Chris Lewis: Citzen Kane
Everyone knows rosebud. I even knew what rosebud was without even knowing where that came from. It’s a part of our culture, each person will at one point in their life hear rosebud and may not know exactly what it means. I’ll be honest; I’m still confused about the importance of rosebud. This movie wouldn’t make the top of my list of favorite movies, but would be one I would like to own. Citizen Kane uses black and white to its advantage to show the light and dark of human nature, and also its mystery. The story begins in heaven. The room is full of light and the journalists are all in shadow. The angels take the history of each person. By taking the history of Kane it is almost as if they are weighing good and evil to see if he should be sent to heaven or hell. This large metaphor could represent the knowledge and workings of the press. The press delves and finds the true story through different sources to create a picture of a person or an event that took place. It would then be up to the public to qualify this information. This just as Kane does in his newspaper. He sells stories that may or may not be true, and leaves it to the public to decide what they shall believe.
Citizen Kane is one of the many rags to riches stories. He is given money, neatly and almost from nowhere. He is given a chance to build himself up from where his parents were in life. But in that he lost his childhood and his innocence and became almost godly; as represented by the kingdom of heaven including reporters as angels and a god being the one to run it all. Because of this glorious rise to riches and fame he is an idol or a pedestal for which the real life public would want to reach. Half of the popularity of this film could be due to the fact that he rises from nothing into a wealthy upperclassman. The other half would be his moral downfall. Something the public loves more than a person succeeding beyond their means is a person that becomes corrupt and fails in the end. The rise of a character gives the public a dream or a hope to become something better than what they are. The downfall makes the public feel better about themselves and their standpoint in life without having mass fortunes and many statues. This film represents the American dream, and the American tragedy.