AFI and Roger Ebert's top film of all time, Welles' 1941 masterpiece has one of the most famous macguffins ever, and its device allows the filmmaker to showcase his formidable talents in the course of chronicling the rise and fall of Charles Foster Kane. Bristling with hubris and self hatred, Kane muscles through his life without regard for anything but love--his unrequited love for himself and his need to make those around him love him.

Given over to a banker's custody after his mother receives a deed that proves to be worth millions as payment for a boarder's stay, Charlie Kane (Welles in a role that sees him age from his 20s to his 70s) lives a life of reckless hedonism. That is, until he becomes of age and all his considerable assets are released to him at age 25, when he decides he'll take up publishing the New York Inquirer. We follow Kane as he sets out to transform this staid, declining paper to a game-changing yellow journalism tabloid, seen by its owner as the vanguard of popularist progress.

Seeking first the adulation of the readers, then of women, then of voters, and finally burning bridges between all of them, Kane's rise and fall, ending in the half-finished palatial Xanadu, is seen in terms of flashbacks, retellings of periods in his life from the perspectives of his second wife, his banker's memoir, his spurned best friend. How trustworthy are their memories? How much of Kane did they really know? Not enough to answer the obituarist's question: "Rosebud? What or who did he mean by 'Rosebud', uttered with his dying breath?"

Ebert in his audio commentary mentions many of the tremendous technical acheivements of the film, Welles' first, and pays particular attention to the DP's cinematography. It is haunting, and the play of light and shadow, the angles of the shots, all help realize the distance between Kane and everyone around him, including the viewer. But its not just a technical triumph--the actors excel across the board too. None more so, in my view, than Welles himself--just the range we see in the early scenes of him as a tireless, pompous playboy with money to burn and the final reel as an old, eccentric, lonely hermit is such compelling work that drew me in instantly.

Citizen Kane may be an angry satire of William Randolph Hearst. But its far more than that--an excellent contemplation of a favorite NT saying, What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his soul? Its innovations help prevent it from being dated, and the film cries out for re-viewing.

And Rosebud? If you don't know by now, I won't spoil it for you. A must see film, truly among the great American movies of all time.

Absolutely. Gosh, I need to see this again soon on DVD. I've had the VHS for years, I'm not sure I've even seen the DVD.

For me, it's those opening shots of the gates and the cold snow falling on Xanadu, the lonely, muttered word, "Rosebud," the isolated hand dropping the snow globe onto a checkered floor, the breaking glass, the entrance of the nurse, the distorted view of the room and the shadowy nurse which pulls the blanket over Kane's face -- the sign of his demise.

Never has a mystery been set up so perfectly.

And it cuts from all of those great shots straight into a trumpet fanfare for "News on the March."

The whole thing just sucks you in from the opening scenes all the way to the end. I probably agree with Ebert that it is the greatest movie of all time.

Link to our brief discussion of the film in another context.

Please rate this film...

It's easy to do, but I love this movie as well. I was exposed to it pretty early on--didn't get it--and when I returned a few years later I found myself loving every minute. The unconventional structure is a big factor in my enjoyment, and may have influenced my current predilection for movies and novels that deal in some way with memory. And I like the way that, in the end, the Maguffin explains nothing.

Oh, and it made me an unabashed Orson Welles fan--which I am to this day. It's amazing that, by the end of the film, when he is made-up to look 70+, one forgets--and at the same time remembers with astonishment--that this is the same young man who was so charming and enthusiastic at the beginning of the movie. It is a real triumph of the actor's art.

I don't think of Rosebud as a MacGuffin at all. I think it demonstrates that Solomon-like longing for redemption or even value. At the end of his life, Charles Foster Kane has had everything there is to have, and yet he paradoxically longs for a time when he was innocent and had nothing. He dies alone in a house full of treasures, in my belief wishing that he could have done things a little differently.

Or perhaps we could say he has everything but wants the one thing he can't have: Rosebud. Or maybe a friend or a time of innocence.

I also think it is a clear demonstration of a life lived only for self with no connection to God. At the end, does it really matter what you collected?

This is how I've always seen it — the "he who dies with the most blah blah" lifestyle that Kane lives over much of his life peters out, and his last days are filled with longing for an innocence and (maybe) naivety that he hasn't seen since his childhood.

When I first started watching The Sopranos on DVD, in the first season, Tony reminded me of Charles Foster Kane. Both are Solomonic type characters. Tony's obsession with the ducks, his dreams about sea birds, and subsequent panic attack when the ducks leave home may have some parallel to Rosebud.

I wonder if this theme runs its course the whole way through the series. In a flashback, he remembers his first panic attack, in the butcher shop - a disembodied pig's head. He kills Ralph over a horse. This loss of innocence, and desire for simple, almost child-like comforts (sleds and pets) makes me wonder if there are other examples of this in movies other than Citizen Kane and programs like The Sopranos.

Hence my nomination of the film for the Top 100.

I'm sure someone can come up with a better capsule than mine.

Much of Kane is a reflection on Hearst, but he wasn't the only magnate who influenced the character; Kane was a composite, as Welles himself would often say in his final years.

I mention this because too often, many people think the Kane-Hearst comparison then means Susan Alexander Kane=Marion Davies, which certainly isn't true. Davies was a solid silent-era comedic actress, as films such as "The Red Mill," "The Patsy" and "Show People" make clear. And she won good reviews in many non-Hearst newspapers and had plenty of fans who didn't read Hearst publications. Fortunately, many of her films have been reissued on DVD, enabling people to check out her talent for themselves. Moreover, she was beloved in the film community for her many charitable works (such as a pediatric clinic at UCLA that's still going strong today).

As for "Kane," I love the movie; it's the film equivalent of Stravinsky's "The Rite Of Spring" -- revolutionary art.