and Citizen Kane Setting Standards?? . . Rosebud. . ." Everyone knows or has heard of this famous line from Citizen Kane, and yet many have called Citizen Kane the greatest cinematic achievement of all time. It is indeed a true masterpiece of acting, screen writing, and directing. Orson Welles, its young genius director, lead actor, and a co-writer, used the best talents and techniques of the day (Bordwell 103) to tell the story of a newspaper giant, Charles Kane, through the eyes of the people who loved and hated him. However, when it came out, it was scorned by Hollywood and viewed only in the private theaters of RKO, the producer. This was all due to the pressure applied by the greatest newspaper man of the time, one of the most powerful men in the nation, the man Citizen Kane portrayed as a corrupt power monger, namely William Randolph Hearst. People notice the similarities between Hearst and the movie Citizen Kane, but they do not recognize the fact that the movie made public the acts in which Hearst conducted business. This man and his unwarranted bibliography showed many other business owners how to conduct their ways. They used any means to collect the best reporters, and they paid to have the best stories. Little did Hearst and Welles know was that they would set a standard for the way owners of tabloids do business today. They gave rise to modern day sensationalism that tabloids owners and editors use to collect the best stories and writers money can buy. One cannot ignore the striking similarities between Hearst and Kane. In order to make clear at the outset exactly what he intended to do, Orson Welles included a few details about the young Kane that, given even a rudimentary knowledge of Hearst's life, would have set one thinking about the life of that newspaper giant. Shortly after the film opens, a reporter is seen trying to discover the meaning of Kane's last word, "Rosebud." He begins his search by going through the...
