Citizen Kane

The element of film that had the most impact on Citizen Kane was narration. Throughout the movie we run into restricted narration. We know just as much information as the reporter who is questioning various people about Kane’s life. We know less than these people until they illustrate their stories. And of course, we are left out of having the knowledge of “rosebud’s meaning. If we knew what rosebud was from the start, the movie would be entirely different. We wouldn’t know how important it was to him. It wouldn’t make us think how it plays into his life and who he became. It wouldn’t have the overall impact on viewers that it did.

The mental subjectivity and point of view were important to the film’s effect. We saw everything about Kane from the outside in. We never saw from his eyes, only from others’ in his life. There are flashbacks, but again, not from his point of view, they merely show what he was doing. If we had seen everything from inside Charlie Kane’s head, subjunctive point of view, there would have been no mystery. The mystery of Charlie Kane is one of the key parts of the film. He is a complicated man, and that is how Orson Wells wanted to depict him.