Citizen Kane Journal

Christopher Garcia

               While watching the film I found it very interesting how the scenes changed from citizen Kane being old to being young. This film definitely incorporated the entirety of his life from start to finish incorporating his private life as well. The way the transitions took place was very well structured and intricate. When I found out that Orson Welles was not an award winning director or even a director at all previously I was shocked. It was also never heard of for a director to have complete control over the set and its actors without any questions being asked. Furthermore, the actors that were in citizen Kane were all new actors which I felt performed really well considering they were all fresh to acting. Charles Foster Kane’s character was based off of William Randolph Hearst whose life represents Kane’s in the film very closely. Though there are many interesting things I found in the text when comparing the film I found these the most interesting.

               The article that I found on Citizen Kane really summarizes the movie and the meaning behind the rosebud really well. In the beginning of the movie it explains how rosebud is the true plot behind the movie though the movie may seem somewhat like a bibliography of William Randolph Hearst life. In the beginning of the movie it’s a very mysterious scene with the glob and the word rosebud you hear uttered from a mysterious man. However, the meaning of the rosebud remains a true mystery until the end of the film where you see the rosebud in the fire after his second wife leaves him. The article also talks about what it took to create the character known as Citizen Kane. To my surprise the article references several millionaires of that time that made up Kane’s character and the flashback and flash-forward technique that was used in order to represent the parts of Kane’s life.

               Before I read the article I thought that citizen Kane was an actual person though it did seem farfetched my knowledge on history is obviously lacking. When I found out how many people’s lives were actually incorporated it surprised me how in debt Kane’s character truly was. I also found out that the film closed its first run with a loss of $150,000 when it first debuted. Knowing it was a masterpiece before watching the movie I was surprised to find out that the movie was not really successful when it first came out. It was only after World War II that it finally resurfaced in Europe and then later on American television, that Citizen Kane took its rightful place as a cinematic masterpiece. This was a surprise due to the fact that most masterpieces that we have already watched were masterpieces right away rather than later on. It just shows you that at that time period there was many changes that took place in the movie industry and as the changes occurred so did the rating of films.

               During the entire movie I felt as if I was watching a bibliography because his life was such a grand mystery that had a lot of different parts. The plot was very deep but I felt that the climax was less of a climax and more of an answer to the grand question what is rosebud? What does it mean? That was the question proposed at the very beginning and right before the movie ended I first thought it was not going to be solved until I saw the fire being burned. I liked this movie and enjoyed all the twists and turns that it had from when he was a kid to the scenes with both his wives which ended up divorcing him. Though I wish the plot was a bit straight forward I definitely enjoyed the mystery that was first proposed.
Article:  http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/89/Citizen-Kane/articles.html

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