[WikiEN-l] Rosebud! .... Rosebud!

Tue Jun 27 15:09:40 UTC 2006

> From: Garion1000 <garion1000 at gmail.com>
> Again, its not that important, I am just curious. Could maybe  
> someone with a
> copy of the encyclopedia Britannica could look up Citizen Kane and  
> see if
> it mentions Rosebud.

_Very_ interesting.

I don't think I can answer the question you were implicitly asking,  
namely "how does the Britannica handle 'spoilers.'" Or perhaps the  
answer is that the Britannica doesn't deal in plot summaries so  
doesn't _need_ to handle them.

The 2006 DVD version has no article on Citizen Kane specifically. (!)

A search on exact phrase "Citizen Kane" gives these results:

“Citizen Kane” (film by Welles)

     * major reference
     * discussed in biography
     * history of Great Depression
     * innovations in directing
     * production by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.
     * role of
           o Mankiewicz
           o Moorehead
     * treatment of Hearst

The "major reference" is in a section of a long article about movies  
describing the Hollywood studio system! It is mostly about  
cinematographic advances in the service of Welles' vision:

Britannica says (about half snipped) "The most extraordinary film to  
emerge from the studio system, however, was Orson Welles's Citizen  
Kane (1941), whose controversial theme and experimental technique  
combined to make it a classic.  (blah blah) radically innovative use  
of sound and deep-focus photography as it examined the life of  
Charles Foster Kane, a character based on the press baron William  
Randolph Hearst.  (blah blah) complicated flashback structure (blah  
blah)  paradoxically revealing not greatness or might but pathetic  
insecurity and emptiness.  (blah blah) newly available Eastman film  
stock (blah blah) plastic-coated wide-angle lenses opened to smaller  
than normal apertures (blah blah) cinematographer Gregg Toland  
achieved a photographic depth of field that approximated the  
perceptual range of the human eye  (blah blah) techniques of ambient  
and directional sound that Welles had learned from radio.  (blah  
blah) functioning on several levels at once, the historical, the  
psychological, and the mythic. Although recognized by many critics as  
a work of genius, (blah blah financial failure no more Welles films).

In Welles' biography, all it says is "In 1940 Welles, on contract to  
R.K.O., went to Hollywood and made the classic Citizen Kane (1941),  
which portrayed the life of a newspaper magnate (suggestive of  
William Randolph Hearst, who sought to ban the movie)"

Another mention, in an article about motion pictures, says "Different  
scales are occasionally juxtaposed in a single shot to produce an  
unmistakable dramatic or rhetorical effect. In Orson Welles's Citizen  
Kane (1941) significant characters are repeatedly framed in the right  
or left foreground while in the background an action takes place  
which disturbs that character or which that character somehow  
controls...."

No plot summary. No identification of Marion Davies. No  
identification of "Rosebud" with a) a sled, or b) Davies' clitoris.

(Double-take) "Wide-angle lenses opened to _smaller_ than normal  
apertures?"