Q:Build a movie plot around this: who is favored to win election as governor? Kane
A:
It's 1941, and newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles, who also directed and co-wrote the script) is dead. The opening shots show Xanadu, Kane's vast, elaborate, and now unkempt estate in Florida. Interspersed with segments of his newsreel obituary are scenes from his life and death. Most puzzling are his last moments: clutching a snowglobe, he mutters the word "rosebud." Kane, whose life was news and whose newspapers not only reported but formed public opinion, was central to his time, a larger-than-life figure. The newsreel editor feels that until they know who or what Rosebud is they won't have the whole story on Kane. He assigns a reporter called Thompson (William Alland) to investigate Rosebud.Thompson digs into Kane's life and hears a lot of stories, but none of them reveal the meaning of Rosebud. The reporter sees Susan Alexander Kane (Dorothy Comingore), the tycoon's ex-wife; she's drunk and won't speak to him. Then he reads the unpublished memoirs of Mr. Thatcher (George Coulouris), Kane's early financial adviser and childhood guardian, who later became a prime target of the Kane newspapers' trust-busting attacks. In one of many flashbacks, the Thatcher memoir shows Kane's mother signing guardianship of the boy and his fortune over to Thatcher, despite his father's objections. When Charles objected violently to being sent away with Thatcher, Kane Sr. remarked, "what the kid needs is a good thrashing." Mrs. Kane responded, "That's why he's going to be brought up where you can't get at him." (Some present-day fans of the film interpret this to mean that Mr. Kane was abusive. 1940s audiences were more likely to have believed that Mrs. Kane was over-protective and that if Charles had been allowed to grow up enjoying the love and discipline of his parents, his life would have turned out better.)Years later, as he was about to get control of his business affairs, Kane's interest in newspapers was piqued when he noticed that he owned the struggling New York Daily Inquirer. Don't sell it, he...