I have a question that perhaps you good people in this forum can help me out.

It's been almost 10 years since I last saw Citizen Kane so my memory of it may not be very accurate (I would view it again but where I am, it's difficult to get a copy of Citizen Kane commercially). Anyway, the last time I saw it, a friend of mine asked an interesting question:

At the begining of Citizen Kane, Kane was shown all alone in a room in his mansion. If I remember correctly, he was very depressed and was drowning his sorrow. In his dying breath, he uttered the word "Rosebud". Then, the shot shows him dropping the glass of wine he was holding - indicating his death, before someone opened the door in the background (it was his nurse I think). That scene pretty much set off the film.

The questioned that my friend asked was, if no one was in the room when Kane uttered "Rosebud", how did the other characters - especially the reporters investigating Kane's life, knew about it?

We posed this question to our film professor then but he gave us a load of crap about "cinematic licence".

Can anyone out there enlighten us ?

Don’t be so hard on the prof.
Can you say "gaping plot hole"?


Peace.

_____________
Youth is the first victim of war - the first fruit of peace.
It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man;
it takes only 20 seconds of war to destroy him.-- King Boudewijn I, King of Belgium (1934-1993)

INT. KANE'S BEDROOM - FAINT DAWN - 1940

A snow scene. An incredible one. Big, impossible flakes of snow, a too picturesque farmhouse and a snow man. The jingling of sleigh bells in the musical score now makes an ironic reference to Indian Temple bells - the music freezes -

KANE'S OLD OLD
VOICE
Rosebud...

The camera pulls back, showing the whole scene to be contained in one of those glass balls which are sold in novelty stores all over the world. A hand - Kane's hand, which has been holding the ball, relaxes. The ball falls out of his hand and bounds down two carpeted steps leading to the bed, the camera following. The ball falls off the last step onto the marble floor where it breaks, the fragments glittering in the first rays of the morning sun. This ray cuts an angular pattern across the floor, suddenly crossed with a thousand bars of light as the blinds are pulled across the window.

The foot of Kane's bed. The camera very close. Outlined against the shuttered window, we can see a form - the form of a nurse, as she pulls the sheet up over his head. The camera follows this action up the length of the bed and arrives at the face after the sheet has covered it.

The nurse heard Kane say, "Rosebud."


INT. GREAT HALL - XANADU - NIGHT - 1940

Thompson and Raymond. Raymond has finished his beer.

RAYMOND
(callously)
That's the whole works, right up
to date.

THOMPSON
Sentimental fellow, aren't you?

RAYMOND
Yes and no.

THOMPSON
(getting to his feet)
Well, thanks a lot.

RAYMOND
See what I mean? He was a little
gone in the head - the last couple
of years, anyway - but I knew how
to handle him.
(rises)
That "Rosebud" - that don't mean
anything. I heard him say it.
He just said "Rosebud" and then he
dropped that glass ball and it broke
on the floor. He didn't say anything
about that, so I knew he was dead -
He said all kind of things I couldn't
make out. But I knew how to take care
of him.


http://www.godamongdirectors.com/scripts/citizenkane.shtml

Well, isn't that just terrific. Now I have to go rent a movie that I
did not particularly care for in the first place. ThankyouverymuchQ. :)

Now I have to go rent a movie that I
did not particularly care for in the first place.

Really ? I thought the movie was pretty good, for it's time. But then, I've always like Orson Welles as a writer/director.

Read this article:

http://www.crosswinds.net/~citizenkane/content.htm

http://www.101hollywood.com/1thrd.gif

I understand why Citizen Kane is a great movie from a historical perspective: it used new camera, cinema, set… techniques that hadn't been used in film before, and the political statements of the film at the time were very important. I get all that. Was it an important film? Yes. Was it revolutionary in it's time?

I think my problem is that I don’t like flashbacks in a movie. I felt the same way about Amadeus. Personal shortcoming, I guess. :D

Peace.

_____________
Youth is the first victim of war - the first fruit of peace.
It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man;
it takes only 20 seconds of war to destroy him.-- King Boudewijn I, King of Belgium (1934-1993)