History Film / CitizenKane

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A Laserdisc of this (and Film/KingKong1933) were the first releases by Creator/TheCriterionCollection.

A Laserdisc of this (and [[Film/KingKong1933|King Kong (1933)]]) were the first releases by [[Creator/TheCriterionCollection|The Criterion Collection]].

A Laserdisc of this (and [[Film/KingKong1933]]) were the first releases by [[Creator/TheCriterionCollection]].

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[[quoteright:325:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/citizen_kane_welles.jpeg]]
[[caption-width-right:325:Hey, have you seen ''Citizen Kane''? You probably should; it's practically the ''Citizen Kane'' [[ShapedLikeItself of film]].]]

Welles was known as an avant-garde theatre director and radio star at the time of making ''Citizen Kane''. The film was the product of a unique contract that granted him full AuteurLicense and "final cut" approval, a rare privilege unheard of for a first-time director back then and even today. The film was a technical breakthrough in cinematic storytelling and pioneered several achievements in cinematography, set design and special effects. (When Welles was once asked in an interview where he found the confidence to direct such an innovative work, he famously replied, "Ignorance … sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it.") The film was also controversial for its protagonist's [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed thinly-veiled resemblance]] to real-life media mogul William Randolph Hearst, who subsequently [[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/28/scale-of-hearst-plot-to-discredit-orson-welles-and-citizen-kane-revealed moved to sabotage its release]].

''Citizen Kane'' represented the film debut and StarMakingRole not just of Welles but of most of his Mercury Theatre troupe that came with him to Hollywood. Creator/JosephCotten, who plays Kane's best friend Jed Leland, became a major star. Creator/AgnesMoorehead, who went on to enjoy a long career as a character actress, plays young Kane's mother in the opening sequence. Music/BernardHerrmann, who was the composer for Welles' ''Radio/TheMercuryTheatreOnTheAir'' radio show, became one of the most famous composers in Hollywood history. Future A-lister Creator/AlanLadd can be seen as the reporter smoking a pipe (he's talking with Thompson in the last scene). Creator/RobertWise, who later enjoyed a hugely successful career as a director, did the editing. Gregg Toland (''Film/TheGrapesOfWrath'') was the director of photography, and his contribution was so essential to the film that Welles put Toland's name on the same title card as his director credit.

[[caption-width-right:325:Hey, have you seen ''Citizen Kane''? You probably should; it's practically the ''Citizen Kane'' [[ShapedLikeItself of film.]]]]

''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 film, produced by Creator/RKOPictures and Mercury Films. It is Creator/OrsonWelles' first feature, and he produced, co-wrote (with Herman J. Mankiewicz), directed and played the leading role as Charles Foster Kane.

Welles' debut film was the product of a unique contract that gave him full AuteurLicense and "final cut" approval.[[note]]It was a really rare privilege and unheard-of for a first-time director back then, and even today.[[/note]] He had been an avant-garde theatre director and radio star, and his first film as a director was a technical breakthrough in cinematic storytelling and pioneered several achievements in cinematography, set design and special effects. The film was also controversial for its protagonist's [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed thinly-veiled resemblance]] to real-life media mogul William Randolph Hearst, who subsequently [[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/28/scale-of-hearst-plot-to-discredit-orson-welles-and-citizen-kane-revealed moved to sabotage its release]].

Represented the film debut and StarMakingRole not just of Welles but of most of his Mercury Theatre troupe that came with him to Hollywood. Creator/JosephCotten, who plays Kane's best friend Jed Leland, became a major star. Creator/AgnesMoorehead, who went on to enjoy a long career as a character actress, plays young Kane's mother in the opening sequence. Music/BernardHerrmann, who was the composer for Welles' ''Radio/TheMercuryTheatreOnTheAir'' radio show, became one of the most famous composers in Hollywood history. Future A-lister Creator/AlanLadd can be seen as the reporter smoking a pipe (he's talking with Thompson in the last scene). Creator/RobertWise, who later enjoyed a hugely successful career as a director, did the editing. Gregg Toland (''Film/TheGrapesOfWrath'') was the director of photography, and his contribution was so essential to the film that Welles put Toland's name on the same title card as his director credit.

* NameOfCain: Charles ''Kane''.
* {{Newsreel}}: This has one of the earliest (if not the earliest) examples of an in-movie fake newsreel. Furthermore, Welles had RKO use their own newsreel department to create it to make it look authentic.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Kane's final attempt at reconciling with Susan almost works out, until the WoundedGazelleGambit backfires on him:
-->'''Kane:''' Susan. Please don't go. No. Please, Susan. From now on, everything will be exactly the way you want it to be, not the way I think you want it, but -- your way. Don't go, Susan. You mustn't go. [[ItsAllAboutMe You can't do this to me.]]\\
'''Susan:''' I see. So it's ''you'' who this is being done to. It's not me at all, not how I feel. Not what it means to me. [''Laughs''] I can't do this to you? Oh, yes, I can.
* NoAntagonist: [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Kane brought his miserable life upon himself.]]
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Kane was probably based on William Randolph Hearst, though Hearst was not pleased with the allusion.
* NoPartyGiven: {{Justified|Trope}}; Kane is running for governor as an independent. Boss Gettys' political affiliation isn't mentioned. UsefulNotes/NewYorkState had extremely corrupt Democratic and Republican political machines during that period.
* OhCrap: Kane displays a very subtle one when his first wife Emily tells him she is going to investigate the house of Kane's mistress, Susan Alexander, after receiving an anonymous tip about it.
* OldDarkHouse: Xanadu is often presented this way.
* OldMediaAreEvil: The film is one of the earliest criticisms of Old Media. While Kane imagines himself as a crusading reformer and at least when he was young he apparently really was, he was also an irresponsible yellow journalist as well as a warmonger.
** NewMediaAreEvil: The film is also very critical of newer forms of media. Especially newsreels, which are shown to be just as constructed, story-driven, and biased as anything else and certainly not objective.
* OminousFog: The opening sequence where the camera zooms into Xanadu is made ominous by the ominous music, but also by the fog shrouding the grounds.
* TheOner: Long shots zooming into Susan's café through a skylight and up a ladder at the opera.
* OneSteveLimit: Averted. The film has characters named Jim Gettys and Jim Kane (Charles' father).
* TheOneThatGotAway:
-->'''Mr. Bernstein:''' A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry and as we pulled out there was another ferry pulling in and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.
* OneTrueLove: Charles and Susan really were meant for each other. She loved him for who he is, but Charles was incapable of understanding that he didn't need to buy her love, nor that they should seclude themselves away from society. She leaves him because he doesn't know how to return her love. In fact, if Charles ever admitted that love is a two-way street, she'd return in a heartbeat. As one of her friends said, any other day but on the day of Charlie's death, she enjoyed talking about him.
* ParentsAsPeople: Kane's mother seems like she truly thought she was doing what was best for her son by sending him away to be raised in wealth and prosperity (and away from his implied physically abusive father) even if it meant she couldn't be close to him anymore, not realizing that she set him down [[LonelyAtTheTop a very lonely path]] that ended with him DyingAlone.
* PatrioticFervor: "I am, have been, and will always be, an American."
* PercussiveTherapy: After Susan leaves him, Kane tears her room apart.
* PlayingBothSides: A young Kane invests in the Public Transit Company while also attacking it in the ''Inquirer'''. He {{lampshades}} it when Thatcher comes to visit.
* PleaseDontLeaveMe: When Susan decides that she has had enough of Kane and his ego and wants to walk out on him, Kane desperately begs her to stay. During this, he inadvertently tips her off that he doesn't truly realize what he has done wrong by including a "You can't do this to me!" in his plea, making her even more resolute to leave him.
* PlotHole: Legend has it that someone once asked Welles how anyone could have known Kane's last words if he [[DyingAlone died alone]]. Welles supposedly paused for a long time and then said, "Don't you ever tell anyone of this." However, Raymond the butler later says he heard the word, implying that the scene was shot from his [[POVCam point of view]].
* PlotTriggeringDeath: The plot is kick-started by Kane's death.
* PopculturalOsmosisFailure: When many films are said to be "the ''Citizen Kane'' of horror/comedy/action" or someone says "[Bad or mediocre movie] is ''Citizen Kane'' compared to [worse movie]," folks get the idea that ''Citizen Kane'' is a great movie. Many people stop there.
