Drama: A reporter searches for the meaning of a rich tycoon's dying word and finds a tumultuous life that is a metaphor for all that is great and dreadful about the American experience.

NITTY GRITTY:

"Rosebud." Charles Foster Kane's (ORSON WELLES) final word. It explains everything, and nothing. Who, for that matter, actually heard him say it before he died? The butler says he did. But Kane seems to be alone when he dies, and the shot of the reflection on the broken paperweight shows his nurse entering the room.( The film was reportedly based on the life of publishing king William Randolph Hearst.)

Reporter Thompson (WILLIAM ALLAND) is sent to track down the meaning of 'Rosebud'. He visits Kane's wife and former associates.

In a series of flashbacks, he uncovers Kane's life from his youth in Colorado to his death. After a worthless deed makes his mother (AGNES MOOREHEAD) rich, she sends Charlie back east with her lawyer Walter Thatcher (GEORGE COULOURIS). Charlie doesn't want to leave and hits Thatcher with his snow sled.

Fast forward twenty years and Charles Foster Kane comes back from Europe to run the New York Inquirer, a newspaper he owns. Through his newspaper and radio empire, Kane feels it is his self-appointed mission to lift the burden from the backs of the underprivileged.

Kane marries the President's niece (RUTH WARRICK)and runs for governor of New York. Political boss Jim Gettys (RAY COLLINS) threatens to expose Kane's extramarital affair if he continues to campaign. Kane refuses the offer and is exposed with his political career ruined. His wife leaves him and he marries his mistress (DOROTHY COMINGORE).

Kane tries to make his new wife into an opera star, but she can't sing. She leaves him. Charles Foster Kane eventually ends up alone. All his wealth could not buy him what he wanted...love.

THE ENDING:

Thompson gives up trying to find out what 'Rosebud' meant to Kane. Then the film cuts to some workmen cleaning out a part of Kane's warehouse. They are tossing items from Kane's old home in Colorado into a giant furnace. One worker places an old wooden children's sled into the fire. The camera moves in close as the music swells and we see painted on the sled, the ominous word 'Rosebud', as the sled is consumed by the fire.

WHAT EVERYONE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT:

The visual look of the film. This was before computer special effects.

EXTRA: Rumor has it that the screenwriter, Herman Mankiewicz, used "rosebud" as an inside joke, because as a friend of Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies, he knew it was Hearst's pet name for the most intimate part of her anatomy. Oow!