Citizen Kane

A detailed Summary of Citizen Kane

There are very many great scenes in the movie Citizen Kane to choose from, but the one scene that I enjoyed most was the first flash back of the movie where Kane is a young boy riding his sled in his first home in Colorado. The characters in this scene, besides young Charles Kane, are Mr. Thatcher, the banker, and Mr. And Mrs. Kane.

The scene opens up in a wide shot of just white snow falling from the sky and the earth is covered by a blanket of snow. And in the distance is a young boy riding a sled down a small hill. The music in this 8 second shot is very light music created from a section of strings. It gives the scene a sense of a magical wintery/Christmasy feeling where the child enjoys playing in the snow. The scene is obviously lit very brightly showing that it is probably sometime in the middle of the day and the white snow is making everything look brighter.

Just as the sled stops at the bottom of the hill, the child gets up, grabs a fist full of snow, and hurls the ball to the right of the camera. We don't get to see what the snowball hits until the next shot.

We find out, in the next shot that the snowball was aimed at a sign perched on top of a house. The sign reads MRS. KANE'S BOARDING HOUSE. This gives us a

The scene ends with a fade out of the boy's face to the fade in of his sled being covered by the snow. A jump-cut is made where more snow is added to the sled representing that the boy is no longer there to play with his sled.

They all form another 'group', and the camera pans in. Suddenly the shot cuts into an extreme close up of the mother and pans down to the face of Charles. By this time, music has started up again, more strings.

The conversation about young Kane continues about how he's going to see the country. Mr. Kane moves in front of the snowman, coming closer to the 2 other characters and the camera. This scene seems to block the kid in by having Mr. Thatcher on his right, his mother on his left, and his father behind him. After all of these shots with the father being somewhat on the outside and farthest away, this gives me a feeling that Orson Wells wanted the audience to know how the father doesn't have much, if any say on any of the decisions. The composition is very close. His father chimes in while he and his mother move closer to him and away from the camera and Mr. Thatcher. Mr. Kane inches up a little bit which brings the 'box' Charles is in smaller.

The next shot is again of the young child throwing another snowball, this time with a snowman in it. The shot itself is still a long shot, the snowman is a little into the distance, and further back is the young boy who is shouting something indistinctable (at least to me.)

Mr. Kane walks closer to the table. The camera pans up as to not cut off any part of him while he gets more involved with what he is telling the two. Then, as Mrs. Kane signs the document giving Charles over to Mr. Thatcher, the camera slowly moves over to M

Some common words found in the essay are:
Charles Kane, Kane Thatcher, BOARDING HOUSE, Kane Charles, Charles Finally, Citizen Kane, Thatcher Kane, Charles Thatcher, charles kane, , camera pans, boy riding sled, kane thatcher, 2 characters, strings scene, front snowman, distance boy, pans charles, shot shot, white snow,

Approximate Word count = 1158
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Movies