* PosthumousCharacter: Charles Foster Kane, his wife, and son.
* PowerfulAndHelpless: All of Charles Foster Kane's wealth and power can't stop the world from finding out about his adultery, which kills his political career. In fact, one of the overarching themes of the film is that all of Kane's wealth and power fail to gain him the love of others, which is the one thing he truly wants and never really gets.
* PrettyInMink: Emily and Susan naturally wore a few furs.
* ProtagonistJourneyToVillain: Charles Foster Kane, obviously. He turns from an idealistic muckraker to a mogul whose life is slowly spiraling out of control.
* ProtagonistTitle
* PunctuatedForEmphasis: While Kane is finishing Leland's review:
-->'''Kane:''' Hello, Jedediah.\\
'''Leland:''' Hello, Charlie. I didn't know we were speaking...\\
'''Kane:''' Sure, we're speaking, Jedediah... [''Forcefully hits carriage return on his typewriter, ka-CHUNK'']… you're fired.
* RashomonStyle: An UnbuiltTrope since it preceded [[Creator/AkiraKurosawa Kurosawa]]'s [[Film/{{Rashomon}} film]] by several years (and Kurosawa adapted a Japanese short story that was published years before ''Kane''[='=]s release).
** Each narrator has a view of Kane based on their experiences and relationships with him. Notably, Bernstein dismisses Thatcher as an UnreliableNarrator, but later Jed Leland says that Bernstein's story is a RoseTintedNarrative. Thatcher's narrative from his diary presents Kane as a resentful UngratefulBastard who never cared for the trouble and headaches the young man gave him, and who still backbites him even when both of them are old. Bernstein presents Kane largely from his youthful days at the ''Inquirer'' while passing over his more inconsistent and erratic middle part of his life, and most notably leaving out the part that he took Kane's side in his fallout with Leland and trying to hide from the reporter the fact that he and Leland aren't on speaking terms with one another. Leland and Susan have stories that don't conflict with another so much, though we do see AnotherSideAnotherStory in that we see Leland present himself as a critic trying to be honest about his opinions and intentions while in Susan's narrative, we see Leland in the audience bored during the performance and making cut-out papers to pass the time, puncturing some holes in his pretenses.
** The opening newsreel is a very subtle example. The newsreel shows a brief glimpse of Kane after his wedding to Susan attacking newspapers and Kane coming off as a coot and eccentric in his later years. When that scene is revisited again, we see the footage continue where after Kane finds out one of the reporters is from the ''Inquirer'', he becomes all smiles and welcoming, and happily goes off on his second honeymoon, implying that his second marriage could have turned out all right after all.
* RealAfterAll: After Thompson GaveUpTooSoon to find what Rosebud is, the audience gets TheReveal: ItWasHisSled.
* RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic: Averted. Characters regularly talk over one another.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech:
** Kane gets the same lecture three times from Leland, Susan, and Boss Gettys: IJustWantToBeLoved is a TragicDream if you truly believe ItsAllAboutMe. Does Kane understand or accept it? No.
** Kane himself gets off a very short and sweet zinger at Thatcher's expense (see ICouldaBeenAContender above).
* RedScare: Thatcher accuses Kane of being a communist near the beginning of the movie. A politician addressing a crowd of workers however accuses Kane of being ''fascist'', and we see Kane hanging out with Hitler and [[UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini Mussolini]] while stating "there will be no war". Essentially Kane is a demagogue who uses politics to his advantage and ego.
* {{Retraux}}: Editor Creator/RobertWise scratched the "newsreel" with sandpaper to make the "old" footage look old.
* TheReveal: "Rosebud" was Kane's sled.
* RichReclusesRealm: One of the most famous examples of this trope: after ruining his political career and making himself a laughingstock, Kane orders the construction Xanadu as a kiss-and-make-up gift for his second wife, Susan. It's so vast it actually consists of an artificial mountain and over forty-nine thousand acres of grounds, and once there, Kane settles in so well that he almost never leaves the building except on business and the occasional picnic on the Everglades, gradually becoming a total recluse once Susan leaves him. The building itself becomes a reflection of himself: big and impressive, but ultimately empty. For good measure, it's never officially completed and by the time of Kane's death, Xanadu has already begun collapsing into disrepair.
* RoadsideWave: This is how Kane meets Susan Alexander; she sees him splattered when a carriage passes by.
* RomanAClef: Welles denied this, but Hearst, one of the RealLife inspirations for Kane, believed this.
** The film actually attempts to avert this by having Hearst mentioned by name in an early scene (the reporters discussing the newsreel), establishing Kane as a different individual.
** But also shoots itself in the foot in the first scene with Kane as played by Orson Welles, in which he says: "You provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war". Substitute "pictures" for "prose poems", and this is a word-for-word quote of something Hearst himself said to a photographer.
** Herman Mankiewicz, who came up with the story, was a frequent guest at San Simeon (aka Hearst Castle). As much as Welles sometimes denied it, much of the story clearly was based on Hearst's life. Some similarities between the real and fictional men:
*** Both were muckracking newspaper publishers who egged on the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar, as noted above.
*** Both had a family fortune that came from mining precious metals (Hearst's father George struck it rich with the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Lode Comstock Lode]]).
*** Both had huge media empires, which wound up getting downsized to some extent in {{the Great Depression}}.
*** Both had estates of staggering size (San Simeon/Xanadu).
*** Both were failed independent candidates for governor of New York (Hearst actually ran for office several times and served two terms as a Democratic congressman from New York).
*** Both had beautiful young mistresses and both bankrolled their mistresses' show business careers.
*** Marion Davies and Susan Alexander were both [[TheAlcoholic alcoholics]] with a fondness for crossword puzzles. Furthermore, both are considered reasonably talented in light entertainment, but were shoehorned into more serious artistic fields that were considered seriously out of their depth.
*** Of course there were many differences between Kane and Hearst as well, which helped Welles maintain PlausibleDeniability. Hearst's parents never abandoned him (in fact, this more closely resembles Welles, who was orphaned at the age of 15). He never married Davies; instead she remained TheMistress and stayed with Hearst until his death.
*** Herman Mankiewicz's original script, ''American'', included even more overt parallels to Hearst's life, showing that Kane's opponents stole the gubernatorial election by dumping ballots in the East River and a scene modeled after the death of Thomas Ince.[[note]]Ince, a film director turned studio boss, died aboard Hearst's yacht in November 1924. No inquest was held for Ince's death, leading to long-standing rumors that Hearst or someone who worked for him murdered Ince. Creator/PeterBogdanovich's 2001 film ''Film/TheCatsMeow'' fictionalizes this incident.[[/note]] Welles removed these scenes after one of Hearst's biographers sued the filmmakers for copying the incidents from his book.
* RuleOfSymbolism: Some critics think ''Kane'' stretches the WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief in order to include symbolic elements. It certainly is packed with symbols. For example:
** Rosebud, Kane's childhood sled, was the last thing Kane was holding onto on the day Mr. Thatcher came to take him from his parents. Rosebud represents Kane's lost childhood, along with everything else he lost when he moved away from home, and the last time that he was truly happy.
** When Charles turned 25, he takes full control of his fortune and tells Mr. Thatcher through writing that he's not interested in his primary sources of income like mines and oil wells. But he ''was'' interested in the newspaper known as ''The Inquirer''. At which point, he almost completely ignores the rest of his fortune to focus on running his newspaper and using it to critique the wealthy class of America — [[{{Hypocrite}} which he is also a part of]]. Initially, ''The Inquirer'' represented Kane's young ambitious dreams of making a real difference in the world and helping out poor people, but once Kane's corruption and ego get the best of him, he drops his good intentions and tries to tell them what he wants them to think, meaning the newspaper also helps chart Kane's {{Protagonist Journey To Villain}}y. Eventually, Kane loses his newspapers in the Great Depression which just about spells the end of his young idealism.
** Rather than spend a lot of his money on investments and things that would make him even richer, Kane chose to buy up a bunch of statues. He even loses a huge part of his fortune buying those statues. Kane's statue collection represents who Kane wants his people to be, [[AGodAmI which is objects that he can look at and that will do whatever he wants them to.]]
** Our title character, is eerily similar to Creator/WilliamRandolphHearst in terms of how things went down. [[CorruptCorporateExecutive They both ran newspaper tycoons corruptly,]] they both built their own private estates, they both and they both had a great love interest who they tried to boost up beyond her talents. Not to mention the real-life story of the battle between Hearst and Welles.
