Citizen Kane

 
Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane was released September 5, 1941. There were no philosophies or events that influenced the film. The genre of the film is mystery/drama. The ideas of wanting to have everything go your way and to have everything is presented in the film through Charles Kane. The film was not adapted from any other piece of work. The film was received in a very positive way when it was released. It even was nominated for 9 academy awards. When I looked at the title, I thought it meant that there was a citizen they called Kane for some reason. From the title, I expected the film to be mysterious and have crime in it. The film begins with weird music playing in the background and the jumps to a scene where a man with a full grown mustache says the word, ''Rosebud.”  After he said that, you see the man’s hand drop a snow-globe as if the man suddenly dies from something. As a viewer, I’m thinking who is the man and what the heck just happened? I also thought why did he say rosebud? There are three important scenes in the film. The first and main scene is when a man by the name of Mr. Thatcher comes to Charles Kane house while he was a young boy and adopts him from his mom and dad. It’s important because it’s the start of how Charles Kane came out o be after he got adopted. The second scene is when Charles’ second wife Susan leaves him because she is not happy with their lifestyle. That scene is important, because Susan is the first person to stand up to Charles instead of telling him what he wants to hear. The last scene is the scene at the very end of the movie where you see a sled in the burning fire that appears to have the name Rosebud engraved on it.  This scene is the most significant because throughout the entire movie there was a mystery of who or what was rosebud, sir Kane last words before he died in the beginning of the movie. The climax of the movie was when Kane fires his pal Jedediah so he called him, because this is the initiation to when Kane gets lonely by losing the loved people around him. That scene illustrates the main idea by showing Charles ways of trying to contradict everything to go his way no matter who gets hurt. There were no loose ends in this film. The mystery of who or what was rosebud was finally revealed. Citizen Kane concludes on the burning of Kane's sled rosebud because that is what the entire movie was about. Charles Kane’s character was developed from the beginning of the movie when he died and continued to reveal his life through the film. The purpose of Charles in the film is to show how a man could have everything anyone could ask for and still be dissatisfied because of how he wants everything to go exactly his way. Kane wore suits and slacks with button down shirts and suspenders. Kane also did a lot of hateful things to people to show how he felt he was better and above everyone else. Then there is Kane’s colleagues Mr. Bernstein and Jedediah. Both men supported Kane with all of his decisions throughout the film no matter what. That developed their purpose throughout the movie because it showed how loyal they were to Charles.  Then there is Kane’s wife Susan. She was very open-minded and did not mind giving Charles a piece of her mind and a dose of his own medicine. There are a few motifs in this film. One of them is isolation. Kane repeatedly finds himself isolated from the world around him, whether he is young or old, happy or unhappy, alone or surrounded by others, which suggests that his final isolation is inevitable. Another is materialism. Kane is a rapacious collector. At one point, in a newspaper office so filled with statues that the employees can barely move around, Bernstein notes that they have multiple, duplicate statues of Venus. Kane obsessively fills his estate with possessions, and at the end of the movie the camera pans across massive rooms filled with crates to show that he never even unpacked many of his purchases. Kane’s collecting is not that of a discriminating connoisseur—he buys art objects so fervently that his behavior more closely resembles the ravenous actions of a predator.   The director’s purpose of the film was basically to entertain with a film about a man who had everything but died with nothing due to his terrible personality and ways. The message of the film is just because you may have a lot more wealth than others and everything you want doesn’t make it right for you to look down on others and treat people badly for your own happiness. The director does use symbols in this movie. The sleds are used as symbols. Two sleds are in the film, Rosebud, the sled Kane loves as a child, appears at the beginning, during one of Kane’s happiest moments, and at the end, being burned with the rest of Kane’s possessions after Kane dies. “Rosebud” is the last word Kane utters, which not only emphasizes how alone Kane is but also suggests Kane’s inability to relate to people on an adult level. Rosebud is the most potent emblem of Kane’s childhood, and the comfort and importance it represents for him are rooted in the fact that it was the last item he touched before being taken from his home. When Kane meets Thatcher, who has come to take him from his mother, Kane uses his sled to resist Thatcher by shoving it into Thatcher’s body. In this sense, the sled serves as a barrier between his carefree youth and the responsibilities of adulthood and marks a turning point in the development of his character. The snow globe is also a symbol. The snow globe that falls from Kane’s hand when he dies links the end of his life to his childhood. The scene inside the snow globe is simple, peaceful, and orderly, much like Kane’s life with his parents before Thatcher comes along. The snow globe also associates these qualities with Susan. Kane sees the snow globe for the first time when he meets Susan. On that same night, he’s thinking about his mother, and he even speaks of her, one of only two times he mentions her throughout the film. In his mind, Susan and his mother become linked. Susan, like Kane’s mother, is a simple woman, and Kane enjoys their quiet times in her small apartment where he’s free from the demands of his complex life. Susan eventually leaves him, just as his mother did, and her departure likewise devastates him. As Kane trashes Susan’s room in anger, he finds the snow globe, and the already-thin wall between his childhood and adulthood dissolves. Just as his mother abandoned him once, Susan has abandoned him now, and Kane is powerless to bring back either one. Statues are also a symbol in the film. Kane repeatedly fails in his attempts to control the people in his life, which perhaps explains his obsession with collecting statues and the appearance of statues throughout the film, since statues can be easily manipulated.