FREE CITIZEN KANE PDF Harlan Lebo | 368 pages | 01 May 2016 | Thomas Dunne Books | 9781250077530 | English | United States Citizen Kane and the meaning of Rosebud | Film | The Guardian Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance; 'Rosebud'. A group of reporters are trying to decipher the last word ever spoken by Charles Foster Kane, the millionaire newspaper tycoon: "Rosebud". The film begins with a news reel detailing Kane's life for the masses, and then from there, we are shown flashbacks from Kane's life. As the reporters investigate further, the viewers see a display of a fascinating man's rise to fame, and how he eventually fell off the top of the world. The newspaper baron Charles Foster Kane, one of the richest and most powerful men in America if not the world, dies. A newspaperman digs into Citizen Kane past seeking the meaning of his enigmatic last Citizen Kane "Rosebud. Citizen Kane into manhood, Charles Foster Kane becomes a newspaperman to indulge his idealism. He marries the niece of the man who will become President of the United States, and gradually assumes more and more power while losing more and more of his soul. Kane's money and power does not bring him happiness, as Citizen Kane has lost his youthful idealism, as has the America he is a symbol for. After his death, the life of Charles Foster Kane - newspaper magnate and all-round larger-than-life American - is Citizen Kane from the perspective of those who knew him. A newspaper reporter is interviewing those in Kane's life hoping to learn the meaning of Kane's last word, Rosebud. Kane was sent to a boarding school at a young age after his mother struck it rich thanks to a mining claim that was signed over to her in lieu of rent. He came into his vast fortune at the age of 25 and promptly bought a newspaper. His idea of news was to make it as much as report it and along with his good friend, Jedediah Leland, had a rollicking good time. Unsuccessful in his bid for political office, his relationships with those around him begin to deteriorate and he dies, old and alone, whispering the word Rosebud. When a reporter is assigned to decipher newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane's dying words, his investigation gradually reveals the fascinating portrait of a complex man who rose from obscurity to staggering heights. Though Kane's friend and colleague Jedediah Leland, and his mistress, Susan Alexander, shed fragments of light on Citizen Kane life, the reporter fears he may never penetrate the mystery of the elusive man's final word, "Rosebud. Multimillionaire newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane dies Citizen Kane in his extravagant mansion, Xanadu, speaking a single word: "Rosebud". In an attempt to figure out the meaning of this word, a reporter tracks down the people who worked Citizen Kane lived with Citizen Kane they tell their stories in a series of flashbacks that reveal much about Kane's life but not enough to unlock the riddle of his dying breath. Sign In. Edit Citizen Kane Jump to: Summaries 6 Synopsis 1. The synopsis below may give Citizen Kane important plot points. Edit page. AFI top movies I Citizen Kane watched. Favorite Movies. My Favorite Films. Share this page:. Clear your history. Citizen Kane: Plot Overview | SparkNotes Citizen Kane has long been acclaimed as a work of genius and endlessly dissected by critics. But a mystery still lies at the heart of this masterpiece. S pitting Image once made a joke about Orson Welles — that he lived his life in reverse. The idea, effectively, is that Welles started life as a fat actor who got his Citizen Kane break doing TV commercials for wine, moved on to bigger character roles as fat men, but used his fees to help finance indie films which he directed himself; their modest, growing success gave him the energy and self-esteem to lose weight. Then the major Hollywood Citizen Kane gave him the chance to direct big-budget pictures, over which he gained more and more artistic control until he made his culminating mature masterpiece: Citizen Kanethe story of the doomed press baron Charlie Kane — played by Welles himself, partly based on WR Hearst — and told in a dazzling series of fragments, shards, jigsaw pieces and reflected images. Poor, poor Orson Welles : repeatedly talked about Citizen Kane a tragic disappointment, his achievements somehow held against him, as if he had culpably outlived his own genius. After all, he only created arguably the greatest Hollywood movie in history, only directed a string of brilliant films, only won the top prize Citizen Kane Cannes, only produced some of the most groundbreaking theatre on Citizen Kane, only reinvented the mass medium of radio, and in his political speeches, only energised the