* SceneryPorn: The sets (the political rally, the newspaper office, the library, Xanadu) are all lavish, grandiose... and empty like the main character.
* SeeminglyProfoundFool: At the beginning of the movie there is a scene where a CorruptCorporateExecutive reunion claims that Kane is one of the DirtyCommunists. It follows a scene where someone at a workers' rally declares Kane a UsefulNotes/{{fascist|Italy}}, and then we have Kane's own declaration that he is [[PatrioticFervor an American]]. This shows Kane as a human Rorschach test: Other people project what they most fear onto him, and will insist on their interpretation of his words and deeds with a desperate will no matter how contradictory they are. The three interpretations are wrong, because the DirtyCommunists, the fascists, and even the patriotic nationalist all believe in something bigger than themselves. The movie shows us that Charlie Foster Kane is only [[ItsAllAboutMe for Charlie Foster Kane]].
* ShaggyDogStory: The FramingDevice ends with Thompson not only giving up to find what ''Rosebud'' means, but admiting that knowing it will not explain Kane.
** Kane's dream was a TragicDream and so, it was never achieved.
* SingleIssuePsychology: All of Kane's problems result from him not knowing how to love due to being taken from his parents as a child. At his mother's urging, because his father was abusive towards him. [[ParentalAbandonment This does not make it better, however.]] Welles when dismissing the story's gimmick as "Dollar Book Freud" regretted it because of this implication, he didn't believe in SingleIssuePsychology, and used "Rosebud" as a deliberate ShaggyDogStory to hook the movie around.
* {{Slimeball}}: In one sense, Kane is revealed to be something of a slimeball by his best friend after Kane's failed election campaign, who observes: "You just want to persuade people that you love 'em so much that they oughta love you back!"
* SlowClap: After the disastrous operatic debut of his wife Susan, Kane stubbornly stands up and does a SlowClap; the rest of the audience begrudgingly follows suit.
* SmallRoleBigImpact: Mary Kane, Charles' mother, only appears in {{one scene|Wonder}}[[invoked]] throughout the film, but she's single-handedly responsible for sending Charles away to live with Thatcher and most of his wealth and fame.
* SnowMeansDeath: Not a straight example, but the snow globe should get an honorable mention.
* SoundtrackDissonance: This is a pretty sad film, but don't worry, the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkcLjAg17bk end credits]] should pick you right up.
* SpinningPaper: A standard trope of early 1930s BMovie[=s=], especially in films dealing with organized crime. It went out of style at around the time UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode was adopted; any use after the mid-1930s is a deliberate invocation of the trope as tribute and parody. ''Citizen Kane'' is one of these. Making later parodies parody parodies.
* StageMom: At their first meeting, Susan tells Kane it was really her mother's ambition for her to be an opera singer.
* StaggeredZoom: It's a lot slower-paced than most staggered zooms, but the opening sequence still qualifies, being a series of cuts showing Xanadu as the camera creeps closer.
* StartsWithTheirFuneral: The film start with Kane's death, and then moves onto a newsreel about his life, before diving right into the flashbacks.
* StockFootage: The film contains a lot of this. For example, the newsreel has a scene where a man speaks to a political rally, denouncing Kane as a fascist. The crowd was simply stock footage and the man was an actor, filmed in a low-angle shot to hide the fact that no crowd was present.
* TheStoic: Mr. Thatcher seems to be very distant from his young ward... and everyone else, really.
* StrawmanNewsMedia: Not at first but the ''Inquirer'' eventually becomes a Type 1, serving basically as Kane's mouthpiece.
* TableSpace: A very clever use of this trope to illustrate the deterioration of Kane's first marriage in a brief montage. The Kanes are shown at a small breakfast table being intimate and affectionate. We see snippets of arguments at other breakfasts. Then the scene ends with the Kanes dining in silence at opposite ends of a long table.
* TakeThat:
** Co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz was a regular invitee to Hearst's San Simeon until he earned their disfavor and was kicked out. Many of the satirical details of Kane come from his own resentment and desire to mock Hearst.
** In an in-universe TakeThat, Emily is reading ''The Chronicle'', Kane's biggest rival newspaper.
** Another in-universe example: Kane finishes the bad review Leland began, and instead of cleaning it up (as Leland assumed he would), he keeps the same vitriolic negativity. Bernstein snarks, "That'll show you."[[note]]Kane fires Leland while continuing to write the review.[[/note]]
* TantrumThrowing: Upon his wife leaving him, Kane goes in a room and smashes/throws everything he sees. He stops at the crystal ball that Susan owned (and reminded him of his mother), making him utter, "Rosebud."
* ThisCannotBe:
-->'''Kane:''' Susan. Please don't go. No. Please, Susan. From now on, everything will be exactly the way you want it to be, not the way I think you want it, but -- your way. You mustn't go. You can't do this to me!\\
'''Susan:''' I see. It's ''you'' that this is being done to! It's not me at all. Not what it means to me. I can't do this to you? Oh, yes, I can.
* TimePassesMontage: One of the most famous: Kane and his first wife sitting at breakfast. Each shift into the future has their conversation becoming more and more hostile, until the final scene in which they don't say a word -- he reads his newspaper, and she reads a ''rival'' newspaper.
* TimeShiftedActor: Being a fictionalized biopic, the film presents Kane in all ages. All of them are Orson Welles in makeup, except for eight-year-old Kane, played by Buddy Swan.
* TradeYourPassionForGlory: Kane, a young crusading newspaper owner, becomes "The Man" in his later life.
* {{Tragedy}}: Kane ends up dying alone and unloved thanks to his narcissism.
* TragicDream: Kane's dream is to be loved. Unfortunately, that dream is available to everyone but him: given the way he was raised, Charlie is used to paying for everything with money, and the idea of investing time and sacrificing his own interests for a relationship is absolutely beyond his comprehension.
* TragicHero: Kane, lampshaded by Leland.
-->'''Leland:''' That's all he ever wanted out of life... [[TragicDream was love. That's the tragedy of Charles Foster Kane.]] You see, [[JerkassWoobie he just didn't have any to give]].
* UnbuiltTrope: ItWasHisSled is a {{Trope Namer|s}}, but the sled is actually the unbuilt trope of the MacGuffin, long before Creator/AlfredHitchcock coined the term.
* {{Understatement}}:
-->'''Kane:''' [''To Susan''] I run a couple of newspapers, what do you do?
* UnrequitedLove: Susan to Charlie. She never stopped loving him, ever. She left simply because it was the only way she could express her own feelings. Had Charlie said the right words, she'd have returned to him in a heartbeat.
-->'''Manager:''' Why, until he died, she'd just as soon talk about Mr. Kane as about anybody.
* UsedToBeASweetKid: Charlie was once a happy, innocent child who was content with what he had. Unfortunately, his aloof upbringing under Mr. Thatcher robbed him of that, turning him into the cynical, media mogul he was known as by most. His desire to recapture his childlike innocence was part of his desire, to the point that he even tracked down and regained the sled he played with as a kid. Unfortunately, not even that was able to make him happy again.
* VideoCredits: A clip of each major character is shown in the credits, except Kane himself.
* VocalRangeExceeded: Susan Alexander can't hack being an opera singer. Instead of HollywoodToneDeaf, Welles got a professional alto to sing a soprano part.
* WarForFunAndProfit: Kane does this in order to sell newspapers. Based on the manipulations of real-life media mogul William Randolph Hearst:
-->"Dear Wheeler: You provide the prose poems. I'll provide the war."
* WhamShot: The shot near the end showing the name "Rosebud" on Kane's old sled.
* WhipPan: These are used in the breakfast table montage showing the deterioration of Kane's first marriage.
* WhiteDwarfStarlet: Susan Alexander is a bit out of the ordinary: ''Now'' she's running on the fumes of her former notoriety, but initially she was pushed into the limelight somewhat against her will and found stardom humiliating.
* WideEyedIdealist: Kane started off as one, and was moderately successful as such, exposing corruption successfully and ascending the ranks in journalism.
* WorthlessTreasureTwist: "Rosebud" is a "Lost Heirloom". And it gets tossed into the incinerator along with the wealthy protagonist's other worldly possessions. Nobody in the story ever finds out what his lost love/lost treasure "Rosebud" meant, though the audience gets the reveal.
