But "Rosebud" is a McGuffin. It's like the stolen money in Pscyho or the car bomb in Touch of Evil. They're all plot devices, not the point of the story. I think we're told what Rosebud is to underline its irrelevancy.

But "Rosebud" is a McGuffin. It's like the stolen money in Pscyho or the car bomb in Touch of Evil.

I don't know. Do the last scenes in Psycho and Touch of Evil focus on the money and the bomb? It seems that having the last scene in Citizen Kane focus on "Rosebud," as well as the earlier sledding stuff and the dying words, suggest it's a bit more than a McGuffin.

I think it's the point of the story in that the film is structured like a bio of a great man, and chronicles his rise to great power and influence and finally the one thing he seems to be connected to is that part of his life BEFORE he "achieved" anything. The pleasure of the film is its narrative and all the wonderful Wellesian and Tolandian touches, but the story itself is an expose of how hollow fame and power is.

I kept going back and forth over whether to admire or loathe her -- she's bold and strategic and unabashed, but the goals she's seeking are so empty.

Yes. Which is sort of the point. You're looking at three strata of society -- the old European elite, the American elite, and this new upstart group of capitalistic money-makers who are redefining what "class" means.

And, um, I don't have much time to talk about this at the moment, because, you know, hurricane, but I think the end of the book is brilliant. You feel bad for Ralph Marvell, and you feel bad for all the guys she steps on, but it's a kind of Darwinism. It's not the kind of world that Ralph Marvell can survive in with any sort of success, not any more.

Rosebud is very important to the reporter, who wants to hang his story on it. It is very important to Kane at the moment of his death. It's not very important to the viewer, except as the trigger for catharsis. We know that Rosebud is the sled, but what this tells us is that life is unknowable.

but the story itself is an expose of how hollow fame and power is.

I think it's also about the importance of the moment. At the moment of Kane's death, Rosebud is vital; afterward, it's worthless. And there's the great brilliant heartstopping speech about the girl on the ferry. You'll never see that girl again, but her moment is eternal.

I don't know. If Rosebud were a McGuffin, or a symbol of unknowableness, why wouldn't it refer to, say, a brand of toothpaste, or something on the ingredients list of the last breakfast he ate?

He's playing on the sled when he is called in to be taken away to the east, and education, and luxury. It's the only part of Kane's childhood that we see, period. It's got to mean more than "this is the hook to my article" or "sometimes you just can't know." You can know; you've been shown the sled earlier on; and the real significance is that it's tossed aside, unnoticed, because the more expensive toys in Xanadu take its place.

It's totally a symbol of the lost frontier, and a sign that Kane himself recognizes what he's lost. Go go gadget American Studies curriculum!

Do the last scenes in Psycho and Touch of Evil focus on the money and the bomb?

I'm not sure what you mean by focus. The last scene of Psycho is the car (containing the money & Marion) being dredged up. I can't remember if it's the last shot, but at the end of Touch of Evil we find out who planted the bomb. In all three movies, these are the things that continue to matter to the characters, but aren't the subject of the story.

And up to that reveal, Kane's last scene is a conversation about the fact that what "Rosebud" means doesn't matter. The audience has been told a shaggy dog story; identifying Rosebud is the punchline. We find out what Rosebud is, not to contradict what the reporter said, but to confirm it.

If Rosebud were a McGuffin, or a symbol of unknowableness, why wouldn't it refer to, say, a brand of toothpaste, or something on the ingredients list of the last breakfast he ate?

I'm not sure the movie could be supported by a framework in which a reporter interviews a dozen people, who reminisce for hours about a man's life without ever being able to figure out what the word "Colgate" might refer to. It might lessen their credibility a little. Although now that reminds me of the SNL parody. But the point isn't that it's something insignficant to Kane. It's that we'll never know what that signficance was. It's not a symbol of unknowableness; it is an unknowable symbol.

You can know; you've been shown the sled earlier on; and the real significance is

But just as Betsy said, I can know what Rosebud is. I can't know what it meant to Kane. I can't know if it symbolized youth or simplicity or family or poverty or innocence or civilization or sex or none of those things or all of them.

The sled combined with the snow globe, which could be construed to Kane remembering winters, raises more possibilities that he was at least thinking of his youth. Whether it was anything of any psychological depth or merely mental wanderings is a separate question.

I don't know. This is Orson Welles we're talking about. Dude was into expansive visions of American mythology. I don't think he would be satisfied with an unknowable symbol, and I certainly don't think the viewing audience of the time was into that sort of thing. In The Killers, which works on the same disordered-flashback structure, we certainly find out why the Swede waited passively for his own murder.

Since this is the Literary thread, and since only one person other than me has read The Custom of the Country (and she's in a hurricane!), can anybody else suggest novelistic American-mythology, expansive representations of that country-to-city, rise-in-social-standing story? I'd like to interrogate the basic plot-eventuality further, and clearly Kane is too debatable at this point to qualify.