Chen
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Citizen Cane: Film Noir
Vincent Chen
February 21, 2018
Expressive Culture: Film Noir
Professor Straayer
Chen
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Plot Summary
In a mansion in Xanadu, a vast palatial estate in Florida, the elderly Charles Foster Kane is
on his deathbed. Holding a snow globe, he utters a word, “Rosebud”, and dies; the globe
slips from his hand and smashes on the floor. A newsreel obituary tells the life story of
Kane, an enormously wealthy newspaper publisher. Kane’s death becomes sensational
news around the world, and the newsreel’s producer tasks reporter Jerry Thompson with
discovering the meaning of “Rosebud”.
Thompson sets out to interview Kane’s friends and associates. He approaches Kane’s
second wife, Susan Alexander Kane, now an alcoholic who runs her own nightclub, but she
refuses to talk to him. Thompson goes to the private archive of the late banker Walter
Parks Thatcher. Through Thatcher’s written memoirs, Thompson learns that Kane’s
childhood began in poverty in Colorado.
In 1871, after a gold mine is discovered on her property, Kane’s mother Mary Kane sends
Charles away to live with Thatcher so that he would be properly educated. It is also implied
that Kane’s father could be violent towards his son and that is another reason she would
like to send him away. While Thatcher and Charles’ parents discuss arrangements inside,
the young Kane plays happily with a sled in the snow outside his parents’ boarding-house
and protests being sent to live with Thatcher. Furious at the prospect of exile from his own
family to live with a man he does not know, the boy strikes Thatcher with his sled and
attempts to run away.
