Goofs for
Citizen Kane (1941) More at IMDbPro »

• Revealing mistakes: When Leland and Bernstein are inspecting Kane's art purchases, Leland moves a statue which wobbles too quickly for it to be made of a dense stone such as marble.
  
  
• Factual errors: The Russian newspaper "Bednota," featured in the movie's opening newsreel, had been merged with "Socialisticheskoe Zemledelye" in 1931, long before Kane's death in 1941. The character for E (or the number 3) is used in place of the character for Z in several places, and the letter N is drawn like a Latin N (as opposed to a Cyrillic/Greek N which looks like an H).
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Kane shouts at Jim Gettys from the stairwell, it is clear that most of the words he is saying are not coming out of his mouth.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: When Kane hovers over Jed Leland's unconscious form after Susan's horrible opera debut, the paper in the typewriter had a thumb mark in exactly the same place where Kane will grab it out of the typewriter a few seconds afterwards. Evidently they shot this scene at least once before.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: There is a camera shadow on the large doors to the Thatcher vault as Thompson enters.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Kane returns from Europe, he enters the Inquirer news room and rushes towards the camera, which dollies back. At this point, and when he subsequently leaves, the dolly track is visible on the floor.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: The camera's shadow is cast on the large, closing door at the Thatcher library.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The long dolly shot from outside the Kane house in Colorado and all the way back inside through two rooms, ending on the far side of a table, could not have been achieved with the table in place and, instead, the table had to be moved into position once the camera was past. It's an almost perfect illusion except that the hat on the table is still wobbling slightly (from the sudden movement) by the time it comes into shot.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Jim Gettys reveals Kane's mistress to his wife, Gettys shouts to Kane, "We've got proof! It will look bad in the papers" Looking closely, he actually said, "...It will look good in the papers..."
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: At the party scene where Kane dances with the girls, there are several shots of his reflection in the mirror. The camera shoots directly into the mirror and its silhouette can be clearly seen.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the picnic scene towards the end, Welles had to shoot against a back-projection because a location shoot was too costly and time-consuming. The stock footage used for the exterior was taken from King Kong (1933), hence on closer inspection the four birds that fly by are in fact very definite pterodactyls. RKO told Welles to take the pterodactyls out of the shot, but he liked them, and decided to keep them.
  
  
• Continuity: When Mr. Thatcher has Mrs. Kane sign the contract at Mrs. Kane's Boarding House, Mrs. Kane goes over the closed window and opens it. In the first shot, the window could only be raised to the height of Mrs. Kane's shoulders, but in the second, it is above her head.
  
  
• Continuity: During the office party scene in which Kane welcomes the newly-acquired Chronicle staff to The Inquirer, the gentleman sitting to the left of Kane is wearing a hat which disappears and reappears in subsequent shots.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: During the office party scene in which Kane welcomes the newly acquired Chronicle staff to The Inquirer, one of the dancing girls kicks a footlight that is being use to illuminate the scene (look in the lower left-hand corner of the frame).
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the aquarium, a wire holding the 'octopus' is visible.
  
  
• Continuity: When Kane is talking to drunk Leland, he puts his right hand in the pocket. In the next shot, after he walks away from Leland, his hand appears out of the pocket.
  
  
• Continuity: At the first time on the opera house stage, just before Susan begins to sing, two men pass carrying a litter behind her twice.
  
  
• Continuity: The first time we see the backstage preparations before Susan sings, the shadow of the curtain rising has a completely straight bottom edge. The second time we see this scenario, this time from behind Susan, as the curtain rises, the bottom of the curtain is adorned with a series of prominent curves.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: You can see through the eyes of the shrieking bird to the scenery behind it.
  
  
• Continuity: When Susan Alexander Kane is doing the jigsaw puzzle by the fireplace, in the first wide shot it's clear that the puzzle is almost complete, but in the subsequent close-up the puzzle has hardly been started.
  
  
• Continuity: When Kane's second wife is recounting the moment she left him, the suitcase that is open on the bed has frills on the inside. When we hear the butler continue the story, Kane walks back towards the suitcase to close it, and the frills are gone.
  
