Citizen Kane's Summary

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Citizen Kane was a film released in 1941 and it it was voted #1 in history of American film. It was written by, directed by and acted by Orson Welles. The story was set in Xanada in Florida and started with an introduction about that place. Citizen Kane has a strange opening as it opened with the camera panning a spooky haunted mansion and then the camera lingered and zoomed in closely to the sign saying "No Trepassing, " then the camera took us to the room in the house, we saw a person was lying on the bed and that was the main character of the story "Charles Foster Kane" (Orson Welles) We could see that he was dying and his last word was "Rosebud", and then he dropped the ball, and it shattered. Because of the word "Rosebud", people wanted to find out what it was, so it was a rising action which the story will began. After Charles' death, the next scence was a newsreel "News on the March," which announces the death of Charles and giving a summary of Charles¡¦s colorful life and career and surely will introduced some of the important people and events in Charles¡¦ life. As this a summary of Charles¡¦s life, this was just an introduction of him, so that we got a sences of how he was like. Later on in the film, we will deeply understand his relationships between him and his wife and about his career. The newsrell was played in a small projection room filled with reporters. He noted Charles¡¦s last word ¡§rosebud¡¨ would make people suspicious. He decided to send a reporter, ¡§Jerry Thompson,¡¨ to search the meaning behind the word ¡§rose bud.¡¨ Jerry¡¦s first interview was Charles¡¦s 2nd wife ¡§Susan Alexander Kane, who worked as a dancer and singer in a bar, thinking she would know something about rosebud. For the reason, she was drunk, she was not willing to tell anything about him, so the waiter told Jerry that she spoke of him often when he was alive, but she said she had never heard of rosebud before. After that, Jerry went to Hall and he read a diary of Charles. As Jerry began to read this memoir, the image of the page dissolves into a flashback to Kane¡¦s childhood. The flashback showed how Thatcher, Charles¡¦s guardian until 25 years old, meet Charles.

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