"Rosebud" was a rather tawdry device
Can you spot props from the movie? Before scrutinizing this frame from the film, you should watch the scene. Embedding has been disabled, but go here to view the ending of "Citizen Kane.
Here are my Great Movies review of the film, and my Viewer's Companion to Citizen Kane.
The 2-disc Special Edition includes my commentary track.
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I sometimes wonder what the secret to the cinematography in "Citizen Kane" was. It's been said it's never been duplicated, special lens had great depth of field, backgrounds and foregrounds were "mysteriously" in focus. I once watched an independent artist film-maker Paul Sharits in the Media Center in Buffalo, NY re-exposing frame-by-frame, older film to new film with a machine, I think he once remarked about supplying the lightning to film, someone carefully literally scratching film frame-by-frame, an art in itself. Sometimes I wonder, if the frames of the "Citizen Kane" film were printed on newspaper, frame-by-frame, composited, and rephotographed, frame-by-frame, multiple shots combined for effect? Nah...but it was about a newspaper "baron" and the USS Maine blew up in Havana, Cuba because of a coal bunker fire, not terrorists, in hindsight.
I had always assumed that they just used staggering amounts of light to permit the great depth of focus. Must have been miserably hot on those sets.