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It has been said that Citizen Kane is the best film ever made. There is no doubt that Citizen Kane is a great film. The absolute stunning 1941 film is one of the world’s most famous and highly renowned films ever to come out of Hollywood. This film contains many remarkable scenes and cinematic techniques as well as innovations before its time. It is a pioneering film that forever changed the filmmaking environment with a plot that is most creative and original in all of movie history.
Citizen Kane is the classic masterpiece which communicates its original narrative through ground-breaking cinematography, lighting, music, setting, sound, and performances. Why is Citizen Kane deemed to be such an amazing film?
Two words, Orson Welles. George Orson Welles was the man behind and in front of the camera of Citizen Kane. He was the co-writer, director, producer and stared as Charles Foster Kane. Welles started his career in the mid-thirties at age fifteen. By eighteen Welles started to appear in off-Broadway productions.
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It was then that he also launched his radio career. By age twenty, he had presented alternate interpretations of certain well-known plays and movies. At age twenty-two, he was the most notable Broadway star from Mercury Theater and because of that BBC radio gave him an hour each week to broadcast whatever he pleased. On October 30, 1938, when Welles aired his adaptation of H.G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds which was perceived by listeners, particularly in New Jersey as a real event.
Welles’s cemented his status as a genius, and his talents quickly had Hollywood calling.
RKO studio had a new president, George Schaefer and he was looking for someone new to put life into his stagnating studio. After Welles BBC radio catastrophe and hearing of Welles interest in filmmaking, he made him an offer never to be heard of in those days in Hollywood. In August of 1939, at the age twenty-four, Orson Welles signed a contract with RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. to make three films, one a year. His pay would be 25 percent of the gross profits of each film with an advance of $150,000. At his own choosing, he could be the producer, director, writer, actor, or all of the above. It was unprecedented in Hollywood for a director to have so much control over all aspects of his film (Fabe 78).
Welles arrived in Hollywood and was greeted with great bitterness because of his youth, inexperience, and his new contract. He began his search looking for a screenwriter, and found a highly experienced one in, Herman J. Mankiewicz. Welles and Mankiewicz quickly formed an alliance and together they worked out the subject for Orson’s first film, Citizen Kane. While Mankiewicz worked on writing the screenplay, Welles continued to put together a Hollywood dream team for his first feature film. Gregg Toland, one of Hollywood’s master cinematographers and newly crowned Academy Award winner for his work on the 1939 film, Wuthering Heights, volunteered to work with Welles and teach him the artistry of the camera in filmmaking.
Welles brought on many familiar acquaintances from his radio and theater days. One such person was Bernard Herrmann, a composer who had worked extensively with Welles on the radio and Perry Ferguson, a highly regarded art director, was also brought in along with cast members from Mercury theater. Welles’s contract allowed him more freedom than any other Hollywood director had ever known before and the most unprecedented privilege he had received was the right to do the final cut on the film. Citizen Kane had intellectual class, it was bold, original, and iconoclastic in both subject matter and technique.
Granted these qualities, and granted the canny publicity accompanying its making, Citizen Kane seemed headed for major commercial success. But all of its virtues could never make up for the damage soon to be done it by William Randolph Hearst’s violent attack on the film (Garis 15). Citizen Kane was released on September 5th, 1941, and there was trouble at the box office from the very beginning. A media mogul name, William Randolph Hearst was deeply offended by the making of Citizen Kane because he believed the film was based on his life and his relationship with his mistress Marion Davies. Hearst and his comrades waged war against Welles, RKO, and Citizen Kane and ultimately got the opening victory.
Citizen Kane failed miserably at the box office and was quickly placed on lockdown by the studio. Film critics, on the other hand, thought Citizen Kane to be the most extraordinary piece of film work, that had never been seen or had never been done before in Hollywood. Late in the year, both the New York Film Critics and the National Board of Review voted Citizen Kane best picture of 1941. There were also Academy Award nominations in nine major categories. The film won in only one category, best original screenplay, and the award was shared by Mankiewicz and Welles.
