The Picnic Scene and the Rise of Susan.
In an era in which the movie studio was king, in a business where it was prudent to tread lightly about the powerful, Orson Welles took RKO Radio Pictures for the publicity ride of the century in 1941 with project number 281, the now venerable, but then volatile, epic Citizen Kane. A not-so-subtle jab at newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, Citizen Kane illustrates the proverbial rise and fall of Charles Foster Kane, a character whose story so incensed Hearst that a smear campaign ensued to such a degree that the very mention of Citizen Kane at the 1942 Academy Awards was met with boos from the audience. In spite of its initial reception, the film persevered and has become one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time with its simple and spectacularly well-executed story. Kane, sent away from home at an early age to live with a banker who would manage his inherited fortune, led a life of quiet loneliness, searching for the love and devotion of those around him, becoming a father figure to the nation through his newspapers. Kane felt deprived, he felt that his mother had done him a great injustice when she sent him away from the humble home of his origins, that she had inadvertently deprived him of all hope of a normal, centered, caring lifestyle. Surrounded by opulence in his new upbringing, Kane tried to break away and find solace in the world of his newspapers, he tried to find love in his first wife, a niece of the President of the United States, but, as in all of his endeavors, he overreached and found himself alone. It was in his loneliness that he met Susan, and it was his failure and degradation in both political and personal arenas that prompted his marriage, making Susan the second Mrs. Charles Foster Kane. Kane abused Susan, forcing her into opera to save his reputation, trying to make her someone she could never be, and, during a picnic in the Everglades, Susan eventually bit back, instigating a fight that would lead to her separation from Kane shortly thereafter.
