Great Characters: Charles Foster Kane (“Citizen Kane”)
Citizen Kane is one of the great cinematic achievements of all time and at its center is its Protagonist: Charles Foster Kane.
Played by Orson Welles, who also directed and co-wrote the movie (along with Herman J. Mankiewicz, uncredited writers Roger Q. Denny, John Houseman, Mollie Kent), Kane is a larger-than-life American inspired by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Here is an IMDB summary of the movie’s plot:
Multimillionaire newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane dies alone in his extravagant mansion, Xanadu, speaking a single word: “Rosebud”. In an attempt to figure out the meaning of this word, a reporter tracks down the people who worked and lived with Kane; they tell their stories in a series of flashbacks that reveal much about Kane’s life but not enough to unlock the riddle of his dying breath.
In an interesting twist of the traditional Protagonist metamorphosis arc, Kane begins his life as a boy in a state of Unity (Rosebud is the name of his sled, a reminder of the happy days of his youth in Colorado), moves through Reconstruction in his attempts to become a rabble-rousing journalist, then reform politician, only to be brought down by an affair with Susan, proceeding into Deconstruction as he tries to revive his standing in public by transforming Susan into an opera singer — a disastrous effort — and finally ending in the ultimate state of Disunity: One of the richest men in the world living in his palatial estate Xanadu, and dying alone.