According to Variety magazine, “A strong element of vindictiveness seems to have been involved.” (Carringer 117) Citizen Kane begins with an opening sequence that is luring and electrifying at the same time. The first scene gives the viewer the pleasure of being the all-knowing spectator as the “NO TRESPASSING” sign begins to tell the story of the emotional barricade on a forbidding black wire fence is the first shot seen in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. After the initial close-up of “No Trespassing,” the camera effortlessly pans up and over the fence accentuating the foreground of a private castle.
Through a series of slow dissolves, we are transported deeper and deeper into Kane’s vast estate and inner sanctum. A single light illuminates from a window of the massive estate, as a dead stillness captivates the night air which echoes a lifeless appearance within that scene. The single light from the window goes out. The music stops. Lights fade back into the scene and the music resumes (Rasmussen 6). This dramatic sequence of shots was to introduce the audience to the protagonist of Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane a man whose past becomes manifested in his present and future now lying on his deathbed. Falling snow and a quaint cottage appears to create a new scene but as the camera zoom out, the emergence of a snow globe within Kane’s hand quiver before he lets go of life last breath and his last word, “ROSEBUD.”
Welles created a visual distortion of perspective with the shattered glass from the snow globe to end the opening scene, this was a history-making moment of genius visual effect never used before. The film tells the story of Charles Foster Kane’s life in flashback. “News on the March” was plastered for all to see. This was a clever tool used for supplying viewers with background information about Kane. The newsreel was a fast-moving montage of images, accompanied by an energetic barking narration of Kane rise to power, his plummet to disturbing isolation and how he was perceived by the public. With awkward transitions and many jump cuts presenting a quick summation of Kane’s over-the-top lifestyle and possessions, has now all come to an end. Xanadu with the legendary palace of Kubla Khan. It is a dynamic, sunlit kingdom full of new construction, news acquisitions, and happy guests. In short, a “pleasure dome.” (Rasmussen 7)
Who or what is Rosebud? Rosebud is the mysterious word that lights the path for the remainder of the film. Kane’s final word is now the driving force of the film which is now being narrated by six different characters and from six different perspectives on the life of Charles Foster Kane and the mystery of his last word. Mr. Thompson a reporter is introduce as a man in pursuit of finding out who or what is “Rosebud.” He leads the film down a path of Kane’s past with testimony from those closes to Kane to reveal the meaning of his final word.
Through this approach Welles, could elaborate the story of Kane’s life from different individual’s perspective. The story became a jig-saw puzzle for Mr. Thompson and a jig-saw puzzle for the viewer regarding who or what is Rosebud. The film progresses through a series of flashbacks and we get a sense of the tragedy of Kane’s life. One of the prominent scenes of the film is when a young Kane is playing in the snow and his mother discusses his future with his new guardian, Mr. Thatcher. This scene takes the film to a groundbreaking moment in cinematic evolution.
Deep-focus photography is now on full display as this scene is shot by Welles and Toland. The deep-focus technique allows the foreground and background of the shot to be in focus simultaneously using lighting, composition, and a type of camera lens to produce the desired effect consistently utilized to bring a greater complexity to both the plot and the perspective of the viewer. The complex camera angles also help to enhance the dramatic effects seen in Citizen Kane. Using relatively wide-angle lenses and small lens apertures to render in sharp focus near and distant planes simultaneously.
The style of deep-focus included foreground, middle-ground, and extreme-background objects, all in focus. This technique also achieves keeping multiple planes within the frame in focus, and creates photography with impression of a fully realized, detailed, layered world. Rather than presenting a composed picture, deep-focus probes space and explores the uniquely cinematic intersection of space, time, and movement. To describe deep-focus plainly is to say it makes anything and everything in the shot immediately relevant. We see deep-focus developed in many scenes of Citizen Kane, one such scene is where the young Charles Foster Kane is throwing snowballs at the sign in his hometown and his mother calls out to him from the window; we see Charles outside playing in the snow, his mother, father, and Mr. Thatcher in the house all in focus and all relevant in that scene.
Deep-focus was also very effective in the scene where Kane’s loses control after Susan Alexander leaves him and his personal isolation became very relevant as he walks down the hallway. Welles gave the audience a clear view of the space Kane commanded as well as space over which he had no power over at that moment. The lighting plan was a crucial element of the film with full light, high-intensity lighting, point-source arc lighting, high-contrast tonality, and low key lighting all on display to create the different variations of each scene.
