Citizen Kane by Orson Welles

The film Citizen Kane by Orson Welles, opens with a picture of a castle with a window

that has a light turned on. As the backgrounds begin to change into a closer view of the castle,

then a view of the castle from the reflection of the water surrounding it, we are drawn into the

window as a man falls dead with the last words “Rosebud” coming from his mouth. We are then

brought through a maze of scenes that reflect one man’s journey through life from his childhood

with an abusive father, to the time he inherits the world’s sixth largest fortune.

Charles Foster Kane, is portrayed in the movie as a man who has everything one could

ever want. Whatever he doesn’t posess, he tries to buy. Power and wealth to Kane are the

epitamy of success, and although he claims or atleast tries to be happy, he truly is not a happy

person. As Kane begins to learn that the things he wants most in life he cannot purchase, so to

do the people with whom he surrounds himself with. When Kane ran for governor, he tries to

use his wealth to overpower his opponent, Gettys. This backfires on Kane when Getty’s

threatens to use information about an affair Kane had to thwart him from the race. Kane once

described his wife as a “cross section of the American public”. These sort of references provide

us with an image of a man that is willing to do anything to portray himself as loving or able to be

loved.

Kane was truly never able to love someone. He was given everything he ever wanted,

and when he couldn’t buy something, he tried to create it. When Susan Alexander, Kane’s

second wife, wanted to be a singer, Kane got her a teacher, and began from there, to create a

singer. He built an Opera house and made her into a glamourous star. Throughout the film,

Kane used his paper, the Enquirer to manipulate the minds of the public into believing whatever

Kane wrote. Kane also used his paper to show the public how politicians (Gettys) were corrupt

and dishonest. Whether the facts published in the Enquirer were true or not, to Kane was

irrelevent.