us to the contract, but the lit
  window reveals the trapped child, whose life is
  literally being signed away.
• Rosebud is Kanes last happy memory.

A frame within a frame Kane as victim.
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Photography

• Use of dark and light as well as camera angles
  determine relationships between characters.
• Power and authority as well as victimization are
  communicated by light and angle (right-hand
  shot).
• Susan is literally defaced in the above shot
  (left).
• Moral ambiguity is visually depicted by plunging
  Kanes face into darkness or splitting his face
  into half darkness and half light.

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Gender Analysis and Ideology

• The film can be viewed as sympathetic to the
  underdog (a definite liberal point of view).
• The women in the film are portrayed as victims of
  Kanes insatiable ego and drive for power.
• The most notable example is Susan Alexander whose
  near suicide is an attempt to escape from the
  opera career Kane has built to aggrandize
  himself.
• Even Emily is a victim.

Sexism is part of Kanes established
masculinity. Money and influence buys Radio City
Music Halls dancersthe height of American male
ownership.
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Susans Role

• Although Susan has never heard of Rosebud, she,
  herself, embodies the same characteristics as
  Kane.
• Each has had a strong mother-figure.
• Susan remains child-like, never truly maturing
  (her bedroom in Xanadu is like a childs
  bedroom).
• Kane takes her as his own toy while she is still
  in her twenties however, their affair doesnt
  become real until after Emily discovers their
  friendship.

Susans alcoholism manifests her guilt. She
obviously loved the man, but his drive for power
overrode their relationship. He never gave her
anything she truly wanted.
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Leland and Bernstein

• Both Leland and Bernstein admire the young
  liberal Kane.
• Whereas Bernstein remains loyal, Lelands
  cynicism increases with Kanes moral corruption.
• Kane does stand up to Emilys anti-Semitism
  regarding Bernstein.
• Bernsteins story of Rosebud (the woman in the
  white dress) romanticizes the quest.

Leland questions Kanes acquisition of The
Chronicles staff.
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Best American Film of all Time

• Touted as the top film of the 100 best films of
  all time.
• André Bazin declares the film a discourse on
  method.
• Citizen Kane is a formalist treatment of class,
  gender relationships and ideology, the same
  themes evoked by the realist film, Rules of the
  Game (Renoir 1939).

Xanadu, Kanes retreat where he lords it over
the monkeys. Note the dissolve.