* WouldHitAGirl: Susan screams at Kane, at a picnic with their guests within earshot, that he doesn't really care about her and never gave her anything she wanted. Finally he gets angry and slaps her.
-->'''Susan:''' Don't tell me you're sorry.\\
'''Kane:''' I'm not sorry.
* YesMan: Bernstein, who always supports Kane and remains devoted to him even after people like Leland and Susan become disillusioned.

* EpicTrackingShot: Both the tracking shot into El Rancho, and the tracking up the ladder during Susan's opera performance -- and yes, it used a visual effect (miniature ladder).
* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The first major scene with Welles as a 24-year-old Kane has him arguing with Thatcher over how he was running ''The Inquirer''. It does extremely well with establishing how money was simply not a concern of his in any way, shape, or form.
* EtTuBrute: {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d by Susan when the ''Inquirer'' gives her a bad review:
-->'''Susan''': Stop telling me he's your friend! A friend don't write that kind of review! All these other papers panning me, I could expect them, but when the ''Inquirer'' writes a thing like that, spoiling my big debut...!
* EveryoneHasStandards: Even Jim Gettys is shocked Kane won't listen to his wife ''or'' Susan and spare them humiliation.
* ExpyCoexistence: An attempt that backfired big-time: a throwaway line at the very beginning of the movie compares Charles Foster Kane to the RealLife media magnate William Randolph Hearst, acknowledging that Kane is a completely different (not to mention fictional) person. Hearst still felt incredibly insulted at what the movie supposedly implied of him and used all the power of his media empire to try to censor the film and make Creator/OrsonWelles' life a living hell.
* ExtyYearsFromPublication: The present year is 1941. Charles Kane was taken from his parents in 1871 (70 years ago).
* FaceFramedInShadow: The film has a few shots of Kane's face framed in shadow and stepping into light, or the other way around.
* TheFaceless: The reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) is always shown from behind, or from a long distance, or with his face hidden in shadow, along with all of his reporter colleagues. According to Welles, it was a tribute to the hardworking reporters behind those film reels that were never seen. Creator/RogerEbert called Alland's performance the most thankless, since he's the character who is the AudienceSurrogate, yet he never got due credit because no one saw his face.
* FatalFlaw: Kane [[IJustWantToBeLoved wanted to be loved]], but [[ItsAllAboutMe on his own terms]]. Kane also doesn't KnowWhenToFoldEm.
* FatSuit: Welles wore one to play the older Kane. Back in the days before he didn't need one.
* FictionFiveHundred:
** Kane is a media tycoon who has more than enough money to spend on constructing [[BigFancyHouse Xanadu]] (which is described in-universe as "the world's largest private pleasure ground") and [[CollectorOfTheStrange filling it with exotic animals and priceless art from around the world.]] One early scene has his adoptive father Mr. Thatcher argue with him over how much money he's losing on running a newspaper and Kane's response?
--->''We did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... sixty years.''
** The above quote is said when he is still ''just starting out'', and he's currently #5 on the ''Forbes'' Fictional 15. One million dollars at the time is approximately $27 million today; thus, "starting out" and thanks to his family's gold holdings (and his mother's management), Mr. Kane is worth at least $1.6 billion.
* FilmNoir: Although there's no crime involved, the movie has a lot of tropes associated with the genre.
* FirstNameBasis: "He doesn't like that 'Mister' / He likes good old 'Charlie Kane'!"
* {{Flashback}}: Lots of them.
* ForcedPerspective: Used on multiple occasions. Maybe most notable in the early scene where Thatcher and Bernstein are sitting at a desk signing papers, in front of some ordinary-looking bay windows. Kane enters the frame, and then walks away from the desk--and walks quite a bit further than one might have guessed, revealing that the far wall is actually further away than it looked and that those bay windows are some seven feet off the ground. This also has the effect of making Kane look tiny in a scene where he is being humiliated by having to sign away much of his media holdings.
* ForegoneConclusion: The fake newsreel spells out the whole plot, minus "Rosebud".
* {{Foreshadowing}}: It's very subtle, but in his first meeting with Susan Alexander, Kane says that 1) he had all the stuff from his childhood home carted up and delivered, and 2) he wanted to go take a look for old times' sake. This sets up TheReveal about "Rosebud".
* ForgottenFallenFriend: The newsreel reveals that Kane's first wife and their son die in a car crash. They are never again mentioned in any scene that takes place after they died. Nobody suggests that among Kane's many personal problems, [[OutlivingOnesOffspring losing his only child]] might be one of them.
* FramingDevice: The story is told mostly via interviews of people who were close with Kane with a reporter.
* FreudianExcuse:
** Kane's parents forfeited custody of their son to an emotionally distant banker. Yeah, he's sure going to turn out A-OK in adulthood...
** On the sled symbolism in ''Citizen Kane'', Orson Welles remarked: "It's a gimmick, really, and rather dollar-book Freud."
* GaveUpTooSoon: Thompson, after spending all the movie looking for the answer to the DrivingQuestion gives up precisely in the very room the answer lies.
* TheGayNineties: A good chunk of the film takes place in the 1890s, when Kane is at his height as a media mogul.
* GetOut: Kane, when caught in an affair and Gettys threatens to go forward with the scandalous story:
-->'''Gettys''': You're making a bigger fool of yourself than I thought you would, Mr. Kane.\\
'''Kane''': I've got nothing to talk to you about.\\
'''Gettys''': You're licked. Why don't you--\\
'''Kane''': Get out! If you want to see me, [[SeeYouInHell have the warden write me a letter!]]\\
'''Gettys''': If it was anybody else, I'd say what's going to happen to you would be a lesson here... only you're going to need more than one lesson... and you're going to get more than one lesson.
** The widowed Susan Alexander is so embittered, she refuses Mr. Thompson's request for an interview:
--->'''John''': Miss Alexander? This is Mr. Thompson, Miss Alexander.\\
'''Susan''': I want another drink, John.\\
'''John''': Right away. Will you have something, Mr. Thompson?\\
'''Thompson''': I'll have a highball, please.\\
'''Susan''': Who told you you could sit down?\\
'''Thompson''': I thought maybe we could have a talk.\\
'''Susan''': Well, think again. Can't you people leave me alone? I'm minding my own business, you mind yours.\\
'''Thompson''': If I could just have a little talk with you, Miss Alexander, I'd like to ask you--\\
'''Susan''': Get out of here. ''Get out!''
* GildedCage: How Susan feels about Xanadu.
* GilliganCut: When Kane announces his intention to make Susan Alexander an opera star, a reporter asks if she'll sing at the Met:
-->'''Susan:''' Charlie said if I didn't, he'd build me an opera house.\\
'''Kane:''' That won't be necessary.\\
[''Cut to newspaper headline: "KANE BUILDS OPERA HOUSE"'']
* TheGreatestStoryNeverTold: No one, except the audience, will ever know what Rosebud really means or signifies. It becomes a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle and a RiddleForTheAges. Thompson hangs a {{Lampshade|Hanging}} on it at the end:
-->'''Thompson''': Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything... I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a... piece in a jigsaw puzzle... a missing piece.
* GreedyJew: Subverted. It's Kane's very Jewish business associate Mr. Bernstein who says that there's more to life than money.
--> '''Bernstein''': Well, it's no trick to make a lot of money... if all you want is to make a lot of money.
* GreyAndGrayMorality: The election between Kane, whose flaws are expounded upon for the whole movie, and Gettys, who seems to be every bit as corrupt as Kane portrays him. In the race between these two, who would ''you'' vote for?
* HailToTheThief: After Charles' and Emily's wedding:
-->'''Emily''': Sometimes, I think I'd prefer a rival of flesh and blood.\\
'''Kane''': Oh Emily, I don't spend that much time with a newspaper.\\
'''Emily''': It isn't just the time, it's what you print: attacking the President!\\
'''Kane''': You mean Uncle John?\\
'''Emily''': I mean the President of the United States!\\
'''Kane''': He's still Uncle John, and still a well-meaning fathead [[UsefulNotes/WarrenGHarding who's letting a pack of high-pressure crooks run his administration.]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal This whole oil scandal--]]\\
'''Emily''': He happens to be the president, Charles, not you.\\
'''Kane''': That's a mistake that will be corrected one of these days.