  
• Continuity: When Susan Alexander Kane tells Kane that she's leaving him once and for all, Kane has a moustache. A second later as he watches her walk away, the moustache is gone.
  
  
• Continuity: When Kane is performing his "rooster" as a shadow show to Susan, his hands are not in the position they would be to cast the shadow as it appears.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After Kane's mother signs the contract for Thatcher, she stands up and seems to walk through the table on her way back to the window. This is due to the table being moved in order to create a continuous tracking shot from the front of the set (where the table was) to the back (window).
  
  
• Factual errors: In the newsreel sequence, a gazette in Spanish is shown, announcing the death of Kane's death. The newspaper's name is "El Correspendencia" but that name simply makes no sense for Spanish speakers. The closest match to this would be "La Correspondencia" because most of the words that end with an "A" are meant to reflect a female gender and the correct article is "La", not "El". However, that literally means "The Mail" and this is just a generic name which is fairly related to news media. Also, the words "Murió" in the header, as well as the "Xanadú" in the article's text are misspelled because they lack the accent marks on the last vowels.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the newsreel, the announcer states how a defaulting boarder had left the deed to a supposedly worthless mine (the Colorado Load) to Mary Kane in 1868, then begins his next sentence, "Fifty-seven years later, before a Congressional committee," as the film cuts to an old newsreel of Thatcher testifying before the committee. Fifty-seven years after 1868 would be 1925. As "talking" pictures were at best still in the experimental stage and in any case not in use in 1925, it would not be realistic that the newsreel of Thatcher testifying before Congress would have sound. Similarly, the sequence immediately following Thatcher's testimony, stated by the announcer as "that same month in Union Square", depicting the radical speaker denouncing Kane, would also not have had sound.
  
  
• Factual errors: One of the posters advertising Susan Alexander's opera appearance shown in the newsreel misspells her first name "Suzan".
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: At the end of her interview with the reporter Thompson, Susan Alexander Kane says, "Come over sometime and tell me the story of your life," but as she says this her mouth is not moving.
  
  
• Continuity: In the first shots of the Breakfast table sequence, Emily's dress covers her shoulder in long shots, but is lower, leaving her shoulders bare, in close-ups.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the newsreel sequence, a gazette in Spanish is shown, announcing the death of Kane's death. The newspaper's name is "El Correspendencia" but that name simply makes no sense for Spanish speakers. The closest match to this would be "La Correspondencia" because most of the words that end with an "A" are meant to reflect a female gender and the correct article is "La", not "El". However, that literally means "The Mail" and this is just a generic name which is fairly related to news media. Also, the words "Murió" in the header, as well as the "Xanadú" in the article's text are misspelled because they lack the accent marks on the last vowels. Another mistake is "Destinguido editor" instead of "Distinguido editor" can be read below the article's title. Finally, the title would never be written as such in Spanish (you can read "Madrid" in the paper): you wouldn't say "El Sr. Kane se murió" but rather "El Sr. Kane ha muerto".
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the picnic, Susan clearly tightens her face muscles and turns her head before Kane slaps her.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the photographer at the party snaps the photograph of the former-Chronicle-now-Inquirer reporters, he is standing much too close to capture them all inside of the frame. At that distance (about 3 feet) he would only be able to capture about 3-4 of the men sitting there.
  
  
• Continuity: The jigsaw puzzle that Susan is putting together changes considerably between the shot where Kane walks into the large room and asks her what she's doing and the next cut, where Kane is standing in front of the large fireplace. The amount of puzzle that she has completed increases greatly between the 2 shots.
  
  
• Continuity: The large sofa (with a table behind) moves between the shot where Kane sits down in the armchair (while Susan does another puzzle), and the cut to Kane's POV. The sofa and table move almost into the line of sight between Kane and Susan between shots.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: In the beginning, Kane says, "Rosebud." The nurse enters the room after the word is spoken. The shooting script only mentions Kane and the nurse being in the room. However, within the movie itself Raymond the butler tells the reporter that he had heard Kane say "Rosebud" after the fight with Susan as well as just before he drops the snow globe, implying that what the viewer is shown in that scene is from Raymond's P.O.V.
  
  

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