Thursday, October 4, 2007
Citizen Kane
There were definately a lot of important literary elements in the film Citizen Kane directed by and starring Orson Welles. There were many conflicts through out the story of his life; his two failed marraiges, his social status, and holding onto his superego. In addition to those conflicts there were many symbols that stood out in the movie. One specific symbol that came up countless times was "Rosebud". There was much hype about this certain term and it turned out to be his childhood sled. At first I was kind of like, "okay..that's really relative..?", but then I tried to think why Orson Welles decided to create that a reoccuring topic. I think it was mostly because Kane's entire life was affected by his childhood, just like everyone else. The sled was one of the things in his life that could keep him happy. When his parents were fighting or what not, he always had his sled to go out and play with almost as an escape. So, for some reason Welles decided that would be a good thing to refer back to for his last word. It seems like maybe since he was finally "escaping" his life, since he was dying...he thought back to his sled-his childhood escape.
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3 comments:
You did a wonderful job of explaining the relevance of the rosebud theme throughout the movie. I had the same reaction to the sled, i was like "ok... wtf" but now i agree with you that it was more a symbol about his childhood escape.
I think that maybe Kari is onto something. Since Kane would not have has such an amazing life if his childhood had not been so dramatically changedin the scene where he was playing with his sled "Rosebud" and was then taken away from his parents so suddenly. It is a representation of his life and how dramatically it had changed.
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