Citizin Kane Movie Breakdown analysis

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Citizen Kane Movie Breakdown analysis
Citizen Kane is an epic American movie that was released in 1941. The film explains betrayal of a transition from childhood and adulthood and emotional contemplation of adulthood. The film has made extremely cinematic contributions on numerous fronts and was well known for the usage of a feature known as deep focus. The film is surrounded by many themes that include greed, the difficulty of interpreting life, and the myth of American dream, the unreliability of memory, and various motifs. A combination of these themes, motifs and symbols makes the film shooting exponentially outstanding compared to other such movies from the same era. We will look into the theme of greed and betrayal in much emphasis as compared to this analysis and breakdown. The narration of the film by Welles provides the audience with an opportunity to employ critique about the credibility of the information provided. The script writer does not introduce Kane in almost 30 minutes of the starting of the film that is a very hard thing to do as a script writer as one is prone to get little attention if the part without the main character is not captive. In 1941, Kane died to leave behind a vast and elaborate estate in Florida called Xanadu accompanied with segments of his newsreel obituaries the author depicts the story of the life and death of the main character. The lie of Kane was news by itself, and he made himself a larger than life figure in this case.

The script writer presents the last word said by Kane, “Rosebud,” as the only clue to understanding the life of Charles Foster Kane. We will look into the theme of capitalism and greed in this research as depicted in the film.
The difficulty in interpreting the life of a person is used to grow the theme of greed and selflessness. The author presents a situation where the life of the main character is described after his demise presenting doubt in the credibility of the information provided. After a deep given the life of the main character, the author presents a situation where he asks his reporters of simple questions to have a clear view of the created character. The main question, in this case, is “who was “Charles Foster Kane”? The author comes out to recognize that a man is not the sum of whatever he has achieved in his lifetime, whatever he processes and the actions he does in his survival tactics, but it’s a deeper inbuilt drive that is deeper inside the person. The author in the storyline develops a clause “Rosebud” from the beginning of the story to the end timeline of the story. Kane uses the clause in his childhood and his demise, and it carries the backbone of the story. Thompson digs deeper into the life of Kane, and he comes across many stories from various unprecedented sources, but none of the sources understands the meaning of Rosebud creating twilight of what could be the meaning of the term. One of the people interviewed is Susan Alexander Kane, who acts as Kane’s ex-wife and depicted as a drunkard. He then goes ahead to read through the stories of Kane’s financial adviser in his early days by Mr. Thatcher, who was also a childhood guardian of Kane and later was faced with attacks titled as “trust-busting” attacks.
In determining the ethical foundation of the film and how the themes of capitalism and greed grow Welles employs diversified methods and strategies to ensure that the audience critiques the situation. The movie starts with Kane as a young boy playing while her mother was determining what to do with the wealth she had acquired from a gold mine that introduces us to the financial situating of the family in context. The worthiness of the Goldmine is speculative as the author says that her mother acquired the mine from a tenant who did not pay his rent. This diversifies the theme of greed further since the worth of Goldmine cannot be compared to rent. As luck would have it, the “claimed” worthless land was found to have large deposits of Gold, and now the Kane family is wealthy tremendously. Due to this situation, her mother decides decided to take Kane to New York to a Mr. Thatcher, who would advise him on how to handle their now present finances. This act introduces capitalism as Kane now lacks the ability to do hard work and is now a beneficiary of ill-gotten material was making him greedy with time. We do not get to see him in his upbringing, and we come to see him as a millionaire playboy and already grown up. Kane tells Mr. Thatcher that he has not invested the wealth he acquired from his mother in any project whatsoever and only used the money for self-uses. From this moment, we start seeing Kane as a person and how his life starts diverting.
Throughout the movie we see Kane acquiring various things of arts and beauty but the author puts emphasis that Kane is not happy with the life whatsoever. No matter how expensive or quality items he gets, he always feels the need to get more of these items. Most of the audience will experience this act as a condemnation of capitalism and that a longing to acquire things of the world is not an enough drive to acquire happiness whatsoever. The elements of a true capitalist are based on working hard to earn and get all the things they have and not acquiring their processions through the sweat of another person. In capitalism, it’s the process of acquiring the wealth they have that makes them happy and not the wealth itself. Kane, in this case, had the wealth acquired through another person’s actions, and he felt he did nothing in the raising of this wealth.
Capitalism in itself is often misinterpreted as a promotion of greed and other immoral behaviors since it gives a sense of creating more and more which may not be possible in some cases. However in many cases, I tend to believe that capitalism provides a sense to create in human beings. Bernstein in his private penthouse office shows Kane at the highest level of his success in his life and contentment. He is the manager of his enterprises. He depicts his ascendance of the career Kane has. He depicts how Kane lured many top journalists from other companies depicting selflessness as well as capitalism. Third interview Thompson goes on with is with Leland, who depicts to the audience the political career of Kane, the disintegrating marriage of Kane and alcohol life of his friend and partner. All these events cause a quagmire and a disruption in Kane’s life.
The marriage is emotionally diminished where even his wife later refers it to as “distasteful episode in my life that I’d rather forget”. Leland depicts Kane running as a governor of New York as a prelude to then run for the president of United States of America. After a watch of the newsreel is the ultimate moment that the journalists feel that there is something amiss in the question. The towering figure, in this case, is amiss and not understands. The journalists only know what Kane did, but none of them came to know what he was ultimate. It’s on this basis that there arises a need for various journalists including Thompson to conduct an interview in finding the light of the story.
When Thompson then comes on to interview Susan Alexandra, it becomes clear from this case that Kane in any case whatsoever had no self-critics. She depicts Kane as a selfless and greedy person as immediately he marries her h insists and pressures her into becoming an opera star depicting selfless. The beginning of this relationship is seen as selfless and not genuine and sprouts from innocence and childlike attraction. Susan depicts that there was no pretentiousness in this marriage, neither were their plans for coming up with a successful one. No matter how poor and unwilling Susan is to become an opera star, Kane insists that she should indulge in the act. Kane eyes the fame behind having a diva wife. The result comes out disastrous, and Kane’s friends are in a no solution situation to deal with the embarrassing issue. In the last interview, Thompson interviews Raymond, who is Kane’s sleazy butler. Thompson takes the audience through deep recollection provided by Raymond, which shows us that Kane did not grieve at the departure of his wife Susan but instead went on to the apartments to rampage all of her things in range and fury. He goes on his rampage on until he comes across a glass ball in the snow scene.
Kane can be depicted as an egomaniac that doesn’t look at him but rather than the picture that the society sees of which he does not properly comprehend. He avoids understanding himself by using the things he has and the goods he buys himself to manipulate the image of the people around him. By being too much preoccupied with the external matters and this leads to having a genuine life. By portraying the act of greed and capitalism from the beginning of the film progressively to the end, he is seen as a stand-in for America person. For those in many cases experience and enjoy wealth and power are blinded by the actions of capitalism, and the daily bread brought to their mouths through greed and ill behaviors. The overall philosophical scope that the film takes revolves around avoiding selflessness and greed in the achievements of certain situations. The media and other journalists are left finding a reason and meaning of the word rosebud used in the beginning and at the end of the film and is painted on the sled. The sled, in this case, represents the childhood that he has been derived and leads to a focus on the innermost pain.