A Mystery in Citizen Kane

I’ve long been troubled by an element in the newsreel company scene early in Citizen Kane. Uncredited Alan Ladd appears there, which is fine; he wasn’t a star yet. But Joseph Cotten appears and speaks in that scene ("Rosebud"). That’s Cotten outside his prominent role as Kane’s friend Jeb. And we’ve seen how Jeb has aged by then. 

Is that a mistake? How could that appearance happen? Couldn’t Welles find someone else to deliver that line? Did he think no-one would notice? Did he not care? Did he forget?  Was he so negligent with such an obtrusive subtle detail? Our boy genius Welles err so obviously?

Here’s my solution. Welles was always a magician. He did tricks as a kid. His F is for Fake exults in magic. So Cotten’s appearance out of character is magician Welles’s personal signature. Even more dramatic and subtle than that announcement: “A Film by Orson Welles.” 

Mere magicians can make someone disappear. More impressive, newly coined film magician can make someone appear.  He gives us two Cottens — first the unnamed, in the “outer" film— then the Jeb, in the “inner." With Cotten’s non-Jeb appearance in the film company’s meeting he embodies his master’s ultimate ability, to create a person out of thin air, beyond the material consistency of a “role.”

And light. One more brilliant touch in that scene. As one of the executives stands in front of the bright screen his head seems to emit a beam of — darkness. That's the newsreel company striving to find a Kane beyond the known and filmed — and beyond that, Welles creating that search for his own purposes. 

This force of abiding mystery returns at the end. When we finally learn what the fugitive “Rosebud” literally means — the sled burning in the furnace — we don’t get to rest on the fire's light (illumination) but we’re left with the thick black smoke rising out of the fire. That denies the sled aa  “solution” of the mystery. 

From all the divergent perspectives we get on Kane, the childhood scene and the metaphorically-laden “Rosebud” (“Gather thee…” etc.) don’t really solve the character’s enigma. The film is a testament to the complexity of its hero. The human — whether Kane, Hearst (with his more private Marion Davies’ “Rosebud”) or (by Welles's working title) “The American" — has dimensions beyond the crossword puzzles the mistress works on -- a tempting metaphor for the investigator’s search for “Kane.”  In confirmation of that continuing mystery, the film closes on the dark, foreboding “No Trespassing” sign and the ever-thickening fence that open the film. We all have No Trespassing signs that protect others’ probes to our core.