my favourite scene in Citizen Kane was the scene where he has a meltdown after his second wife left him. 

i liked it because it shows us how he reacts when he doesn’t get what he wants and how much she meant to him. He smashes up all his possessions and this symbolizes how money didn’t mean anything to him. This shows us how his wife meant more than money even though it didn’t seem like it because he was so used to getting everything, he wanted that he wasn’t worry about losing all of it. The use of things that broken and the amount of it symbolizes chaos and this represents his personality as the addiction to buying things. This implies that overtime he’s possibly gone mad from all the freedom and money he had. 

This would have been shocking for the audience at the time because the chaos and violence wasn’t something they were used to, and no one acted like that in the past especially in film. In 1941 the war was about to start so people would have been shocked that he was throwing around expensive things when everyone else was struggling. This would make the audience feel hatred and as if Kane had been spoilt and raised as selfish because he’s breaking everything when the audience know that they were possibly going to lose lots of young men and not react the same way. 

Wells uses the use of ceiling to show off how he can use ceilings in film without all the camera equipment being shown. The use of ceilings and walls makes Kane seem claustrophobic and trapped as if he’s trapped in his fame and wealth and he wants to escape but he can’t because of how important and famous he is. This is done by having Kane surrounded in things with a low angle camera which represented power. This would have made the audience scared of him because he was powerful, and he could get almost everything he wanted. The idea of smashing up everything could symbolism freedom and not being trapped anymore because it’s when he realizes that things don’t mean anything to him, and wealth doesn’t necessarily bring happiness like his wife did when they first met. 

The snow globe could represent his freedom when he was a kid playing in the snow before he got wealthy and the idea of the glass being around the snow globe could symbolize how he’s trapped outside of his childhood and his freedom. It contrasts when he was 8 and happy even though he didn’t have anything with later when he had everything, but he wasn’t happy.