Citizen Kane (Part 3) Trivia Quiz

Answer: Declaration of Principles

Kane's principles include the following:

I) I will provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly.

II) I will also provide them with a fighting and tireless
champion of their rights as citizens and as human beings.

After Kane requests that his Declaration be printed, Leland requests the original copy. He suggests, 'I have a hunch it might turn out to be something pretty important. A document. Like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and my first report card at school.'

Answer: 6 years

In a visually entertaining transition, the camera moves in toward a painting of the 'Chronicle' writing staff while Kane discusses, with some envy, the 'Chronicle's' success. Once the 'Chronicle' team is fully within focus of the picture, the scene fades into an actual photographic sitting with the same group of ten men.

Kane claims, 'Six years ago I looked at the picture of the
world's greatest newspapermen. I felt like a kid in front of a
candy store. Well, tonight six years later I got my candy, all of
it. Welcome, gentlemen, to the 'Inquirer'!'

The 'Inquirer's' circulation at this point: 684,000.

Answer: The world's biggest diamond

Though Kane has suggested numerous times that he is not concerned with wealth and fame, the fortune that he now controls has clearly overwhelmed his sensibilities. He spends lavishly, sending home precious paintings and pricelss antique marble sculptures, among many other objects. Kane is a man of great appetite, and not only for material objects...he hopes that the purchase of the world's biggest diamond will lure his future wife.

Answer: Norton

Miss Emily Monroe Norton, niece of the current president, becomes Kane's first wife. Their marriage is initially a happy one, but they lose interest in each other, as depicted in the famous breakfast table scene later in the film. In the Newsreel at the beginning of the film it states that, not long after their divorce, Emily and her son (with Kane) are killed in a car accident.

Answer: A stooge

Leland has few kind words in his recollection of Kane. He claims that Kane 'behaved like a swine' and that he did 'brutal things'. According to Leland, Kane had a 'generous mind', lavish with opinions, 'but that he never believed in anything except Charlie Kane.'

Answer: Love

Jedidiah Leland probably knows Charles Foster Kane better than anyone else, so when he makes this revelation it seems rather believable. Leland insists that Kane wanted love from his wife, and later from the American people in general, and this is what drove his ambition.

Unfortunately, according to Leland, Charles 'just didn't have any [love] to give', the exceptions being to himself and to his mother.

Answer: A toothache

Susan meets Charles on the sidewalk, the poor fellow just having suffered a splash of dirty rainwater from a passing vehicle. She tempts him into her apartment with offers of 'hot water', all the while experiencing the painful throbbing of a sore tooth.

In Susan's apartment, the fatherly Kane and the young lady get along nicely, throwing shadows on the wall, wiggling ears and singing gaily.

Answer: Jim Gettys

In a marvelous set of film cuts, Kane is depicted making a fiery political speech at an interesting variety of angles. Interspersed with the speech are cutaway close ups of his various supporters and more distant shots of the crowd (which is actually a drawing with holes cut out and lights flashing behind to get the effect of movement).

'Well, I'd make my promises now, if I weren't too busy arranging to keep them.', Kane brags during this grandiose and polemical address to his supporting throng.

Answer: Fraud at polls!

And indeed Kane does lose...so the headline 'Charles Foster Kane defeated: FRAUD AT POLLS!' appears in the 'Inquirer' the next day.

Answer: Criticism

Another marvelously shot scene, this one entirely from low angles, involves Kane and Leland talking about the failure of the political campaign. Leland discusses Kane's extraordinary ego, how he talks of the working class people as if he owned them (making some reference to Kane's 'Declaration of Principles'). He also makes reference to the labor movement, a movement that will take away Kane's purpose for being...that purpose being to have the working man worship at his feet.

Finally, Leland requests that he be moved to Kane's Chicago paper where he will continue to do 'dramatic crimitism' (Cotten, who portrayed Leland, immediately corrects himself by saying 'criticism'. This was not an intentional gaff).

Thank you for trying this quiz. I hope you enjoyed it and will try the other quizzes in this series.