Blog #3 - Relationships Between Shots

In the final scene of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane the shots that are presented are immensely significant to the film as a whole. The sequence begins with the reporter who investigated Kane’s last words back in Kane’s mansion, Xanadu, explaining his opinion on what the word “rosebud” may have meant for Charles Kane. The shot begins with him but the audience cannot help but notice the mise-en-scene which is cluttered with all of Kane’s possessions. This shot is increasingly revealing as the camera moves outward, therefore showing more of what Kane owned and all together implying how empty Kane’s life was regardless of his countless acquisitions. The next two shots are more of an aerial view of the same room, with the people moving out of the frame and the focus becoming the things in it. Aside from the change of perspective, slow, ominous music begins to play suggesting that there is something more to come. The fourth shot is the aerial view of the camera as it moves across the room, hovering over all the material things and leading us to one in particular — the sled of Kane’s childhood. The focus of the sled is quickly interrupted by a worker who comes to collect it and the immediate upbeat of the music’s intensity creates a sense of danger in the following shot where the sled is thrown into the furnace to burn. The angle the sled is shown in is straightforward, offering no room for the viewer to miss the word “rosebud” which is now in flames. The shot that follows the disintegrating rosebud brings us back to Xanadu. The mansion eventually fades into the fence with the “No Trespassing” sign which creates a circularity for the film which opened with the same images. These final shots, along with the music and movement that are integral parts of them, work to show that — although the audience now knows the meaning of rosebud — the efforts of the reporter were worthless because he ended up learning no more than what he began with on the famous Charles Foster Kane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP0O1BKu3zk