Briefly explain how Welles used the device of the flashback to help tell the story of Kane
What will be an ideal response?
Answer: The ideal answer should include:
1. When Mankiewicz approached Welles with the idea of the story, Welles was concerned that the materials would be too sprawling, too unfocused.
2. To sharpen the story line and infuse it with more dramatic urgency, he suggested scrambling the chronology of events through a series of flashbacks, each narrated from the point of view of the person telling the story. Welles had used this multiple flashback technique in a number of his radio dramas.
3. Like a number of Welles’s other movies, Kane begins with the end—the death of its protagonist when he is about 75. With his last dying breath, he utters the word “Rosebud” as a glass snow globe he’s holding crashes to the floor, splintering into a thousand fragments. The plot of the movie is structured like a search—for the meaning of this final utterance.
4. Welles claimed that the Rosebud motif was merely a plot gimmick, intended to hook the audience on a dramatic question that’s really a wild goose chase. But the gimmick works. Without this gimmick, the story would have remained rambling and unfocused. The search for the meaning of Rosebud shapes the narrative, providing it with a forward thrust, with a dramatic question we all want answered.
5. The flashback structure of Citizen Kane allows Welles to leap through time and space, cutting to various periods of Kane’s life without having to adhere to a strict chronology. To provide the audience with an overview, Welles introduced most of the major events and people of Kane’s life in a brief newsreel shown early in the film. These events and people are explored in more depth in the individual flashbacks that follow.
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