Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane was filmed in 1941, which is a very different era from now. The style of the film and the acting is really distinct. The movie opens with a sign reading "NO TRESPASSING" while gloomy music is playing which offers a sort of depressing feel. Soon the camera moves to a lit window in a secluded tower, on the Xanadu estate, a lonely enormous castle. The Xanadu estate is where the film starts because that's where Charles Foster Kane's life ended; there he muttered the word "rosebud" and hunched over, dead. Then, a reporter from the Inquirer journey's into Kane's past to find the meaning of Rosebud. Through this, the magnate's history is discovered with a series of extensive flashbacks from 5 different sources that new the man.

In 1941, the US entered World War II and the great depression had just ended. The film was very appropriate for the time and had a dark feel to it which was probably also the mood of America at the time. It focused on a media magnate, Kane, but caused much controversy due to the fact that there were some major similarities between Kane and a real life newspaper publisher of the time William Randolph Hearst. Since the film had such a similarity to Hearst's life, Hearst did not want the movie to be a huge commercial success and used his power over the media to help that. This resulted in the movie's delay and a limited run; critics believe it would've been a much huger success had the controversy not happened. Citizen Kane proceeded to receive nine academy nominations but only got one of them and was booed while on stage to accept the award. The message has a lot to do with its success, it would've been a bigger box office movie if Orson Welles had not made Hearst mad by making the movie so similar to his life, but it probably wouldn't be so unforgettable without the controversy. Besides, controversy always gets people talking and the talk makes people want to see the film so I'm sure it helped a bit too. The movie attracted an older crowd with it's innuendos towards politics, but it also kept a younger crowd entertained.

One of the main themes of the movie is how hard it is to interpret a man's life, this journalist finds the five closest people to Kane, each with a different experience with the man, and all paint a somewhat different picture than the previous. Rosebud, which is the most obvious symbol in his life shows that Kane held on to his childhood. The most important thing to the man who had everything was his sled from when he was a child. He is rich and powerful as an adult, and longs for his youth, before the money and fame. There is also a theme of isolation, in the beginning as a child he is playing by himself