Citizen Kane Film Response

After a very gloomy picture and music, at the beginning of the movie the newspaper industry giant Kane, who was lying on the bed, screamed and died. At the end of his life, he said the last sentence in a whispered word: rosebud.

In Kane’s dying scene, the director used three shots to establish the suspense of the entire film.

The first shot was pulled back from the close-up of the ‘snowflake’ in the front glass ball, and we saw the glass ball held in the palm of one hand.

The second shot was a large close-up of the mouth, spited out the word ‘rosebud’.

The third shot was the close-up of the hand, and the glass ball in the hand rolled to the ground.

These three lenses were connected together and evoked the viewer’s question: Why did Kane hold the glass ball when he was dying? What did ‘rosebud’ mean and what did it have to do with glass balls? The glass ball fell to the ground and broke, and the hero died. Can this mystery be revealed?

In the movie, the newspaper reporters attached great importance to this. They wondered what Kane wanted to express. They had to send young reporters to visit the very close friends and relatives of Kane. To this end, they also went to the library in order to find the relevant information. In the course of this visit, the film reinterpreted the short but brilliant life of Citizen Kane. Thompson played the role as an investigator in the film; he is not the major character but the most important one. He made the pieces of Kane’s life into a whole story.

After watching the whole movie, all the questions are answered. The glass ball was Kane’s gift to his second wife, Susan. As Susan left Kane, Kane smashed up the furnishings in her room, but only kept the glass ball. Kane died with a deep desire of love, that was indicated in the glass ball.

The ‘snowflake’ in the glass ball was the trigger for Kane to say ‘rosebud’ when he died. He missed the snow in his home state of Colorado and the sleigh that brought joy to his childhood.

However, it was all over. Kane came to the end of his life with regret. The glass ball fell to the ground, and the rosebud sleigh was not saved from being burned. Everything went away.

In the story structure, citizen Kane adopted a retroactive narrative technique which was a flashback. Pieces of Kane’s history were discovered by the reporter and were put together to show his bright rather than sad life.

The scene of Kane’s break with his close friend Leland was played out in a deep focus shot.

At the beginning of the scene, Leland took advantage of the wine to berate Kane. Kane was in the foreground and only showed one leg. He looked tall and towering. There was a composition that hinted at Kane’s arrogance. However, Leland’s diminutive figure in the shot made his tirade seem like a conversation with a giant. His speech seemed pale.

Faced with Leland’s tirade, Kane was trying to salvage their friendship. As he tried to excuse himself by saying he was too desired to get drunk, Kane was also trying to talk equally. The two were briefly in the same depth of the frame.

When Leland said, ‘you don’t care about anything, you care about yourself,’ Kane’s arrogance was at its peak and he turned away. At this point, the camera followed Kane’s steps to the left and at a certain angle. There was only a tall Kane, a conceited Kane, and a Kane who isolated himself.

Kane was determined to end the friendship, but his arrogance would not allow him to compromise further. He finally agreed Leland’s request to go to Chicago as a theater critic.

In this long lens, the composition and the movement of the camera showed the contrast of forces and the psychological activities of the characters incisively and vividly.

Another scene in the movie was also worth discussing. Susan protested to Kane with violent words. She could not bear the taunts and was not willing to sing anymore. Kane came up to Susan, shaded her in the darkness, and ordered her to go on. Susan was on her knees, instinctively leaned back to avoid Kane’s shadow. Perhaps, at this point, Susan had made up her mind to leave Kane.

At the end of the film, when Kane’s childhood sleigh was burned, the camera moved slowly to show the logo of the sleigh — ‘rosebud’ — in a close-up. When Kane died, he remembered the sleigh that had brought him joy as a child. Obviously, in the film, the ‘rosebud’ brand sleigh is endowed with symbolic meaning — pure and happy childhood.

At the beginning of the film, an elevating scene started from the ‘no trespassing’ sign on the fence of Kane luxury manor house, trying to get over the fence. At the end of the film, the shot was lowered, frozen on a ‘no trespassing’ sign. The two scenes seemed to bind up the scattered pieces of Kane’s life, presenting a symmetrical beauty in structure.

Gorgeous color and dazzling special effects can bring sensory pleasure to the audience. But those are not enough to define a good movie. As a moviegoer, in addition to the sensory satisfaction, a little more rational eyes that focus on the movie’s function, may better harvest another pleasure.