A great film, but not the greatest.

Rating: Null/10 (10 April 2003)

SPOILER I finally got to watch this film and found it quite interesting. To sum it up, a famous, extremely rich Charles Foster Kane dies in his castle home; his last spoken word `Rosebud' - a snow-shaker glass ball falls from his now lifeless hand, shattering on the floor.
A news media company producing a 1941 newsreel on his life wants to find out what `Rosebud' refers to, so it assigns a reporter to find out by interviewing significant people in the man's life. Flashbacks in the man's life show a happy young boy (in a humble 1871 setting) playing in the snow who gets basically sold off by his mother for an enormous amount of money (for mineral rights to a gold mine) to an aristocratic guardian, is raised by that guardian, gets access to the money, buys a some-what stagnant newspaper against the guardians wishes, becomes overbearing to others in his pursuit of personal indulgences and pursuits, supposedly starts a war (not shown in the film), cheats on his wife for a floozy with a toothache, runs for Governor, makes enemies with a local city boss, the city boss blackmails him regarding the affair with the floozy costing him the Governor's election, gets divorced and marries the floozy, makes the floozy sing opera and builds her an opera house (even though it's obvious she can't and doesn't want to sing), makes more enemies, builds an exorbitant castle for the floozy, the floozy can't take it anymore and divorces him (significantly, she states that this is the only thing in his adult life that he didn't make the decision on), trashes the floozy's room after she leaves - picks up the snow-shaker glass ball and says `Rosebud', becomes a recluse, then dies a lonely old man longing for "Rosebud". The reporter never finds out what `Rosebud' means. The final scene shows workers burning most of the things that Citizen Kane saved in his lifetime. A snow sled is thrown into the fire as waste, symbolizing what this man did with his life and available resources. As it turns out, `Rosebud' is the brand name of the sled he played on as a boy, and his reference to it is the only happy time in his life, which was simplistic and fun.
A good film, rather dark, but worth seeing. A great performance by Orson Wells. He was quite young at the time and performed the movements and mannerisms of a middle aged and elderly man to perfection. Another good note is that this picture is the first time radio performers of the likes of Joseph Cotton and Agnes Morehead were first seen by the American movie audience. 8 out of 10.