If it helps, really take a hard look at the scene where he first meets Susan – and note what’s just been brought front-and-center for him, including Rosebud and everything it stands for, right when she refers to (a) her sidelined dream of being a singer and (b) what mothers are like, and he responds in a peculiar fashion. That moment is quick and quiet and if you’re not watching for it you’ll miss it, by IMHO it’s essential to understanding why it all starts going downhill for him thereafter.
Yeah, but that raises another irony. The implication is that Kane would’ve been happier had he stayed in relatively innocent Colorado instead of being foisted by his mother onto an urban millionaire to be educated and civilized, and Susan would’ve been happier as some good-time music-hall singer instead of being pushed by Kane into opera (and, presumably, Marion Davies would have been happier making lightweight comedies instead of the overblown epics Hearst pushed her into).
But there is also the matter of taste and personal preference. I happen to dislike Citizen Kane. I understand all of the technical triumphs, the clever dialog and so forth, but I just don’ t like the movie. Various aspects of the film annoy me.
“De gustibus non disputandum est.”
(“There is no use arguing over differences in taste.”)
It’s one of the few black and white movies that I had never heard of that I actually sat down and watched all the way through when it was running on AMC. I didn’t even know it was Citizen Kane for the longest time, until I heard that movie described. I didn’t get the “it was his sled” part, since I missed the beginning.
Note, this isn’t because I can’t stand black and white. It’s just that that era had a different language of filmmaking, and I normally just don’t like that era.
I also think that, if I’d have known it was a classic, and thus had any expectations, it would have colored my viewing. What I liked about it at the time was more how weird it was. I didn’t actually understand it, and I came in a little ways in. (I’d guess 30 minutes, but I really don’t know.)