84 years later, this is still cinema’s greatest one-word mystery

“Rosebud.” That’s the first word we hear in Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ 1941 film about the life and times of Charles Foster Kane, one of the greatest and most wretched men ever to live. It’s the last word Kane speaks on his deathbed, and a reporter spends the rest of the movie trying to figure out what it means.