Tawdry? Okay. But effective? Yes. The influential American film critic Pauline Kael wrote an 1971 essay on the making of the movie, "Raising Kane". She quotes Welles as saying “The Rosebud gimmick is what I like least about the movie. It’s a gimmick, really, and rather dollar-book Freud.” Credit -- or blame -- for the Rosebud gimmick really belongs to Herman J. Mankiewicz, who wrote the script that Welles got co-writing credit and an Oscar for. Notwithstanding Kael's agreement that the Rosebud gimmick is "dollar-book Freud", she acknowledges that Mankiewicz provided Welles with "a beautifully engineered structure". Well, the Rosebud gimmick is the framing device for that "beautifully engineered structure". Go figure.

Paul, I dug into the blog's archives and found this post from June 2008 in which I had found a video clip online, an interview with Welles. Unfortunately as these things happen on YouTube, that clip disappeared, but here is exact quote:

I'm ashamed of Rosebud. I think it's a rather tawdry device. It's the thing I like least in Kane. It's kind of a dollar book Freudian gag. It doesn't stand up very well.

And here are my comments about the whole Rosebud thing:

First, Welles reveals that the idea of ‘home’ is very important to him because as a child, his family moved multiple times, so he never really had what he would call a home. Second, he confesses that his least favorite thing about Citizen Kane was Rosebud — he calls it a “rather tawdry device.” May I humbly disagree. First, Rosebud serves numerous narrative functions: framing device for the narrative, source of a mystery as well as eventually the key to solving it, the sled and the snow globe powerful visual devices, taking on talismanic significance. But beyond that, I wonder if Welles is doing a bit of deflection here. In response to the interviewer’s question, “Is there anything that came out of that [i.e., Welles’ family moving around so much] in the movie,” Welles offers a definitive no. But isn’t ‘home’ what Rosebud — the sled / snow globe — represents to Kane, that one time and one place where he was truly happy, his youthful winter wonderland, he and his friends, sledding in the snow, only to be yanked out of there by life’s sudden turn? And so isn’t it fair to think that Welles’ desire to have a single place he could call home (he says so point blank in the interview) is reflected in the experience of young Charles Foster Kane? Therefore, Rosebud can be seen to be much more than a “tawdry device,” it is precisely the whole point of Kane’s existence, constantly attempting in all his life endeavors to find some thing, some place he could call ‘home.’ Yet he could never satisfy that almost infantile need, which is why it’s so riveting to see him wandering the halls of Xanadu on the night of his death, clutching the snow globe, then offering up his final word, “Rosebud.”

If you check out the video that IS available from that 2008 post, watch Welles talk about home. That's what Rosebud is - a talisman representing home which Kane associated with happiness. And you can hear in Welles' own voice how important that idea is to him and how he lacked it in his own life... like Kane. We write what we know...