Rosebud

Like that shining window in the distance, Rosebud becomes the elusive focal point for a newsreel reporter's investigation into the life and times of Citizen Kane, an exploration that provides the plot framework for the movie. And like those shifting, sometimes inverted, initial images, each person reporter Thompson (William Alland) interviews provides a different perspective, a contrasting image of the same man: Charles Foster Kane. Rosebud serves as a very important motivation in the film. …

…directly addresses the audience. Everyone knows that prohibited space becomes immediately fascinating and that nothing arouses curiosity more than a secret. The end of the film reverses the camera movement, so the space that opened up the story is symmetrically closed, returning the audience backs to the original position, outside the wire fence, ultimately back into the auditorium, the same as they were but different for having undergone the experience of the previous two hours.