* HappinessRealizedTooLate: Introduced isolated inside his unfinished palatial mansion, media mogul Charles Foster Kane lies DyingAlone, having lived in seclusion from the world for many years after the wholesale failure of his ambitions and relationships. With his final breath, he utters the word "Rosebud." The movie unfolds in flashback as Intrepid Reporter Jerry Thompson tries to unravel the significance of Kane's dying declaration through interviewing those who knew him. However, no one he talks to knows just who or what Rosebud was, the closest answer he gets is from Kane's butler who concludes he was just saying a nonsense word. Thompson never does solve the mystery, though the answer is shown to the audience in the final scene: ItWasHisSled from his childhood that represented a simpler, happy time that Kane could never recover. The conclusion? It is indeed LonelyAtTheTop.
* HesDeadJim: The film opens with Kane's hand falling and dropping the snow globe.
* HeWhoFightsMonsters: Kane, who envisions himself as a crusader for the little guy against corruption, becomes a cynic and a reactionary.
* HiddenDepths: While W.P. Thatcher comes off as stoic and distant as Kane's adoptive father, he does genuinely care for Kane throughout his life, even bailing him out during the great depression and allowing him to keep the majority of control over the Inquirer. Kane may lament the loss of his mother, but it's not an enormous leap to recognize that Thatcher was an infinitely better father figure than Kane's actual father would have been.
* HighHopesZeroTalent: Susan Alexander gets put out on a huge opera debut by Kane. While her voice may be pleasant for something singing in the shower, she is not cut out for opera in any way.[[note]]Specifically, she's way out of her range. She's a contralto (low register) trained/forced to sing as a soprano (very high register). This could ruin any vocal potential she did have.[[/note]] Her vocal teacher loudly proclaims she is unteachable and more or less facepalms every time she sings. Kane won't listen to Susan, the instructor, or every newspaper critic in America and insists she keeps going on stage. Welles later regretted this part of the film, as people assumed she was based on screen actress and William Randolph Hearst's paramour Creator/MarionDavies, who Welles (and many others) felt was actually a fairly talented actress and a nice person. Marion Davies was well-suited to romantic comedies; unfortunately, Hearst saw her as the second coming of Creator/MaryPickford and kept putting her in lavish, sentimental dramas that didn't take advantage of her talents.
* HitlerCam:
** Orson Welles was the TropeCodifier. Refers to the practice of shooting a solitary figure from a slightly lower angle. This magnifies the figure's height and presence in the mind of the viewer. Greatly popularized by the film.
** In the newsreel, a ground level shot features Kane with UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler played by Carl Ekberg, a Norwegian-born actor who would portray Hitler in several other movies, in addition to portraying German soldiers among other roles throughout his career.
* HollywoodToneDeaf: Averted with Susan Alexander. To get the effect of a realistically overmatched singer, Welles got a professional ''alto'' opera singer and had her sing a soprano part, so yes, the actress who played Susan Alexander can sing, but doesn't have much range.
* HowWeGotHere: The film starts with Kane's death. Thompson's investigation then serves as the framework for telling Kane's life story, which is then told in roughly chronological order.
* [[{{IAmWhatIAm}} I Am Not What I Am Not:]] Strangely, two characters come to terms with the fact that they can’t be the men they once wanted to be when they are before their InUniverseCatharsis.
** When he is forced to give up the control of his empire, Kane reflects that his advantages had stolen his chance at true greatness.
--->'''Kane:''' You know, Mr. Bernstein, [[ICouldaBeenAContender if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man]].\\
'''Thatcher:''' Don't you think you are?\\
'''Kane:''' I think I did pretty well, under the circumstances.\\
'''Thatcher:''' What would you like to have been?\\
'''Kane:''' ''Everything you hate.''
** When 'Boss' Jim W. Gettys tries to BlackMail Kane, he admits that even he, the archetype of the SleazyPolitician, [[EvenEvilHasStandards has more standards]] than Kane.
--->'''Kane:''' In case you don't know, Emily -- this -- this gentleman [''Kane puts a world of scorn into the word''] -- is --\\
''' 'Boss' Jim W. Gettys:''' I'm not a gentleman, Mrs. Kane, and your husband is just trying to be funny calling me one. I don't even know what a gentleman is. [''Tensely, with all the hatred and venom in the world''] You see, my idea of a gentleman, Mrs. Kane -- well, if [[IntrepidReporter I owned a newspaper]] and if I didn't like the way somebody else was doing things -- some politician, say -- I'd fight them with everything I had. Only I wouldn't show him in a convict suit, with stripes -- [[DontTellMama so his children could see the picture in the paper. Or his mother]]. [''He has to control himself from hurling himself at Kane''] It's pretty clear -- I'm not a gentleman.
* ICouldaBeenAContender: InvertedTrope by Kane, when he is forced to give up the control of his empire. Hardly a nobody. Very disillusioned, he reflects that it was his ''advantages'' that denied him his chance at true greatness:
-->'''Charles Foster Kane:''' You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man.\\
'''Thatcher:''' Don't you think you are?\\
'''Charles Foster Kane:''' I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.\\
'''[[CorruptCorporateExecutive Thatcher:]]''' What would you like to have been?\\
'''Charles Foster Kane:''' [''DeathGlare''] [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech Everything you hate.]]
* IJustWantToBeLoved: This is Kane's main motivation. {{Deconstructed|Trope}}, as, despite how innocuous a motivation it seems, it makes him a JerkAss -- he wants to be loved, but [[LoveHungry on his own terms]], and he doesn't understand that it just doesn't work that way.
-->'''Leland:''' He married for love. Love. That's why he did everything. That's why he went into politics. It seems we weren't enough, he wanted all the voters to love him too. Guess all he really wanted out of life was love. [[CentralTheme That's Charlie's story, how he lost it]]. You see, [[ItsAllAboutMe he just didn't have any to give. Well, he loved Charlie Kane of course, very dearly]], and his mother, I guess he always loved her.
* IJustWantToHaveFriends: Kane ultimately drives away all his friends with his egotistical personality and self-centeredness, becoming LonelyAtTheTop.
* ImpoverishedPatrician: Leland is described as coming from an old, rich family where one day the old man shoots himself and they discover they have nothing.
* INeedAFreakingDrink:
** Jed Leland needs several to muster the courage to write an honest review of a Susan Alexander performance. He gets so plastered he can't even finish it.
** Earlier, Leland looks at the headline from Kane's own paper announcing his defeat, and then walks straight into a saloon. This seems to be the start of his drinking problem.
* IntrepidReporter: Jerry Thompson, the reporter who tries to find out the meaning of "Rosebud". And Kane himself during his younger years.
* ITakeOffenseToThatLastOne:
-->'''Charles Foster Kane:''' You long-faced, overdressed anarchist.\\
'''Leland:''' I am ''not'' overdressed!
* ItsAllAboutMe: Kane's mission in life is ''to be loved on his own terms''. Lampshaded spectacularly:
-->'''Kane:''' [''Pleading''] Don't go, Susan. You mustn't go. You can't do this to me.\\
'''Susan:''' I see. So it's you who this is being done to. It's not me at all. Not how I feel. Not what it means to me.'' [''Laughs''] ''I can't do this to you? [''Odd smile''] Oh, yes, I can.
* ItsAllJunk: Kane is an obsessive collector of everything, who then treats people like objects and dies a lonely old man, surrounded by glorified junk in a ridiculously opulent estate. The last line of the film is, in fact, "Toss that junk."
** And ironically, the only piece of "junk" that meant something really important to Kane is burned up because it can't be sold.
* ItWasHisSled: [[invoked]] Despite being the {{Trope Namer|s}}, the sled is a MacGuffin. As Jerry muses over a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces, "Rosebud" is only a piece of the puzzle. (In addition, there were ''two'' sleds, each representing a time in his life. The second sled was "Crusader".)
* ItWillNeverCatchOn:
** Kane didn't believe, in 1935, that there would be a war. UsefulNotes/WorldWarII started four years after that.
** "I've got to make the ''New York Inquirer'' as important to UsefulNotes/{{New York|City}} as the gas in that light." Of course, this scene takes place shortly before gaslights became obsolete.
* IvyLeagueForEveryone: Kane is said to have attended and been thrown out of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Cornell.
* JekyllAndHyde: Kane tells Thatcher early on, "The trouble is, you don't realize that you're talking to two people," referring to himself as both a man of wealth and as a man of the people. One of the main points of the movie is the internal war between those two sides. It can be argued that both sides lose by the end of the movie.
