8) “Rosebud.” – Citizen Kane, 1941
Citizen Kane is a justly revered classic of cinema, and it’s made even more impressive by the fact that it was Orson Welles’ directorial debut, which he co-wrote and starred in at the incredibly young age of 25. For years it was ranked as the greatest movie of all time by Sight and Sound magazine, until just this year when it lost the top spot to Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
I’m not here to join the chorus of detractors who say that the movie itself is overrated. I will say, however, that the line “Rosebud,” which lands at number 17 on the AFI list, is overrated.
A bedridden Charles Foster Kane (played by Welles) whispers the line during the film’s opening moments, then drops a snow globe onto the ground. A nurse runs into the room to check on him and discovers that he’s dead. The entire plot of the film is framed around a reporter attempting to find out what Kane was referring to when he muttered his final word.
There’s just one problem: Kane died alone. The nurse came into the room after he murmured his last word. How did anyone actually hear him say “rosebud?” Reportedly, when Welles was questioned about this by some friends, he thought for a while and then said, “don’t you ever tell anyone of this.”
So “Rosebud” is, as a movie quote, simply a reminder of the one glaring mistake in an otherwise pretty perfect movie.
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