The low-key lighting produces the shadows and dark sinister feel you get throughout the film. There were many special effects elements used to create this exquisite film range from background projection to matte painting; models to miniature sets; mechanical gadgetry to compositing of images through optical printing; low-angle camera setups made possible by muslin ceilings on the sets; and an array of striking visual devices; such as composite dissolves; extreme depth of field effects; and shooting directly into lights.
Most of these elements ran directly counter to the conventional studio cinematography of that time. The sounds of Citizen Kane were created by composer, Bernard Herrmann who used a blend of sound effects and with musical instruments and a live orchestra to add dimensions that mirrored the imagery of the film. As with all film creation, the editing and mise-en-scene was key element for success, and all those elements were brilliantly used and executed in the making of Citizen Kane. The style and genre of Citizen Kane can be classified as film noir for its aesthetics of stark lighting effects, frequent use of flashback, intricate plots, and lighting with dark moody shadows throughout the film. Welles elaborated on the use of expressionist techniques associated with Soviet montage and German Expressionism (Fabe 80). Many critics over the years have reference Citizen Kane as the grand synthesis of realism and expressionism in film form because of the richness of the imagery enhanced by the film’s intricate structure.
The film was highly praised by the realist theorist Andre Bazin for its use of long takes and deep-focus photography, which Bazin felt brought a heightened realism to the screen and constituted “a revolution in the language of the screen.” (Fabe 80) Orson Welles painted a storyboard with broad visual strokes that leaves you wanting a little more of Citizen Kane. The movie is a work of art and uses so many different techniques, that you must admire the spirit and energy of the film. The pace of the film allowed Welles to construct the life of Charles Foster Kane so the audience somehow begin to care for Kane. As the film progress through his rise and fall, the mysterious word, Rosebud, leaves the characters of the film feeling a sense of wonder and confusion. Thompson, at the end of the film is walking through Xanadu when a woman asks, “What Rosebud?”
In the final sequence, those upstairs have the question and no answer. Those downstairs, in the furnace room, burn the sled. They have the answer. But they do not have the question. There are, in fact, no answers here, “No Trespassing,” in the life of Charles Foster Kane. The first and last words of the film offer contradiction to it apparent meaning (McGinty 47 - 48). Thompson still does not know the answer to Kane’s final word, Rosebud. No one seems to know the answer. And no one ever will... except the audience at the end of the film. Today many Hollywood director's use the style of Citizen Kane cinematography as a template for their filmmaking.
Many directors like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, have praised Citizen Kane as an influencer on their filmmaking over the years. Inevitably, many subsequent films have some of that same ebullience: Martin Scorsese’s, The Wolf of Wall Street recreates the scene in which Kane throws a party for his newspaper staff, and their office is invaded by a marching band and a high-kicking chorus line. But not even Scorsese’s eternally boyish dynamism can match that of Welles when he was making Citizen Kane. (BBC.com)
Citizen Kane was created with a completely different cinematic technique than the norm of that time-period in Hollywood. When Citizen Kane opened in 1941, it did not fare as well as Orson Welles had hoped because of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Who waged a snub campaign to destroy the film; for the most part at that time, he succeeded. Eventually, Citizen Kane reappeared in 1956 and was resurrected to a new life with a new audience; over the next several years, the film's stature continued to grow and grow. Now over the last seventy years, this film has evolved into a critically acclaimed masterpiece.
Respected and revered by many in the film industry, tops just about every movie polls there is and keeps intriguing the young and old of many generations. Citizen Kane was groundbreaking for its remarkable scenes and cinematic techniques as well as the innovations it created. Welles and Toland are still considered masters for their work on Citizen Kane by the film industry because they were the ones who took a chance on something new and different and ended up with a masterpiece of cinematic art, for all cultures and generations to enjoy and appreciate even seventy years later.
Works Cited
Why Citizen Kane is Classic Masterpiece of Cinematography. (2021, Dec 10). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/why-citizen-kane-is-classic-masterpiece-of-cinematography-essay
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