* JerkAss: The movie amounts to showing how Charles Foster Kane turned into a big piece of shit, lost childhood or not.
* JerkassHasAPoint: When browbeating Kane about his sensationalistic headlines about corruption in the local railway business, Thatcher calls out Kane's hypocrisy, pointing out that Kane himself owns a ''huge'' amount of stock in the company his papers are condemning. Kane blithely agrees, noting that his stock is preferred, i.e., less risky than common stock if the company gets into trouble. Thatcher also notes that Kane's newspaper is losing a ton of money. Kane grins and agrees, then reminds Thatcher that he has so much money that the paper can last sixty years. But then he's forced to sign away the paper less than forty years later.
* JumpScare: The screeching cockatoo near the climax of the film. Quite possibly the best ''non''-horror example in cinema history.
* LargeHam: "Siiiiing Siiiiiing!" [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools It works, though.]]
** MrExposition during the introductory voice-over could count, as well.
* TheLawOfConservationOfDetail: Playing with this trope is arguably the main conceit: it's a movie about the impossibility of finding the right details. "Rosebud" is an example, as is the famous "girl in the white dress" speech.
* LetThePastBurn: The ending is a loose example, differing only in that the whole house isn't burnt.
* LivingOutAChildhoodDream: Averted. Charles Foster Kane's last words are one of the most famous examples of this trope, even if all he can do at that point is look back with regret to the childhood he never had and never will have instead of getting to actually live it.
* LonelyAtTheTop: As a core theme. One of the reasons why he tries to desperately cling to his wife, and eventually comes true when she leaves him. It's also the meaning behind "Rosebud": his life, though successful, was so unhappy that the time he was happiest was when he was a child and playing with his sled.
* LoveHungry: As desperate as Kane is for love, he is too selfish to understand that one cannot force others to love them. It just doesn't work that way.
* LovingAShadow: The end of the film shows that Kane idolized his childhood with his parents before Thatcher adopted him, but the little we see of them they don't seem particularly much more loving than Thatcher was.
* MacGuffin: The identity of "Rosebud". It never gets obtained... by the ''characters'', that is...
* MalevolentMugshot: Regardless of whether one views the titular character as a VillainProtagonist, [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Pn5WEpjsar8/S7g0iT9EGoI/AAAAAAAAArA/vyL2k9dYGKQ/s1600/Kane1.jpg this image]] certainly counts as the TropeMaker in film, beating ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'' by seven years. Since the point of the film is to tell Kane's story and let the audience decide if he is a hero or villain (or both), it is also an UnbuiltTrope.
* TheManIsStickingItToTheMan: {{Discussed|Trope}} in the film, where Charles Foster Kane, heir to the sixth-largest private fortune, becomes a crusading publisher/editor who takes a progressive platform against wealthy interest holders. Walter Thatcher specifically brings up Charles' attack on the Public Transit Corporation of which he himself is a shareholder, to which Kane responds by noting that a rich man taking the cause of reform might keep communists from doing so:
-->'''Charles''': The trouble is, you don't realize you're talking to two people. As Charles Foster Kane who owns 82,364 shares of Public Transit Preferred -- [[ObfuscatingStupidity see, I do have a general idea of my holdings]] -- I sympathize with you. Kane is a scoundrel. His paper should be closed, a committee formed to boycott him. [[RefugeInAudacity If you can form such a committee, put me down for a contribution of $1,000.]] On the other hand, [[DaEditor I am the publisher of the]] ''[[DaEditor Inquirer]]''. As such it's my duty... I'll let you in on a little secret. It is also my pleasure to see that the working people of this community aren't robbed by a pack of money-mad pirates, just because they have no one to look after their interests. You see, I have money and property. [[TheMoralSubstitute If I don't look after the interests of the underprivileged]], somebody else will. [[DirtyCommunists Maybe somebody without money or property.]] [[RedScare That would be]] [[AndThatsTerrible too bad.]]
* MatchCut: The entire opening sequence. Watch how the light never moves.
** Also after slapping Susan. Her left eye matches with an eye decoration in the next scene. Hard to catch.
* MathematiciansAnswer:
-->'''Reporter:''' Mr. Kane, How did you find business conditions in Europe?\\
'''Kane:''' With great difficulty!
* MatteShot: The outside of Xanadu is mostly a series of matte paintings.
* MementoMacGuffin: "Rosebud", which partially drives the plot.
* AMinorKidroduction: Sort of--we get a glimpse of Kane as he dies and then we see him again in the newsreel, but the story proper starts with eight-year-old Kane.
* TheMistress: Susan Alexander, before Kane marries her.
* {{Mockumentary}}: Early in the film. Welles [[Radio/TheWarOfTheWorlds was good at these]]. People in the 1940s who were used to seeing the "March of Time" newsreels regularly would have been much more amused by the satire. Possibly the earliest example of an in-movie fake newsreel.
* MorallyBankruptBanker: Subverted because Mr. Thatcher isn't shown doing anything evil. Implicitly, Thatcher is a decent (if very conservative) middle-aged banker who did his best while raising Kane... as TheStoic, in a stage in Kane's life he needed love more than anything. Little wonder Kane grew up to be dysfunctional.
* {{Mouthscreen}}: One of the most iconic examples in film history. The first we see of the title character is a close up of his lips as he says his last word: "Rosebud."
* MusicalPastiche: ''Salammbô'', the [[ShowWithinAShow opera in which Susan Alexander stars]], is Music/BernardHerrmann's pastiche of French [[{{Opera}} grand opéra]] à la Jules Massenet. Pauline Kael suggested that it was originally supposed to be a real Massenet opera, ''Thaïs''; but Herrmann angrily refuted it when Kael said it was a compromise because they couldn't get the rights:
-->'''[[http://www.wellesnet.com/bernard-herrmann-on-working-with-orson-welles-and-citizen-kane/ Bernard Herrmann]]:''' Pauline Kael has written in ''The Citizen Kane Book'' (1971), that the production wanted to use Massenet's "Thais" but could not afford the fee. But Miss Kael never wrote or approached me to ask about the music. We could easily have afforded the fee. The point is that its lovely little strings would not have served the emotional purpose of the film. I wrote the piece in a very high tessitura, so that a girl with a modest voice would be completely hopeless in it.[[note]]There are several real ''Salaambô'' operas; more in Trivia.[[/note]]
* MythologyGag: Also a ShoutOut. In one scene dated 1935, Kane tells a reporter not to believe everything he hears on the radio. Considering who is playing [[Creator/OrsonWelles Kane]] [[Radio/WarOfTheWorlds that is true]].

* AbusiveParents:
** Mr. Thatcher seems to be very distant from his young ward. Have you ever wondered how any human being [[AllTakeAndNoGive could ignore that to have love, you have to give love]]? Well, just imagine him being raised by [[TheStoic Mr.]] [[MorallyBankruptBanker Thatcher]].
** Emotionally, Mrs. Kane towards her son as she wants to ensure that he has wealth and "proper" upbringing at the cost of being raised by his parents. The irony is that by trying to protect Kane from his physically abusive real father, his mother condemned him to emotional neglect by Mr. Thatcher.
** Kane's father, physically speaking, which is partly why his mother sends him away in the first place. Although, in his defense, the one time he threatens to strike his son is after Charles violently pushed Thatcher down with his sled.
* ActorAllusion: Kane knows plenty of magic tricks that amuse Susan. Creator/OrsonWelles himself was an amateur magician.
* ActuallyPrettyFunny: Leland writes a scathing review of Susan's opera performance, passing out from drink afterwards. Kane reads it over his shoulder and can't help laughing.
* ActuallyThatsMyAssistant: When Kane is buying the ''Inquirer'', the editor of the paper mistakes Leland for Kane.
* AgeCut: "Merry Christmas" [cut forward about 15 years] "and a Happy New Year".
* AimlesslySeekingHappiness: Alongside his desperate need to be loved "on his own terms", this is the TragicDream of Citizen Kane, hence the mysterious "rosebud": it's the sled he owned when he was a child, symbolizing the last time in his life he was truly happy and contented with his lot, before Mr. Thatcher took him away from his parents; he found the sleigh again as an adult, but he couldn't regain the sense of innocent joy. In much the same way that he tried to find love by lavishing people with pointless gifts and sacrificing nothing of himself, Charles Foster Kane tried to find happiness by collecting artworks and junk in equal measure, but none of it brought him any real happiness -- to the point that some of the statues he bought were never even removed from their crates.
