Own the rights?
The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags are used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.
For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for Citizen Kane can be found at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033467/parentalguide.
Yes. It is very loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, who was one of the greatest newspaper publishers of all time.
Rosebud is the sled that Charles Foster Kane used to play with as a boy. It may represent his lost childhood; it may be some insignificant memory that bubbled up in his mind just before he died.Whatever it meant to Kane, it was the last word he spoke. We follow a newsreel reporter as he tries to uncover the mystery of "Rosebud." He never finds out, but we see the sled just as it is thrown into a fire along with tons of other detritus from Kane's life.
This is not necessarily a plot hole as many have suggested. It would appear that Welles intentionally withholds information from the audience in the opening scene in Kane's bedroom. The audience is only allowed to see the room in fragments and in close-ups and we never see the room in its entirety. Therefore, we cannot ascertain to any degree of certainty that Kane was alone in the room when the word "Rosebud" was spoken. Indeed, later in the film, Raymond, the butler of Charles Foster Kane, informs Thompson (the reporter) that he was in the room at the time of Kane's demise and heard his dying words.Also, keep in mind that Xanadu was a big palace with an echo. Even if Kane was alone in the room when he was dying, it is likely his servants were nearby, ready to attend to him. So it is not unlikely they would've been able to hear him say "Rosebud." Notice how the maid comes in almost immediately after he drops the globe.
Citizen Kane won a reputation as the greatest film ever made when it topped the 1962 Sight and Sound poll. It has topped the list ever since.The film is commonly praised for its intricate plot, filled with flashbacks that shuffle the chronology of Kane's life; its extraordinary performances; its marvelous technical stunts; and its deep-focus photography. Few if any of the technical effects are entirely original to Kane. But Orson Welles and his crew's masterly use of so many of them in one film has made Citizen Kane an influence on nearly everything that came after. (For dissenting opinions see this FAQ entry.)
More fun than any great movie I can think of. -- Pauline KaelOn seeing it for the first time, one got a conviction that if the cinema could do that, it could do anything. -- Penelope HoustonWelles' first and best, a film that broke all the rules and invented some new ones. . . A stunning film in every way. -- Leonard Maltin's Movie GuideCitizen Kane is more than a great movie; it is a gathering of all the lessons of the emerging era of sound, just as Birth of a Nation assembled everything learned at the summit of the silent era, and 2001 pointed the way beyond narrative. These peaks stand above all the others. -- Roger Ebert, 1998Too long, too dark, too talky, too arty. Orson Welles was a ponderous, overrated bore, the cinematic equivalent of William Faulkner. -- Florence King, Stet, Dammit! The Misanthrope's Corner 1991 to 2002, NY, 2003, p. 255
r73731
