Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Citizen Kane


for picutre info see **

Citizen Kane is a film that I am extremely interested in. After watching a documentary about the film and the conflicts of Orson Wells and William Hearst I was looking for all the simliarities between Orson's character, Kane, and what I learned about Hearst in the documentary. I'm also facinated by rosebud. I want to first go over some of the parts I really liked about Citizen Kane. I loved the breakfast table sequence with Kane and his first wife, Emily. Another was the puzzle sequence with Kane's second wife, Susan. And I'll conclude by talking about rosebud.
The breakfast table sequence was awesome. I loved watching the change in attidue toward each other, the change of outfits and hairstyles. A span of time was shown in about 2-3 minutes of screen time. I thought the cosutmes were great here.
The puzzle sequence came later, which was a good pattern--it showed the quirks of each marriage. Emily and Kane talked/puzzles during breakfast. Susan and Kane talked/fought while Susan worked on puzzles. I liked the puzzle sequence again because of a longer span of time was shown in about 2-3 minutes. It was neat to see all of these puzzles half finished, almost finished or just starting.
Now, onto rosebud. Rosebud has me intrigued. I met somebody recently who previously has seen Citizen Kane and she said, "Yeah, tell me what you think of rosebud when you find out what it is!" She expressed that it was pointless, but the whole movie was centered around it. I found rosebud to be different than that. I think rosebud symbolizes the only time that Kane was truly happy, which was when he was a child with his family only thinking about sledding. Kane was never happy, or he at least never found a happiness that lasted. I think on his death bed he was reflecting on life (like most people do) and found that being with rosebud was the last time he had happiness.
Overall I'm still trying to figure out what I think of Citizen Kane. I think I liked it, but wasn't thrilled like I was with The Godfather. The cinematography and editing definitely pulled me in as did the Orson Wells, Hearst, Kane comparison.

No comments: