What are the major themes of Citizen Kane?
Themes
- The Difficulty of Interpreting a Life. The difficulty of interpreting a person’s life once that life has ended is the central theme of Citizen Kane.
- The Myth of the American Dream. Citizen Kane was one of the first movies to depict the American Dream as anything less than desirable.
- The Unreliability of Memory.
What did Rosebud symbolize?
“Rosebud is the trade name of a cheap little sled on which Kane was playing on the day he was taken away from his home and his mother. In his subconscious it represented the simplicity, the comfort, above all the lack of responsibility in his home, and also it stood for his mother’s love, which Kane never lost.”
What is deep focus in Citizen Kane?
Deep focus allows subjects close and far away from the camera to remain in focus and is achieved by using a wide-angle lens and a smaller aperture. Deep focus means deep staging of characters along the z-axis. An early scene in Citizen Kane (below) is a great example of the deep focus found in the film.
Why was rosebud so important?
What is the most important scene in Citizen Kane?
So many moments in Welles’s film can fit be deemed as important. The burning of the sled “Rosebud,” the dropping of the snow globe, or even the loud whisper of “Rosebud” as Kane’s final words could all constitute as significant scenes from the film.
How was Citizen Kane taken down by the media?
However, Kane is also taken down by the media, when Jim W. Gettys sells a story about Kane and Susan Alexander to The Chronicle. The skeleton around which the plot of Citizen Kane is built is Thompson’s search for the meaning of “Rosebud”, Charles Foster Kane’s last word.
What does Rosebud mean in Citizen Kane?
Although Thompson never discovers the meaning of the word, Welles reveals the secret to the audience when, at the end of the film, there is a shot of Kane’s old childhood sled being thrown away — and the inscription at the top of the sled is “Rosebud”.
How is the American Dream portrayed in Citizen Kane?
Citizen Kane was one of the first movies to depict the American Dream as anything less than desirable. As a child, Kane is fully happy as he plays in the snow outside the family’s home, even though his parents own a boarding house and are quite poor.