The Snow Globe in Citizen Kane (1941)
By Isabelle Holloway
(Contains spoilers for the 1941 film Citizen Kane)
The snow-globe as we know it today has evolved into a trinket of Christmas kitsch and wonder, swirling around such far-ranging subjects as Betty Boops and Eiffel Towers. However, this curious object came about by accident: in 1900, an Austrian maker of surgical instruments named Erwin Perzy sought to produce a surgical lightbulb from a water-filled globe. He inserted metal flakes, attempting to amplify the light. Noticing that the metal flakes settled like snow, Perzy inserted semolina to enhance the flurried effect. His failed instrument sprung into a successful business: the Original Snow Globe Company.
Although snow globes had been introduced as collector’s items to the United States in the early 1920s, it was not until the 1950s that they had whirled into popularity for the public. This spike is largely attributed to 1940s Hollywood films which gradually processed the snow globe into a seasonal object of the collective American consciousness.
Before the widespread use of Technicolor, filmmakers in the 1940s capitalised on the contrasts of lighting and dramatic angles to create mood and atmosphere. Snow, whether falling, accumulated atop rooftops, or contained within snow globes, glitters crisply in contrast to the darker shadows and figures of a scene. Thus, it frequently serves as a cinematic motif in coeval films like Odd Man Out (1947), in which Johnny escapes along a surreal landscape of snow, or Kitty Foyle (1940), in which a snow globe frames Kitty’s flashback.
The film, however, that was arguably the most influential in popularising the snow globe, in addition to its features of snow, was Citizen Kane (1941).
Figure 1: Still from Citizen Kane, 1941, directed by Orson Welles, produced by RKO Radio Pictures, featuring a snow globe held in Kane’s hand.
The opening of Citizen Kane foreshadows the key mystery of the film: as an elder Kane holds a snow globe (Figure 1) — iridescent and innocent against a black backdrop — he utters a single, haunting word:
“Rosebud…”
An investigation sets out to answer the mystery of “Rosebud”: is it a who, in which it is perhaps a secret lover? A where, representing a place? Some key to his fortune, or even a mundane detail of his life?
Figure 2: Still from Citizen Kane, 1941, directed by Orson Welles, produced by RKO Radio Pictures, featuring Kane as a boy with a snowman and sled as observed by his mother.
Figure 3: Still from Citizen Kane, 1941, directed by Orson Welles, produced by RKO Radio Pictures, featuring Kane as a boy pulling a sled next to a snowman.
The snow globe’s landscape later seems to invert out into a flashback of Kane’s childhood. Observed through the protected side of the window, Kane’s mother watches him play in the snow (Figure 2). As the snow falls, there is an impending sense of abandonment as the mother leaves the frame to show the isolated play of a boy, accompanied by his snowman and sled, in dim brightness (Figure 3).
Figure 4: Still from Citizen Kane, 1941, directed by Orson Welles, produced by RKO Radio Pictures, featuring a sled collecting snow.
A once animated scene featuring Kane, his parents, and the banker, Thatcher, fades into a disturbingly empty scene howling with the departure of Kane, whom Thatcher had taken guardianship over. The sled lays forgotten in the corner of the frame while snow billows over in neglect (Figure 4). This dark ambience casts a shadow over Kane’s adult ambitions and relationships up until his death, where flames, consuming his belongings, lick unknowingly over an inscription on a sled, reading “Rosebud”. The Latin phrase “sic transit gloria mundi” (thus passes the glory of the world), sweeps over Kane’s legacy — one that is both impressive and brutally confronted.
Figure 5: Still from Citizen Kane, 1941, directed by Orson Welles, produced by RKO Radio Pictures, featuring a snow globe falling from Kane’s hand.
The opening scene takes on new significance: Kane, having uttered his final word, “Rosebud”, releases the snow globe from his hand (Figure 5). The flurried still creates an eerily magical moment: along the metaphorical perimeters of life, the snow globe slips from Kane’s hand as they both fall against the sharp outlines of tile and bed.
The snow globe’s shattering marks the end of Kane’s life glories while bitterly recalling what he had really longed for: the last time he felt true joy and nurturing affection before being abandoned.
Although paling in vigor to Kane’s businesses, campaigns, and estates, the snow globe, small and modest, ultimately contains the eternity of his nature and memory. The death of Kane with the shattering of his snow globe recalls Andrew Wyeth’s 1978 Spring, featuring an ill man lying in melting snow. As the snow flurries upon Kane in his final moment, so does the sun melt Wyeth’s man. Thus, this snow globe motif recalls Nature as the original power over mortality, and questions whether to romanticize or to disillusion the very snow which has mythologised itself as an essential hallmark of the holiday season in such works.
Both inaccessible and artificial, as well as preserved and magical, the snow globe in Citizen Kane evokes the dual loss and joy of the Christmas season: loss in a fleeting whirl of winter, but joy in the sentimentality of a memory, or memories, frozen in time.
Bibliography
Atlas Obscura, “Who Invented the Snow Globe?” accessed December 22, 2024, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/who-invented-snow-globe.
Brandywine River Museum of Art, “Spring,” accessed December 22, 2024, https://collections.brandywine.org/objects/880/spring?ctx=45c34181-c2e0-4462-83d7-.
The Henry Ford, “Snow Globes: Objects of American Culture and Personal Contemplation,” accessed December 22, 2024, https://www.thehenryford.org/explore/blog/snow-globes-objects-of-american-culture-and-personal-contemplation.