FAQ for
Citizen Kane (1941) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags are used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for Citizen Kane can be found at here.

Yes. It is very loosely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, one of the most famous newspaper publishers of all time. Hearst himself tried to prevent the film's release, claiming it defamed his reputation. He offered to buy all the negatives to have them destroyed and refused to allow the film to be advertised in his papers. More info here

Rosebud is the sled that Charles Foster Kane used to play with as a boy. It may represent his lost childhood; it may be some insignificant memory that bubbled up in his mind just before he died. Whatever it meant to Kane, it was the last word he spoke. We follow a newsreel reporter as he tries to uncover the mystery of "Rosebud." He never finds out, but we see it just as it is thrown into a fire along with tons of other detritus from Kane's life.

At the end of the film, Raymond, Kane's butler, informed Thompson (the reporter) that he was in the room at the time of Kane's death and heard his dying words. Welles likely shot the death scene from early part of the film the way he did, making it appear that no one else was nearby, to emphasize Kane's solitude.

Citizen Kane won a reputation as the greatest film ever made when it topped the 1962 Sight and Sound poll. It has topped the list ever since. The film is commonly praised for its intricate plot, filled with flashbacks that shuffle the chronology of Kane's life; its extraordinary performances; its marvelous technical stunts; and its deep-focus photography. Few if any of the technical effects are entirely original to Kane. But Orson Welles and his crew's masterly use of so many of them in one film has made Citizen Kane an influence on nearly everything that came after. (For dissenting opinions see this FAQ entry.)

More fun than any great movie I can think of. -- Pauline Kael

On seeing it for the first time, one got a conviction that if the cinema could do that, it could do anything. -- Penelope Houston

Welles' first and best, a film that broke all the rules and invented some new ones. . . A stunning film in every way. -- Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide

Citizen Kane is more than a great movie; it is a gathering of all the lessons of the emerging era of sound, just as Birth of a Nation assembled everything learned at the summit of the silent era, and 2001 pointed the way beyond narrative. These peaks stand above all the others. -- Roger Ebert, 1998

Too long, too dark, too talky, too arty. Orson Welles was a ponderous, overrated bore, the cinematic equivalent of William Faulkner. -- Florence King, Stet, Dammit! The Misanthrope's Corner 1991 to 2002, NY, 2003, p. 255

Since his mother sent him away to be educated, Charles felt abandoned and most likely thought that attaining things would fill the hole that his mother left in his life.