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The significance of the diegetic elements 'Rosebud' and the 'Glass Ball' in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). The paper argues that these elements are crucial tools for creating the myth of Charles Foster Kane for both the in-film audience and the external audience. The analysis draws on semiotics, cultural studies, and film theory to reveal the film's 'directness' and the manipulation of these elements to misdirect interpretation.
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This paper analyses, compares and contrasts Citizen Kane 's two diegetic elements: “Rosebud” and the "Glass Ball," and locates them as the main signs that build the system Orson Welles created in his first feature film. In the first scene of the film, before the introduction of the “Rosebud” idea, the "Glass Ball" is presented only and exclusively to the extra diegetic audience (the viewers). The difference between to whom the former and the latter are presented, and the sequence in which they are presented, was what guided this paper’s research. Semiotics, cultural studies and film theory sustain and reinforce the argument that Orson Welles has used the skills he had developed as an amateur magician to create the myth of Charles Foster Kane to the diegetic audience (the characters within the film) and the myth of Citizen Kane, to the extra diegetic audience (the viewers). Moreover, "Rosebud" and the "Glass Ball" are interdependent signs that form a code to mislead and misguide both diegetic and extra diegetic audience to an elusive search for meaning. Keywords: Citizen Kane, film studies, film theory.
film - are built. Citizen Kane ’s great illusion - the search for “Rosebud’s” meaning - has endured as long as the myth of Charles Foster Kane and the film itself. Both elements then, play a major role in the film’s diegesis, “the content of the narrative, the fictional world as described inside the story.”^3 In contrast to the understanding that both “Rosebud” and the “Glass Ball” are main structural parts of Citizen Kane’s narrative, here is what a quick Google search offers as the film’s plot: “When a reporter is assigned to decipher newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane's dying words, his investigation gradually reveals the fascinating portrait of a complex man who rose from obscurity to staggering heights. Though Kane's friend and colleague Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten), and his mistress, Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore), shed fragments of light on Kane's life, the reporter fears he may never penetrate the mystery of the elusive man's final word, "Rosebud.” Google serves here as a source with the purpose of evidencing that an ordinary summary doesn’t include the “Glass Ball” as part of narrative.” Moreover, the plot’s descriptions, critical analysis, academic works and essays, have developed a common interpretation for “Rosebud” as a romanticized and idealized connotation for Kane’s lost childhood. The “Glass Ball,” in another hand, has been interpreted as the mere diegetic vehicle to access the supposedly lost childhood. This common interpretation is precisely the effectiveness of Orson Welles’ trick. Both general and specialized audiences approach “Rosebud” as the sole main subject, while the “Glass Ball” is put aside. The “Glass Ball” is only brought back as forceful vehicle for a misled interpretation, as states Lars Trodson, author of the book About Orson: “Welles himself called the revelation about the sled a cheap trick. And if he called it that, why should we believe that the sled [Rosebud] is the thing to focus on? Maybe, like a consummate trickster, that sled was misdirecting our attention all along.” The ways “Rosebud” and the “Glass Ball” are displayed establish a film that leans towards a presentational mode rather than a representational one. By the use of specific angles, cuts and transitions, “Rosebud” and the “Glass Ball” are not meant to represent a narrative. Furthermore, both elements are meant no present a problem with an introjected solution to be revealed and completed by the audience, as an open work that offers apparently disconnected elements that can be only assembled by the viewer - the extra diegetic audience.^4 This presentational concept provides an elaborated and planned scene that encourage the viewer to come to conclusions and interpretations and believe in them. It works as an invitation by Orson Welles to do so_._ As a diegetic element, the “Glass Ball” is part of the film’s narrative space, in other words, it is being shown on the screen as part of the action displayed. As such, it is a shared
information between the characters in the film (diegetic audience) and the viewers (extra diegetic audience). “Rosebud” in another hand, is an intra diegetic element referring to a differentiated emotional space: Kane’s last moments. Kane’s last thoughts and feeling that might involve memories, regrets, or even joy. Whatever it is, “Rosebud” as an intra diegetic element is offered as an event during which “the character’s subjectivity becomes ours: there is a double privileging - we are positioned not only physically but also psychologically as the subject.”^5 Being an intra diegetic element, “Rosebud” successfully creates identification and a sense of shared subjectivity between Kane and the extra diegetic audience (the viewers). Through the manipulation of a diegetic element - the “Glass Ball”