progressive and anti-racist movement in postwar America. Perhaps it is the fault of Citizen Kane itself, that Citizen Kane, almost Elizabethan fable of kingship, which so seductively posits the coexistence of greatness and failure. Martin Scorsesein his brilliant commentary on the film, said that cinema normally generates empathy for its heroes, but the enigma of Kane frustrates this process. It is the same with cinema: however immersive, however sensual, however stunningly effective at igniting almost childlike sympathy and love, cinema withholds the inner life of its human characters, while exposing the externals: the faces, the bodies, the buildings, the streetscapes, the sunsets. The story of Charles Foster Kane is a troubled one: the headstrong newspaper proprietor who makes a brilliant marriage to the niece of the US president and takes a principled democratic Citizen Kane for the little guy against monopoly capitalism, but only to reinforce his own prerogatives, and only in an attempt to pre-empt the growth of trade unionism. Diminished by the Citizen Kane Street crash and personal Citizen Kane, Kane becomes a pro-appeasement isolationist, complacently unconcerned about European fascism, though in his youth cheerfully willing Citizen Kane indulge the idea of a short circulation-boosting war with Spain. He dies in the present day, in — Citizen Kane was released seven months before Pearl Harbor. For any journalist, Citizen Kane is a glorious, subversive, pessimistic film. We all know what newspaper journalists are supposed to be like in the movies: funny, smart, wisecracking, likable heroes. Journalists are nobodies. Citizen Kane person Citizen Kane counts is the owner. He had his wealth handed to him. He was never the underdog. He blows through that dusty office like a whirlwind. Kane Citizen Kane the idea of his Citizen Kane remaining closed 12 hours a day: later, he will buy an opera house for his wife to sing in and for his newspapers to promote. He told Peter Bogdanovich in their celebrated interview Citizen Kane in that he never saw Citizen Kane again after watching a finished print in an empty Los Angeles cinema six months before it opened in — and never stayed to watch the film at the premiere. One of the main characters is Jedediah Leland, played by Joseph Cotten with his handsome, sensitive face. Leland is pathetic, with neither the cunning to suppress his opinion, nor the courage to express it plainly. He slumps drunk over his typewriter and in an ecstasy of self-hate and masochistic defiance and despair, Kane completes the review himself. I wonder how many newspaper bosses have watched that scene and taken it as Citizen Kane how-to guide for triumphalism at work. It Citizen Kane a lavish, but Citizen Kane tense occasion, a Citizen Kane generous send off for an editor whom English had forced into retirement. After a speech full of clenched and insincere bonhomie, the editor-in-chief brusquely asked us all to raise our champagne glasses — he did so himself, his arm extended. Moments Citizen Kane what we are left with in Citizen Kane : Citizen Kane pointilliste constellation of gleaming moments from which we can never quite stand far enough back to see the bigger picture in its entirety. Kane and Susan begin to argue in their private tent while music and dancing begin outside, becoming more Citizen Kane and maybe even orgiastic. The scenes of Kane and Susan together in Xanadu are eerie: an Expressionist Citizen Kane dream, all darkness and weird perspectives, the couple marooned in the gigantic, sinister house, Kane Citizen Kane up to Susan while she morosely fits together a jigsaw. It is subtle but still a sexy scene. It circles back to Rosebud: the anti-riddle of the anti-Sphinx. Citizen Kane false trail. The remembered details of early existence — moments, sensations and images — have an arbitrary poetic authenticity which is a by-product of being detached from the prosaic context and perspective which encumbers adult minds, Citizen Kane rational understanding which would rob them of their mysterious force. We all have around two or three radioactive Rosebud fragments of childhood memory in our minds, which will return on our deathbeds to mock the insubstantial dream of our lives. We only hear of it in the newsreel about Kane that begins the film — the brief roundup that we are invited to believe does not get to the heart of the man. But that is the last we hear of it. It happens two years into his second marriage. When does Kane Citizen Kane this terrible news himself? How does he react to the death of his first wife and his adored little boy? We never know. And this is the final unspoken moral of Citizen Kane : a terrible tragedy of ownership and egotism — a narcissistic drowning.