"Citizen Kane is often called the greatest film ever made. With close examination of the opening scenes, discuss the significant artistic features and cinematic techniques that led to this response."
"Citizen Kane is often called the greatest film ever made. With close examination of the opening scenes, discuss the significant artistic features and cinematic techniques that led to this response."
Citizen Kane is often called the greatest film ever made. Its use of film techniques often taken for granted nowadays were completely new and had not been done before. Simple things like ceilings on the sets and realistic scenes such as the newsreel, which would not stand out in a modern film, were combined to make a film full of innovative techniques. The director, Orson Welles, developed the use of deep focus to make the flat cinema screen almost become three dimensional, which added a realism that had not been explored before.
Right from the start, a viewer can see the innovation displayed by Welles. The opening scene, one of the most famous in the entire film, begins with the fence that surrounds Kane's mansion, Xanadu. This shows how private and reclusive Kane has become in his old age, that he requires this huge wire mesh fence around his home. The scene then dissolves to show the main gates of Xanadu, with the large letter "K" in the middle. This represents how, despite all his accomplishments, this one letter in a circle can now sum up his life, that people just see him as an old man who will not let anyone close to him.
Still in the first scene, the atmosphere of the footage, with the fog shrouding everything, creates a feeling of foreboding and fear of what will be seen. The strange images of the boats and the monkeys particularly provoke uneasiness in an audience. The music also helps the effect, with its threatening sound clearly telling the audience that this is not the nicest place to be.
As the camera comes closer to the house with each shot, we become aware of a single light shining in one solitary window. Just as the camera gets closest to the light, and the music reaches a crescendo, it suddenly goes out. This happens just as Kane dies, so it is both a signal that he has passed away, and a metaphor of the light of life going out.
The opening scene also contains the first instance of something being viewed through a piece of glass and of just the reflection of what is going on being seen, in this case, both at once. These techniques make the audience unsure of what they are seeing and are used at other times throughout the film.
Realism is a major reason why "Citizen Kane" stands out from other films of the time. However, it is the way realism and theatrical effects are mixed together that truly marks it out as one of the greatest films ever made. Ceilings ...
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The opening scene also contains the first instance of something being viewed through a piece of glass and of just the reflection of what is going on being seen, in this case, both at once. These techniques make the audience unsure of what they are seeing and are used at other times throughout the film.
Realism is a major reason why "Citizen Kane" stands out from other films of the time. However, it is the way realism and theatrical effects are mixed together that truly marks it out as one of the greatest films ever made. Ceilings on the set allowed for scenes lit by normal lightbulbs, giving the appearance of real rooms, but the theatrical spotlights through the windows in the newsreel showing room and the library highlight parts of the scenery, leaving others in shadow.
The people working on "Citizen Kane" went to great lengths to get authentic-looking film for the newsreel. It was degraded using sand to give a grainy look as opposed to the smooth film used for the main picture. Also in the newsreel, the jerky cuts, when Kane spills cement on his coat then is shown clean, give a more genuine feel to the footage. The newsreel scene can also be viewed as a parody of an actual news programme of the time, "March of Time". This particular reference would certainly have been picked up on by a 1940s audience, who would have known the programme and may even have believed for a few moments that a real newsflash had interrupted the film.
The narrative structure of the film, with people from Kane's life being interviewed and recounting their experiences of him, makes the film seem like a real-life documentary. It almost could be a biographical piece about this newspaper tycoon and would-be politician's life, despite him being a fictional character.
Part of this "documentary-feeling" comes from the close links with the life of William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper baron and politician whose estate, San Simeon, was a real-life equivalent of Xanadu. Like Hearst, Kane's first marriage breaks up due to an affair with a young singer, and their lives have many other overlapping points.
Another, less noticeable, realistic element is the sound in some scenes, which may not be noticed as it was designed to sound like the noises and music that would appear in a real-life scene in the same place. This diegetic sound could almost have a casual viewer believing that they are watching a real documentary on this person's life.
The other most important element of "Citizen Kane"s narrative structure is the fact that it begins at he end. This unusual idea has been used in two other films of more modern times, Titanic, and Memento, which both begin with an ending, then tell of the events leading up to it. This technique will grab the audience's attention, because now, instead of trying to work out in their mind how the film will end, they find themselves trying to work out how the end came to happen the way it did. This was yet another original idea, which would have perhaps confused, or perhaps intrigued a 1941 audience and it was another point that made it stand out.
"Standing out" was something not restricted to people and objects near the camera in "Citizen Kane" as the deep focus technique allowed Welles to show things in the background clearly. Although this was not an entirely new technique, Welles used it with such craft that many people believed it was.
It allowed the relationships between people to be shown by the physical distance between the actors and their positions in relation to each other on screen. Scenes towards the end of the film show this, with Kane and his wife talking across large rooms to each other, but it is particularly noticeable and effective in the scene where Mrs. Kane signs her son over to be raised by Mr. Thatcher. As well as the triangle formed on-screen by Mrs. Kane in the foreground, Mr. Kane further away and Thatcher between them, (he has literally come between them, too) we can see a young Charlie Kane, completely oblivious to this event which will shape his future, in the background, throwing snowballs at the window. Welles' mise-en-scène gets the message of what is going on between the characters just by their positions, movements and actions, without the need for the characters to voice any explanation.
It has already been mentioned that "Citizen Kane" used the ceiling as part of the set, and it enabled low-angle shots to look real. This meant that Welles could use a camera looking up at a person to heighten their status and make them appear more threatening and "in charge". Conversely, people in a position of weakness or lesser importance could be shot from above, physically making them appear smaller and less threatening. For example, when Mr. Thompson visits Thatcher's library to read up on Kane, the statue of Thatcher is shot from the bottom and up close, so it appears huge, when, in reality, it was a small model.
Montage was a technique very useful to Welles, as it allowed a lot of information to be conveyed in a small period of time. In particular, the newsreel sequence uses montage to great effect. The "closed" signs during the depression show how much of Kane's empire was closed or merged during that time. In addition, the shots of different world leaders (including Hitler), many of whom held greatly different views show his conflicting nature and how he contradicted his previous words and actions if they were not correct or showing him in a good light.
Montage of newspaper headlines is a major storytelling device for Welles, and he uses them to give the audience the picture without directly telling them. When Kane dies, papers from all over the world in all languages are shown with the story on their front page, indicating that he is incredibly well known globally, not just in America. Opera posters advertising Kane's second wife, Susan Alexander, are put into a montage showing the huge publicity Kane gave her, despite her mediocre talents.
A different example of Welles' mise-en-shot having great effect is the use of single shots from one angle for extended periods of time. This is a technique rarely employed in modern films, with directors preferring to jump to different angles frequently, showing as much as possible in a different way. This can feel strange to a modern viewer, and I found myself watching some of the interview scenes especially, just waiting for the camera to change, even just for a close-up, but it rarely does.
A scene from the newsreel gives a good overall impression of the film. When Thatcher is shown calling Kane a communist, a union leader declares him a fascist, and Kane refers to himself as "One thing only- an American." These different views of Kane are symbolic of the way we only get what people who knew him thought of him, and as the newsreel director said, "what he did." We never find out the real truth, only other people's views, and although clues are given (after all, not many would believe that this cold businessman would so fondly keep his childhood sledge) we never really know the man himself.
Michael Whiteman