* AirQuotes: InUniverse and a PlotPoint: Jed chuckles that Kane was determined to make Susan an accomplished opera star to TakeThat the newspaper describing her as a "singer".
-->'''Jed:''' You know what the headline was the day before the election, "Candidate Kane found in love nest with [[AirQuotes quote]], singer, [[AirQuotes unquote]]." He was gonna take the quotes off the singer!
* AllInTheEyes: Kane's eyes are lit at the opera house during Susan's disastrous debut. It shows his monomania and disconnection from the audience reaction.
* AllTakeAndNoGive: Kane's main problem. He wants everyone to love him, but he doesn't have any love to give in return.
* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: InUniverse with the opening newsreel in which Kane is denounced as [[CommieNazis both a communist and a fascist]].
* AmbiguouslyGay: Leland the "Broadway critic" is coded as gay (couldn't be stated outright under UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode) and was possibly infatuated with Kane in his early years.
* AmbiguouslyJewish: Mr. Bernstein. In fact, it's implied in one scene that Kane's first wife feels uncomfortable around Bernstein for precisely that reason.[[note]]Mr. Bernstein was played by a Jewish actor, Everett Sloane.[[/note]] Emily also complains about a NoodleIncident with Bernstein.
-->'''Emily:''' Your Mr. Bernstein sent junior the most incredible atrocity yesterday, Charles. I simply can't have it in the nursery.
** The atrocity in question is a mezuzah, a box containing sacred Hebrew texts (usually the Ten Commandments), affixed to a doorpost, often believed to act as a warding or protection (and thus a protection over the child). Additionally, if "Mr. Bernstein is apt to pay a visit to the nursery now and then", he'd kiss his fingers and then touch the mezuzah upon entering and leaving the room.
* AnachronicOrder: The film starts with the title character's death, gives us a brief newsreel outline of his life, then fills in the details of his life with a series of flashbacks. The flashbacks are not in chronological order; their order depends on the order in which a reporter interviews people.
* AndStarring: The final image of the credits, after all the secondary characters have had clips shown of them with their actors' names, is a list of the bit part actors. Then at the bottom it says "Creator/OrsonWelles as Kane". Creator/RogerEbert stated it was a blatant example of false modesty on Welles' part. He adds that listing Gregg Toland's cinematography credit alongside his directorial credit on the same card was true modesty.
* AngerMontage: The room trashing sequence. The movie commentary tracks note that this scene was a bit of "{{method acting}}"[[invoked]] that got out of control. Welles broke his hand very early in the sequence; you can see him favoring it at the end. Also different from the typical example in that it is shown in a couple of long master shots, rather than an actual montage of closeups: this is because they could only do one take.
-->'''Welles:''' ''(after shooting the scene)'' I felt it. ''I felt it''.
* ArbitrarilyLargeBankAccount: Given that he was based on William Randolph Hearst, Kane qualifies.
* ArcWords: "Rosebud" is a possible UrExample. This was the last thing that Kane said before he died, and the DrivingQuestion of the movie is figuring out what he meant by that.
* ArchEnemy: [[MorallyBankruptBanker Walter Parks Thatcher]] and [[SleazyPolitician 'Boss' Jim W. Gettys]] to Charles Foster Kane.
* AsideGlance:
-->'''Thatcher:''' "I think it would be fun to run a newspaper." Hmmph!
* BadassBoast:
-->'''Kane:''' You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars ''next'' year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... [''Smirking''] 60 years.
* BecameTheirOwnAntithesis: Kane begins with a declaration of principles, championing the ''Inquirer'' and himself as a tireless seeker of truth and justice and the defender of "the common man", until he slowly becomes a power-hungry controller of information who wants the common man to love him but who has none to give back, exemplified when he loudly proclaims that the people will think "''what I tell them to think''."
* BettyAndVeronica: Kane's wives, Emily and Susan, respectively. Emily is a starchy, proper society woman; Susan is Kane's brash, working-class mistress.
* BigEater: Kane, as evidenced by this early exchange:
-->'''Jedediah:''' Are you ''still'' eating?\\
'''Kane:''' I'm still hungry.
* BigFancyHouse: Xanadu, which is cited as the largest private estate in the world, the cost of which to maintain quote "No man can say."
* BladeOfGrassCut: Rosebud does not apply, but the snow globe might.
* BluntYes:
-->'''Leland:''' Bernstein, am I a stuffed shirt? Am I a horse-faced {{hypocrite}}? Am I a New England school marm?\\
'''Bernstein:''' Yes. If you thought I'd answer you any differently than what Mr. Kane tells you...
* BookEnds: The same shot of Kane's house and the fence in front with a sign reading "No Trespassing".
* BrainlessBeauty: Susan Alexander Kane is naïve more than stupid, really. It's just that her voice has "bimbo" connotations. (She does however seem to believe that there might be a 12-hour difference between New York and Florida.)
* BrokenAce: Under all his wealth and prestige, Kane is a broken man who can't hold down a relationship with anyone and desperately longs for his stolen childhood.
* BurnBabyBurn: The last shot is of Kane's childhood sled burning. Ultra close up on the sled's name, which is Rosebud -- but, come on, [[ItWasHisSled you should know this already.]]
* BusCrash: Thanks to the MoralGuardians (divorce, at the time, being considered immoral), Kane's first wife and son had to be killed in a car crash so Kane could marry Susan.
* ByronicHero: Kane is an archetypal example. As a little boy, he gets snatched from his family and introduced into the cold, ruthless worlds of media, politics, and business. By rising to the top of that ruthless world through cutthroat cunning, he becomes an internationally famous media tycoon and one of the richest men of all time. But under all that wealth, he's a broken man who can't hold down a relationship with anyone and desperately longs for his stolen childhood.
* CallingTheOldManOut:
** Kane delivers one to his adoptive guardian, Mr. Thatcher:
--->'''Kane:''' You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man.\\
'''Thatcher:''' Don't you think you are?\\
'''Kane:''' I think I did pretty well, under the circumstances.\\
'''Thatcher:''' What would you like to have been?\\
'''Kane:''' Everything you hate.
** This is displacement. Kane's really angry at his ''mother'', for sending Kane away when he was young, and putting him into Thatcher's hands. Implicitly, Thatcher is a decent (if very conservative) middle-aged banker who did his best while (ahem) raising Kane.
* CensorDecoy: The birthday/song scene originally took place in a brothel. Welles knew he'd never be able to get away with that, but he kept it in the screenplay so the execs at RKO wouldn't notice the jabs he was taking at Hearst.
* CentralTheme:
** How will the world remember you when you are gone?
** Money can't buy love or happiness. Even the most powerful people in the world often truly desire [[MundaneLuxury simple things]]--like having a real childhood.
** Even in a world of mass information, it's sometimes impossible to "know" the people around us truly.
* ChekhovsGun:
** The now-legendary sled appears very early in the film when Thatcher, in his memoir, recounts his first meeting with Kane, who was a child at the time.
** Also the Declaration of Principles, which [[IronicEcho Leland sends back to Kane after Kane has betrayed those principles.]]
** The snowglobe Kane drops upon his death is first seen in Susan Alexander's bedroom when Susan invites Kane into her home. It reappears again after Susan leaves Kane.
* {{Chiaroscuro}}: Like many tropes, the usage of Chiaroscuro in film was widely popularized by ''Citizen Kane'', although it was already common in {{German expressionis|m}}t cinema. This ties into the film's use of "Deep Focus" (one of the techniques cinematographers rave about in the movie). The way they managed to bring foreground and background objects into focus in the same shot required the more distant objects to be extremely brightly lit, encouraging the heavy-shadow Chiaroscuro compositions. Which is why Welles put Gregg Toland's name on the same card as him.
* ClassicalAntihero: The titular character, albeit one PlayedForDrama.