Welles as an actor performing Kane denies the magic performance. Finally, at the end, when Kane loses Susan and destroys her bedroom, he holds the “Glass Ball,” uttering the word “Rosebud.” If nothing about Kane’s presented childhood can be retained as reliable information, “Rosebud” and the “Glass Ball” might not have a meaning at all and at the same time that might be what their meaning is. Through the voice of Kane’s butler Raymond, the film reveals the fragility of “Rosebud’s” signification. In Raymond’s words, “He [Kane] did all kinds of things that didn't mean anything.” Not coincidentally, these are the last words uttered in the film. However, after establishing the possibility of meaning absence, the film ends with the image of something been burned in Kane’s fireplace. It is a sled, just as the sled showed in Kane’s imagined memory childhood scene. As the camera gets closer, the extra audience (the viewers only) can read the word “Rosebud.” Therefore, by the end of the film what rest is nothing but a myth, or better, two myths. One, Charles Foster Kane the character. Another, Citizen Kane the film. Both myths require intensive search, research, deconstruction and debate. Both are built upon many stories and versions, many memories and imaginations, as a great myths demand. Citizen Kane is, of course, much more than two elements. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine the film without “Rosebud” and the “Glass Ball.” In using two different yet complimentary sings - “Rosebud” and the “Glass Ball” - Orson Welles created a code for his film that was not part of the usual cinematic arsenal, at least not at the time it was produced. Perhaps that’s why at the time the focus of film criticism was directed toward cinematography, sound, lighting and screenwriting. Later as the movie kept its status, and film theory was developed to new levels, Citizen Kane was appreciated as film d'auteur. During its 75 years, “Rosebud” has been fully explored creating the myth-making of Citizen Kane inside (diegesis) and outside (extra diegesis) the movie. In Welles own explanation of Citizen Kane, we find his statement in respect to how to tell a story more than what story to tell: “He [Charles Foster Kane] is never judged with the objectivity of an author, and the point of the picture is not so much the solution of the problem as its presentation.”^8 Therefore, to whom and how “Rosebud” and the “Glass Ball” are presented define the tricky invitation to the film’s complex diegesis. As a magic lover and practitioner, Welles has made intriguing use of “Rosebud” and the “Glass Ball” to establish an illusionistic search for meaning, while constructing two myths at once: The myth of Citizen Kane , the film; and the myth of Charles Foster Kane, the character. The former, a work that has produced a great amount of different interpretations, legends, stories and debates over the last 75 years; the latter, a character equally endlessly analyzed, interpreted and debated for as long as the film exists. Without “Rosebud” and
the “Glass Ball,” the film’s plot could remain untouched, but the story would not be the same. If faced as labyrinth, as once proposed Jorge Luis Borges, Citizen Kane should be seen as one that creates as many false trails as it can, misleading both diegetic and extra diegetic audiences, but offering one center: Orson Welles’ cinematic mythmaking and his mastery in creating an elegant trick played since 1941.^9
Bazin, Andre. Orson Welles: A Critical View. Paris: Editions Du Cerf, 1972. Print. Borges, Jorge Luis, and Eliot Weinberger. Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Non-Fictions. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. Burch, Noël, and Annette Michelson. To the Distant Observer: Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema. Berkeley: University of California, 1979. Print. Eco, Umberto. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1979. Print. Hawthorne, Christopher. Rosebud Remix: The Citizen Kane DVD Is As Coldly Magnificent As The Original Film , Slate Blog. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2001/10/rosebud_remix.html Hayward, Susan. Key Concepts in Cinema. New York: Routledge, 1996. Print. Kauffmann, Stanley, and Henstell, Bruce. American Film Criticism, from the Beginnings to Citizen Kane; Reviews of Significant Films at the Time They First Appeared. New York: Liveright, 1972. Print. Mulvey, Laura. Citizen Kane. London: British Film Institute, 2008. Print. Welles, Orson_. Orson Welles' F for Fake_. Saci, 1975. DVD. Sennett, Robert S. Setting the Scene: The Great Hollywood Art Directors. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1994. Print. Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation, and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966. Print. Stoehr, Kevin L. Film and Knowledge: Essays on the Integration of Images and Ideas. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002. Print. Welles, O. and Mankiewicz, Herman J. The Shooting Script of Citizen Kane.
Welles, Orson. RKO Archives. 1941. Raw data. UCLA, Los Angeles.
