I watched it on a dreary small tube TV when I was 8, when the movies were shown on TV in the 50’s. I was transfixed for the entire time, not even remembering or bothered by the commercials.”, just remembering face to the tube never looking away. I did not understand what the blond lady had to do with it after his meeting her, but that did not interfere with the attention and impact. When he dropped the snow globe and said ‘rosebud’ at the end, dying, I knew exactly what he meant what he had lost in his childhood and sobbed my heart out. Then when the sled was tossed into the furnace, I really lost it, in overwhelming grief at his loss.
This topic brought it to mind, making me wonder if Wells created an allegory, a metaphor, for displaced and damaged lives as the culture transitioned from farm families to industrialization. Chris said once that children understood the Dramatica theory more easily than adults. (or some such). Something was clear cut about the film that a kid picked up on.
I started to wonder if the fallen globe with the word at the beginning and at the end indicated holistic, an instinctive search for something lost in childhood that never panned out. Each year it was voted the top movie, I wondered how many of the voters had seen it as a child, also