* CollectorOfTheStrange: Kane is one. He collects so many things -- animals and plants, everything he had in his life -- that after his death, a lot of his collection is not catalogued nor even unpacked, and has to be sold off or destroyed:
-->'''Newsreel Narrator:''' [''At beginning of news reel on Charles Foster Kane's death''] ''Legendary was Xanadu where Kublai Khan decreed his stately pleasure dome. Today, almost as legendary is Florida's Xanadu, world's largest private pleasure ground. Here, on the deserts of the Gulf Coast, a private mountain was commissioned and successfully built. One hundred thousand trees, twenty thousand tons of marble are the ingredients of Xanadu's mountain. Contents of Xanadu's palace: paintings, pictures, statues, the very stones of many another palace -- a collection of everything so big it can never be catalogued or appraised, enough for ten museums -- the loot of the world. Xanadu's livestock: the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea, the beast of the field and jungle. Two of each, the biggest private zoo since Noah. Like the pharaohs, Xanadu's landlord leaves many stones to mark his grave. Since the pyramids, Xanadu is the costliest monument a man has built to himself. Here in Xanadu last week, Xanadu's landlord was laid to rest, a potent figure of our century, America's Kubla Khan -- Charles Foster Kane.''
* ConversationCut: This happens more than once. The AgeCut where Thatcher says "Merry Christmas", and after a 15-year TimeSkip "and a Happy New Year", is also a ConversationCut. Another such cut comes when Leland is delivering Kane's standard stump speech to a small crowd, cutting smoothly to Kane delivering the speech to a huge crowd in a large arena.
* CreatorCameo:
** Cinematographer Gregg Toland appears as a reporter in a brief scene in the opening montage.
** Pretty much every male in the cast plays one of the reporters in the opening projection room scene as well. This is one of the reasons why [[{{Chiaroscuro}} it was shot so darkly and shadowed]], even compared to the rest of the film. Joseph Cotten is still clearly visible in the corner, however, when the editor is asking "What were his last words?"
* DarkReprise: As Kane is embarking on his political career, he brings a marching band and a line of chorus girls into his conference room to sing a very upbeat rendition of "There Is a Man, a Certain Man" to the assembled businessmen and politicians at the conference table. ("Who is this man? It's Charlie Kane! He doesn't like that 'Mister'; he likes good old 'Charlie Kane'!") Much later, after Kane has lost the race for New York governor under extremely humiliating circumstances, a much slower and even dirge-like version of "There Is a Man" is played as an instrumental tune as Kane's campaign workers clean all the confetti off of the stage.
* DeadHandShot: At the beginning, with the snow globe, when Kane drops it as he dies.
* DeadSparks: Charles and Emily Kane, as shown in the dinner table sequence, when their once warm relationship ends with them not speaking to each other.
* DeathGlare: Orson Welles gets off a DeathGlare that could have melted steel, right after Thatcher asks "What would you like to have been?". Kane answers "Everything you hate."
* DecadeThemedFilter: On the "News on the March" segment, clips such as Kane's first marriage were undercranked and sandpapered to give out an 1890s feel.
* {{Deconstruction}}: In the context of the '40s, and even today to some extent, ''Citizen Kane'' radically subverts the conventional Hollywood narrative.
** ''Citizen Kane'' was in many ways an attack on the narrative style of UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfHollywood as well as several American types like the SelfMadeMan and UsefulNotes/TheAmericanDream. Namely, that the idea of defining life in terms of social success and wealth ultimately makes you value people less and makes you want to control and buy people around you.
** The theme of the story, that of an antihero DyingAlone, unredeemed, an unpleasant, manipulative {{Jerkass}} who [[AesopAmnesia never learns his lesson]] even in his old age and who leaves behind several disappointed friends and broken loved ones was fairly harsh, in terms of absence of easy conflict resolution, putting across the futility of life and the passage of time. Likewise the characters are not consistent or slaves to type. Rather than being marked by a single trait and attribute, they have multiple traits and attributes. Kane goes from an idealistic, flamboyant young man to a reclusive, paranoid hermit; the CharacterDevelopment isn't drastic or cordoned to a single transforming event.
** The opening newsreel montage also parodies the glib, cheery newsreel style reportage at the time, pointing out that even if the information is objectively correct, the tone, interpretation, and drastic editing only give a shallow, superficial idea of the subject. The multiple-narrators approach, which is still quite revolutionary, directly puts across the problem of objectivity, since there's always at least one missing side of the story, and ultimately the reporter, William Alland, decides that the full mystery of Kane or his motivations cannot really be known and gives up on finding out what Rosebud is. Even if the film supplies TheReveal and gives viewers a resolution to the DrivingQuestion of "What is Rosebud?", the idea that it can explain Kane any more than the other stories we see remains up in the air.
* DecoyProtagonist: The film is a double subversion. Even though Kane is the title character, he's actually the person we learn about through multiple third-person perspectives of him, since he died at the beginning. The real protagonist is Jerry Thompson, whose goal throughout the film is to find out what "Rosebud" meant.
* DepthDeception: The film used this subtly:
** In one scene, a window turns out to be both much larger and much higher up than it initially appears, which means that when Kane approaches it, he suddenly appears much smaller and less significant. This, of course, is used for symbolic effect.
** Also done with the fireplace in Xanadu, which is revealed to be large enough to burn whole trees when Kane goes back to it.
* {{Determinator}}: One of Kane's {{Fatal Flaw}}s, such as forcing the world to accept Susan as an opera singer, which [[DrivenToSuicide drives her into a suicide attempt]].
* DigitalDestruction: The film got an accidental taste of this. In one scene, there was supposed to be rain outside the window; the person in charge of the film's restoration thought it was excessive film grain, so it was digitally edited out of the restored print. Later, the Blu-ray boasted a new restoration, which brought back such details as the aforementioned rain.
* DownerBeginning: Kane dies in the first scene of the film.
* DownerEnding: One of the most famous examples in cinema. By the end of the movie, the viewer realizes that, despite being on top of the world, Kane was tremendously unhappy and what he wanted above all else in his life was to be loved. Kane dies alone, as the movie opens, as he remembers the last time in his life when he was truly happy; when he was playing with his beloved sled, Rosebud. Plus the fact that the reporter and the rest of the world never do find out what "Rosebud" is. The only way the viewer finds out is when it's too late; when the sled is being burned, along with some of Kane's other belongings. The real tragedy is that he had the sled as part of his property throughout his whole life. Still, owning it didn't change a thing -- the past is the past. This also means that Kane died with one cherished secret only he knew. The press and the populace could never get their hands on what was closest to his heart. And the snow globe, which Kane held until he died, had belonged to Susan, who had loved him for himself. He was thinking of her, too.
* DramaticDrop: The snowglobe that's dropped as Kane dies.
* DramaticIrony: Susan rips into Kane for publishing Leland's nasty review ("Stop telling me he's your friend!"), but she never finds out that Kane himself wrote most of it.
* DramaticShattering: The snow globe at the beginning.
* DrivenToSuicide: Susan eventually decides that she's done with the opera singing and all the scathing critiques it brings and tries to overdose. She survives however, but nonetheless stops singing.
* DrivingQuestion: The last thing Charles Foster Kane said before he died was "Rosebud". What did he mean when he said that? While the characters never find out, the audience does with the WhamShot to close the film: "Rosebud" was the name of the sled that Kane had when he was a child. Kane was AimlesslySeekingHappiness for his entire adult life, and the simple memory of playing in the snow with his sled as a child was the last time Kane felt like he was truly happy.
* DrosteImage: This effect is shown when Kane passes between two mirrors.
* DungeonmastersGirlfriend: Kane funds an elaborate opera show for the sole purpose of casting his girlfriend in the lead role.
* DuringTheWar: Kane manipulates the public sentiment to incite the war. Bear in mind that the film came out ''before'' America entered UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
* DyingAlone: Kane at the beginning. The rest of the movie is devoted to showing [[HowWeGotHere why he was alone]].
* DyingCandle:
** Throughout the opening montage showing Kane's vast Xanadu estate, a single lit window is visible on the upper right hand corner of every shot, getting closer all the time. At the end, the light goes out, leading to the memorable scene of Kane uttering his dying word.
** Susan's failed opera career is shown through a chaotic montage punctuated by a flashing lightbulb (supposedly the one used to cue the actors backstage). The montage ends abruptly with the bulb burning out, followed by Susan in bed with some sleeping pills next to her bed, implied to be a suicide attempt. Subverted in that Susan survives, although the burned-out bulb can also symbolize the death of her opera singing career.

'''Susan:''' I see. It's ''you'' that this is being done to! It's not me at all. Not what it means to me. I can't do this to you? ''Oh, yes, I can.