Rick et al: In regard to Citizen Kane - it always seems to appear on Top Ten lists, and you're right, in comparison to more recent films it seems a bit slow and stodgy.

But, in it's day it was a breakthrough piece. Use of sets with ceilings because of the low angle shots, deep focus lens designed by cinematographer Gregg Toland, innovative sound work, and the courage of Welles to take on a major media figure - William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was so pissed at the not-so-veiled reference to him and his paramour, Marion Davies, he tried to buy and destroy the negative, and his nationwide newspaper empire successfully prevented the film from achieving any sort of commercial success.

As far as the aging of Welles in the Kane role - yeah, it wasn't great, but Welles was only 26 years old then. So taking him up to a 60-year old was a challenge. (Even with the available excesses of Tinsel Town - booze, women, drugs and power !!!)

The comment on the Rosebud scene, which begins and ends the film, reminded me of the supposed femminist philosophy question: "If a man says something in the middle of a forest, with no one else around, is he still wrong ?!?" :)

There is some interesting scuttlebutt about the Rosebud scene. It is apparently one of the scenes that really incensed Hearst. The writer who co-wrote the film with Welles knew Hearst and his lover, Davies, very well and used some of his knowledge to embarrass them. Supposedly the word "Rosebud" was Hearst's pet word for a very private part of Davies' anatomy. When Welles trotted this out in the first scene of the film it sent old man Hearst's blood pressure through the ceiling !